The technology behind OIX dispels the argument that in order to make online advertising relevant for consumers you must use and keep consumer surfing behaviour or their personally identifiable information. It was designed and built from the ground up to ensure 100% secure user privacy.

• We cannot know who they are
• We cannot know where they've been
• It's always their choice

The OIX doesn't gather personally-identifiable information. Phorm technology does not view any information on secure (HTTPS) pages, and ignores strings of numbers longer than three digits to ensure that it does not collect credit card numbers, phone numbers, National Insurance numbers or other potentially private information. It doesn't store IP addresses or retain browsing or search histories. The system does not integrate with any system (like the ISP's log-in system) that could identify the user.

Even the cookie is anonymised with a long, randomly-generated number. As a result, OIX can't know who users are or any information that might worry the user. Plus, users can switch it off or on at any time.

The technology powering the OIX has been designed from the ground up to protect Internet user privacy and anonymity. Phorm's privacy claims have been verified by external auditor Ernst & Young (View report PDF).

What does it keep?

Phorm's technology collects information on browser type, response to advertising, the URLs of some of the web pages viewed, and search terms entered. Neither URLs nor search terms are stored - they are discarded immediately. The user information that's left is assigned to an anonymous cookie with a randomly generated ID number. The random ID marks an anonymous list of the categories of products or services in which a user appears to be interested.

Unlike search engines and most websites, the OIX can't lose sensitive information, or choose to release it, because the OIX doesn't have it in the first place.