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technical diagram
 

DIAGRAM KEY

Rules Engine

  • Only HTTP traffic is processed within the Rules Engine and thereafter in the rest of the system.
  • The Rules Engine looks to see if the user's browser already has a Webwise cookie
  • If an Opt-Out Webwise cookie is present, the user's request immediately passes through to the Internet
  • If an Opt-In cookie is present, the user's request is passed via the Data Mirror to the Internet
  • If no cookie is present, and the user has set their browser to block cookies from the Webwise.net domain, the request is passed through to the Internet
  • If no cookie is present, and cookies are not blocked for Webwise, the user is passed to the Customer Choice Module

Customer Choice Module

  • The Customer Choice Module presents a web page to the user giving them the option to participate in the trial (opt-in) or not participate in the trial (opt-out)
  • If the customer chooses to opt-in, a User ID (UID) cookie containing a random number is placed in the user's browser. The user's request is then sent back to the Rules Engine.
  • If the customer chooses to opt-out, the UID cookie is set to the opted-out value and the user's request is sent back to the Rules Engine

Data Mirror

  • The data mirror makes a copy of the user's request as it passes through to the Internet. This copy is forwarded to the Profiler and Anonymizer.
  • Only opted-in traffic is mirrored

Profiler & Anonymizer

  • The Profiler & Anonymizer cleans personally identifiable information from the data and then generates a summary of the remaining data to be passed to the Channel Server
  • To clean the data, the following are removed:
    • IP address
    • Form fields
    • Email addresses
    • Numbers
  • The summarised, non-personally-identifiable data passed to the Channel Server consists of the following:
    • UID
    • Requested URL
    • Search terms (if the requested page is a major search engine)
    • The top 10 repeated keywords from the page content
  • All other data is deleted and is not stored to disk during the process.

Advertising Channel Database

  • This stores the templates for advertising product categories, called Channels.
  • Channel definitions are regulated and must not contain triggers in sensitive subject areas such as Pornography, Gambling, Tobacco

Channel Server

  • The Channel Server receives the summarised and anonymized data from the Profiler & Anonymizer, analyses it for matches against the available advertising channels and stores a record of any successful matches.
  • The data received from the Profiler & Anonymizer is deleted immediately after the matching process.
  • Where a successful match is made, the only data stored is the UID, the channel matched and a timestamp
  • Each individual channel match is deleted when it becomes older than the matching period set for each advertising channel. The maximum allowed matching period is 6 months.


Other notes

  • All equipment is owned by BT and located within BT data centres.
  • BT has operational control of the Profiler and Anonymizer, and Phorm has no operational access to these systems
  • Phorm have no access to other BT-managed systems
  • BT's Operational Support personnel have full access to Phorm-managed systems via Firewall rules to enable operational monitoring
  • All operational application flows are initiated by BT-managed systems

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