Virgin Media Phorm Webwise Adverts [Updated: See Post No. 1, 77, 102 & 797]

[popper]

Originally Posted by theciscokid

Hi

I don't think you can cancel because VM can change prices etc as per T&C's.

The cooling off period you had has since expired so to cancel now will cost you sorry to say.

I understand your reasoning

cheers

you really should try and make the time to read the T&C.

theres a section (i forget were now) that says any price change allows your exit from the contract without penalty,so yes you can.

[theciscokid]

I'll just stick to reading my CCNA books and college notes!! Thats great bedtime reading! lol

Fair comment though. I'll try and brush up

[popper]

Originally Posted by Ravenheart

Andy,

I'm glad you've decided to delurk

The whole Phorm debate is something that concerns us all, I was just watching a programme on BBC1 about identity theft, the experts are telling us to protect ourselves and our ISP's are teaming up with a 3rd party firm with a history in spyware adding another tier of risk to our online activity.

Like you I've had no problems with my internet from Telewest/VM and to have to drop down to a more unreliable dsl connection wouldn't be ideal.

Virgin have said in a letter replying to one of the forum members letters that they would distance themselves from anything that tarnished the Virgin brand.
Well Phorm certainly does that.

I find it amusing that the Virgin group promote themselves on the following page

http://www.virgin.com/AboutVirgin/Wh...vigateToPage=3

"Brilliant Customer Service" I'm sorry, but selling your customers privacy to a spyware company certainly isn't.

Good luck with your CCNA


Happy posting.

just for information more that anything.

its rather common that people mix these up, but infact the Virgin group do not own the Vigin Media cable company.

ntl/tw/etc are still the same old companys rolled in to one, the ntl/tw US board infact licenced the Vigin brand name from the Virgin group for a 20 year lease , and someone inside ntl/tw slaped the Media on the end hence 'Virgin Media'

they also pay RB a seperate retainer for acting as their figurhead and call him out when the need arises.

so while RB and his the Virgin group are one of the largest shareholders in VM they dont have the seat on the board,or run the cable/uk mobile company.

HOWEVER given the Virgin group own the V brand name, the ntl/tw US board of directors are infact bringing the virgin brand into disrepute(sp) and it seems reasonable that there will be clauses in the signed contract forbiding this, so the Virgin group must be interested in anything such as this VM ISP Phorm deal....

---------- Post added at 23:28 ---------- Previous post was at 23:24 ----------

lol, i didnt mean to put you off, just the first reply i clicked on, thanks for pointing the readers to DPI BTW, they may be enlightened as to how powerful this isp/phorm kit is and as an end user you have no control over that....without a dpa notice being sent etc.

[theciscokid]

No probs popper and thanks for highlighting it in the first place.

We occasionally have to use packet sniffers on our private network for bandwidth monitoring purposes. It's a very useful technology but god only knows it's wide open for exploitation in the wrong hands.

Cheers

[Ravenheart]

Originally Posted by popper

just for information more that anything.

its rather common that people mix these up, but infact the Virgin group do not own the Vigin Media cable company.

ntl/tw/etc are still the same old companys rolled in to one, the ntl/tw US board infact licenced the Vigin brand name from the Virgin group for a 20 year lease , and someone inside ntl/tw slaped the Media on the end hence 'Virgin Media'

they also pay RB a seperate retainer for acting as their figurhead and call him out when the need arises.

so while RB and his the Virgin group are one of the largest shareholders in VM they dont have the seat on the board,or run the cable/uk mobile company.

HOWEVER given the Virgin group own the V brand name, the ntl/tw US board of directors are infact bringing the virgin brand into disrepute(sp) and it seems reasonable that there will be clauses in the signed contract forbiding this, so the Virgin group must be interested in anything such as this VM ISP Phorm deal....

Hi Popper,

Thanks for clarifying that, I did know that Virgin put their names to things without having a direct input, as IIRC when they sold the Virgin Megastores to a French company there was some sort of deal for them to keep the Virgin name for a period of time. After seeing the VM link on that Virgin site I thought they had more input than they seem to have.

[CaptJamieHunter]

Originally Posted by popper

they also pay RB a seperate retainer for acting as their figurhead and call him out when the need arises.

so while RB and his the Virgin group are one of the largest shareholders in VM they dont have the seat on the board,or run the cable/uk mobile company.

HOWEVER given the Virgin group own the V brand name, the ntl/tw US board of directors are infact bringing the virgin brand into disrepute(sp) and it seems reasonable that there will be clauses in the signed contract forbiding this, so the Virgin group must be interested in anything such as this VM ISP Phorm deal....

This is why I don't understand why there hasn't been some kind of statement by Sir Beardy. I've had a generic letter from VM Customer Service saying "we'll get back to you" but I don't know whether it's in response to my letter to Neil Berkett or to Sir Beardy.

My response to Ian Woodham went out yesterday and it emphasises how much of a hammering the Virgin Media brand is taking. It's now associated with Phorm and BT and illegal wiretapping of customers' data. With every passing days' silence that perception becomes more and more embedded in peoples' minds.

[AlexanderHanff]

Originally Posted by CaptJamieHunter

This is a draft e-mail to David Davis. I'm assuming that although he's a "self confessed geek" he might not be completely up to speed on the Phorm issue. Sorry for the length but as you probably noticed, I'm not very good at concise. Suggestions, enhancements and corrections appreciated.

From: Me
To: davisd@parliament.uk

Dear Mr Davis,

I should like to bring to your attention a number of worrying recent developments in the field of internet privacy and of the failure of the Office of the Information Commissioner to investigate what appear to be breaches of the Data Protection Act and Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.

You may already be aware that three major internet service providers (ISPs) have signed agreements with a company known as Phorm to sell the internet browsing data of their users as part of a "targeted advertising" scheme.

Computer news site The Register has uncovered a number of disturbing facts about Phorm including its previous involvement in spyware under a different name. Phorm prefer to spin this fact saying they were involved in adware. A cursory look at http://blogs.zdnet.com/Spyware/index.php?p=820, http://www.f-secure.com/sw-desc/peopleonpage.shtml and http://www.f-secure.com/sw-desc/apropos.shtml suggests differently.

Phorm make a number of claims about their "product" being "a gold standard in user privacy" but despite being present on The Register, CableForum and a number of weblogs they have failed to openly and honestly answer detailed technical questions and concerns put in the public domain. You can find an example of such questions on http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03...ster/comments/

Particularly I refer to the growing belief that Phorm is illegal under RIPA. The Foundation for Information Policy Research has published an open letter to Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner, stating this belief.

This letter is at http://www.fipr.org/080317icoletter.html

The Guardian newspaper recently rejected Phorm, saying that their "decision was in no small part down to the conversations we had internally about how this product sits with the values of our company." As polite a devastating put down as I have ever seen.

More recently The Register obtained proof that BT not only secretly tested this "product" in June 2007 but lied to cover up this fact. Customers were given various excuses for their concerns, but no customer was told the truth. The report is at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/17/bt_phorm_lies/

This issue took an even more serious turn when The Register revealed that it had seen documentary evidence confirming that "BT secretly intercepted and profiled the web browsing of 18,000 of its broadband customers in 2006 using advertising technology provided by 121Media, the alleged spyware company that changed its name to Phorm last year. BT Retail ran the "stealth" pilot without customer consent between 23 September and 6 October 2006."

This in addition to the secret 2007 tests. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 makes intercepting internet traffic without a warrant or consent an offence. It seems to me that illegally intercepting 18,000 customers' internet traffic is in breach of that legislation. As was the first secret test. I contend that BT must also be in breach of the Data Protection Act as the data was collected without customers' consent.

Please read the full report at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04...rm_2006_trial/

BT claimed that there was nothing illegal about the trials but refused to answer a number of direct questions asked by The Register about Stratis Scleparis, the BT Retail CTO who became Phorm CTO after the first successful secret trial. BT preferred to hide behind a bland statement and refused to apologise to customers.

The report is at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04...orm_interview/

I am also led to understand that the Metropolitan Police declined to record the first of BT's secret tests as a crime when a colleague tried to report it as such. Please read the report at http://denyphorm.blogspot.com/2008/0...ort-crime.html

A number of people have already complained to the ICO but had little back in response.

Today we became aware that despite these facts coming to light, the ICO have said that there is definitely no official investigation by ICO with regards to Phorm. Neither is there any investigation with regards the BT secret trials of 2006 and 2007.

I am led to believe the ICO are claiming that RIPA falls under the remit of the Home Office. The ICO seem unwilling to accept there should be an investigation into the activities of BT and Phorm. I should also add that the ICO were also extremely reluctant to divulge this information to a colleague and refused permission to quote them.

This cannot be acceptable from a public servant organisation.

This cannot be acceptable from the organisation created to "protect personal information" "provide information to individuals and organisations" and "take appropriate action when the law is broken."

A major telcommunications company in the UK has betrayed the trust placed in it by its users. It and its accomplice, Phorm, should surely be brought to book for this flagrant violation of privacy legislation.

One cannot help but wonder if the lack of action by the government and ICO is influenced in any way by the presence of former Labour minister Patricia Hewitt. I am not suggesting any impropriety but I am sure you appreciate that I and many others cannot understand why BT and Phorm are being allowed to breach internet users' privacy with complete disregard for their customers or the law.

I urge you to take up this issue with your colleagues in both Houses, the House Of Commons Science and Technology and Culture, Media and Sport Committees and the House Of Lords Science and Technology Committee.

Thank you for your time. If I may be of any further assistance to you please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Yours sincerely

The Parliamentary committees may be worth contacting: the House Of Lords committee at http://www.parliament.uk/parliamenta...ct_details.cfm and the House Of Commons Select Committee at http://www.parliament.uk/parliamenta..._committee.cfm
and the Commons Culture, Media and Sport committee at http://www.parliament.uk/parliamenta...rt_members.cfm

Each one has a number of members. More people to enlighten and educate.

Sorry for the length. I need a cup of tea now!

You need to metion ICO's obligation to enforce the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations with regards the BT secret trials. Whereas ICO might be able to say that RIPA falls under the remit of Home Office they cannot sidestep Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations as I outlined in my previous post.

Feel free to cite the relevant parts directly from the beginning of that very long post I made.

Alexander Hanff

[Winston Smith]

Hi All,

Apologies if this has been asked before but the thread has been going for some time now and although I have read it all it has been over the past few days so I may have missed this if it was asked before.

Firstly my thanks go to all those (Alexander/Popper/CaptJamie et al) who have been posting about this and more, been emailing MPs etc. They insipred me to email my MP, MEP and sign the petition.

As a personal user of Virgin I am seriously ticked off about this but due to my location am unable to swap to ADSL so will sign up with Relakks or similar.

However more importantly is this spyware going to be implemented on all BT lines or solely on residential/home use. I ask this as I work for a company who use BT for all our non head office broadband. Moreover we provide the ability for our clients to connect to us for payroll and hr purposes. Although our client connections to the payroll/hr systems are via a minimum of SSL and preferably via L2TP/IPsec our staff still access the internet over clear channels. They access Inland Revenue for the UK and elsewhere as well as other payroll related sites.
BT also provide the leased line that links our head office - is there reason for concern there?
Maybe I am being paranoid but BS7799 seems to be fairly strict and we have this certification and dont want to lose it.
Thanks

WinstonS

[Portly_Giraffe]

Well, here's my contribution to Suggest a Story for April 5th pm. And I do mention Sir Richard Branson.

Phorm - some questions for the Government, BT and others

As a consumer who uses the Internet a lot I am very concerned about the current proposals for BT, Virgin Media and Carphone Warehouse (Talk Talk) to partner with Phorm to use deep packet inspection to monitor subscribers' web activity, in order to present targeted advertising to them on sites which are also signed up to the Phorm service.

... ... ...

It's time the BBC was asking the government a difficult question. Why has BT not yet been prosecuted for their Phorm trials which were in clear and unequivocal breach of the law?

You might also want to try to get a straight answer from BT on why they think the interceptions they carried out in the trials were not illegal.

You might want to ask BT whether they propose to make Phorm "opt-in" or "opt-out". You might want to ask whether those who opt-out will have to take action – e.g. maintain a cookie on their PC. You might want to ask BT whether those opted-out will still have their web traffic inspected anyway, just not acted upon.

You might want to ask how Phorm can be legal even if the user is misled into giving consent – for a wiretap to be legal, both parties have to give their consent, and it is unlikely that all websites would agree to traffic to their websites being intercepted.

You might want to ask BT why they are partnering with a company who as 121media was notorious as a source of rootkit malware. See:
http://www.f-secure.com/sw-desc/peopleonpage.shtml
http://www.f-secure.com/sw-desc/apropos.shtml
This was some of the most intractable malware on the Internet. Phorm may say it was easy to remove, but the process was: work in safe mode - run a 3rd party fix tool - delete several registry keys - delete 4 hidden and protected files from 4 directories all with scrambled names - uninstall 2 programs from add/remove. Easy to remove? I don't think so.

You might want to ask Sir Richard Branson what damage he thinks Virgin Media's proposal to use Phorm is doing to the Virgin brand.

The ISPs, led by BT, appear to be hell-bent on proceeding with the Phorm rollout. Their excuses range from the ridiculous ("it will increase privacy" (how?)) to the disingenuous ("Phorm includes anti-phishing features" - well maybe it will, but these are equally available for free in the latest Web Browsers, and since when did bundling a useful utility with malware stop the malware from being malware?). They have to be stopped, and stopped now, or one area of consumer rights will be lost for ever.

And by consumers, I include MPs, Judges, Journalists, indeed anyone who uses their computers from home and whose every interaction with the Internet, whether searching, home shopping, viewing documents and sending or receiving webmail-based communications will be read and processed by Phorm.

[CaptJamieHunter]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHanff

You need to metion ICO's obligation to enforce the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations with regards the BT secret trials. Whereas ICO might be able to say that RIPA falls under the remit of Home Office they cannot sidestep Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations as I outlined in my previous post.

Feel free to cite the relevant parts directly from the beginning of that very long post I made.

Alexander Hanff

Thanks for those points

Credit to Alexander, Ravenheart, Popper and others who've posted at length on the legal aspects.

Think I'll be e-mailing the individual members of the Committees I mentioned tomorrow...

Sleep well y'all!

[AlexanderHanff]

Originally Posted by flashpaul

I don't have paperless billing so my prices will go up
and I think that gives me the right to cancel !

If vm state in writing that I can leave if phorm is intorduced then I will stay put , otherwise I will cancel all my services

As far as I am aware it is unlawful to charge customers more for paper billing the same as it is unlawful to charge customers more for not using Direct Debit. It falls under the Unfair Terms in Consumers Contract Regulations and companies have been slapped for this so many times now it beggars belief that they are still trying it on.

Alexander Hanff

[BBKing]

Interesting hypothetical Phorm-related insecurities:

http://yorkshire-ranter.blogspot.com...hack-thee.html

[popper]

yes,i too recall that....cant find the part now as im busy elsewere.

"And by consumers, I include MPs, Judges, Journalists, indeed anyone who uses their computers from home and whose every interaction with the Internet, whether searching, home shopping, viewing documents and sending or receiving webmail-based communications will be read and processed by Phorm."

it brings a to the eyes seeing all this unpayed mass PR, who needs 5 payed PR firms

hit them were its going to have real impact

[AlexanderHanff]

Later tonight I will be writing an academic paper on Phorm (not as part of my degree but as an academic). I will make the paper available in PDF and would appreciate it if as many people possible can publicise it.

It is going to be quite a heavy paper and will focus on the legal issues. I hope to finish it before the markets open tomorrow, depends how long my 2yr old stays asleep.

Alexander Hanff

---------- Post added at 01:07 ---------- Previous post was at 00:51 ----------

Here is another story:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/3561909.stm

The reason I have posted this link is because it illustrates concerns I raised several weeks ago about how this Phorm technology could lead to very serious consequences.

Many of you may recall that I mentioned the targeted advertising could lead to a situation where a spouse is searching for a woman's shelter online to escape domestic abuse and as a result gets profiled by Phorm and ads relating to women's shelters and support groups for domestic violence are targeted at her browser which the abusive husband then sees and kills his wife in a rage.

Granted, the above article is not a direct example of this but it does highlight the dangers given that the man involved was spying on her internet communications and then killed her as a result.

Alexander Hanff

[popper]

Winston.

Originally Posted by Winston Smith

Hi All,

Apologies if this has been asked before but the thread has been going for some time now and although I have read it all it has been over the past few days so I may have missed this if it was asked before.

Firstly my thanks go to all those (Alexander/Popper/CaptJamie et al) who have been posting about this and more, been emailing MPs etc. They insipred me to email my MP, MEP and sign the petition.

As a personal user of Virgin I am seriously ticked off about this but due to my location am unable to swap to ADSL so will sign up with Relakks or similar.

However more importantly is this spyware going to be implemented on all BT lines or solely on residential/home use. I ask this as I work for a company who use BT for all our non head office broadband.

Moreover we provide the ability for our clients to connect to us for payroll and hr purposes. Although our client connections to the payroll/hr systems are via a minimum of SSL and preferably via L2TP/IPsec our staff still access the internet over clear channels.

They access Inland Revenue for the UK and elsewhere as well as other payroll related sites.

BT also provide the leased line that links our head office - is there reason for concern there?

Maybe I am being paranoid but BS7799 seems to be fairly strict and we have this certification and dont want to lose it.
Thanks

WinstonS

your the first to mention it here so thats good, more questions, more avenues of discovery....

its a very good question, and while im not totally up on this part, so others can jump in at any time given what the girl on TV said today, that the BT customer base could be from all over the map,and we are not sure who they might be! .

it appears they might have used the equivalent of a cable super head end to plug that DPA kit into, for DSL so thats one of the RAS.

http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/RAS.htm
"...
When having problems, or it may just be curiosity, you may wish to know which RAS you connect via.

There are currently 11 RAS's in the UK which you may be routed through,
Birmingham, Bletchley, Ealing, Edinburgh, Ilford, Kingston, Manchester, Reading Sheffield, Milton Keynes, Faraday.

Don't assume that you will be routed through the RAS nearest your home town, it doesnt work like that and its very possible that different DSLAMS in the same exchange will be routed to different RAS.

...
"
that being the case , its looking far werse for BT as everything including stuff like your companies are pluged into that i think.