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

This diagram STILL does not address the issue of someone gaining a Webwise cookie and then accessing the website via a non-phormed ISP (e.g. browsing from a laptop at home via a phormed ISP, then from work via a non-phormed ISP) who strips off the Webwise cookie then?

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

Perhaps it doesn't but i was using it to show the copyright phorm will be breaking everytime it pretends to be another website.

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

Surely, for good or bad, that includes the content providers not just the public?

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

The "stakeholders" include individual content providers, users and anyone affected by a system. However we would naturally focus more on the public interest with regard to individual rights.

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

There are many members of the public that spend money to have website we copyright our sites. We should also be protected from another orginisation pretending to be us. Our reputation couuld be tarnished if phorm do revert to some of their past tricks..


I have members of the public visit my sites i might help them to find things they are interested in. This is between me and the person visiting and shouldn't have the big brother over the shoulder spying..

sorry but I do hold this as personal to me and as such not for others to use, copy, or whatever with.

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

Yes, I understand. I face such problems every day of implementing clients' requirements, which often include fist-slamming assertions that a feature must operate in a stated way, despite the limitations of the browser and corporate-mandated security zone settings etc.

At the risk of making a sweeping statement and being proved wholly wrong, the crux of the problem is and always will be consumer buy-in. Choosing and installing a new browser is relatively simple. With great open source browsers being available, if the big 3/4 implement something that the community doesn't like, a new branch and branding will emerge without this feature. FireKitten?!

One could assume intra-ISP profiling provided the answer but again both the consumer and the online community can play a part in forcing corporate hands because of (a) the power of viral messaging (switch from VM/BT/TT because of Phorm) and (b) the amount of user and hobbyist generated content, which, given a working Phorm detector could be used to deliver a direct message to anyone visiting from a participating ISP.

One avenue that hasn't been explored on this forum is the role that single-sign on (global identity/identity management/online passport/...) systems could play in behavioural targeting. No doubt the bods at Yahoo, Google and Microsoft are more than on top of this. Of course the challenge will still be getting ordinary websites to participate in data profiling, a problem intra-ISP solutions don't have.

But I think the only fair way to get this data is to pay the websites themselves for it, that way the income rightly goes to the content producers and not the service providers.

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

I don't need many words to describe the Lunacy of the afore said Logic!

Who is Bamboozling Who & what has happened to the Media & Advertising Executives Braincells?

There is a World of difference between Click-Streaming Users Fixed Media Preferences & Proposing or trying to Click-Stream "Live Personal, Private, Copyright, Trade Secret Communications between Two consenting Personal,Business, Military entities", especially without proper consent from Both Parties.

Since the Internet (even of http Port 80)is a hybrid of Secure, Personal, Private data, it is basically Madness to Profile any of this streaming data WITHOUT GOOD REASON, especially at the ISP Level which takes Basic Rights away from both Business & the General Public!
http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/im...s/banghead.gif

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

One final thought for Simon and then I hit the pub for last orders...

(A question that's been posed before) Does the internet need a revolution in advertising? Online newspapers are starting to see real returns from their online business. New sites and ideas get created on a low-cost basis from many hours of hard graft. If they take off, their running costs are relatively low and they can more than break even from existing ad sources. It could be said that problems at the ISPs are all their own and Ofcom's fault.

Who's pushing this revolution in advertising and how will we suffer if the revolution is quoshed? Goodnight all.

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

MPO Phorm is pushing this revolution to line his pockets and a cut for the ISPs.

Customers will see nothing but webpages loading slower and god forbid if a phorm server falls over no internet...

The words I heard mentioned form someone who has seen the rig it is like a load of servers if one failed he said it would be a nightmare to sort it out.

If this fails we will lose nothing the ISPs just a little greed.

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

OK - i get that, i see everyones IP address that visits my website via statcounter - but statcounter only sees who visits which sites they track - it does not build a profile for invidivual peoples entire internet usage, nor does google (apart from search queries). So his analogy seems irredeemably flawed IMHO if his comparison is that what phorm plan to do is somehow similar to website owners profiling their visitors (this is back to the tesco clubcard analogy where tesco only see what you buy from them).

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

Yup as I pointed out in my last paragraph they conveniently ignore that point.

Alexander Hanff

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

I think a bigger problem is websites will be able to read your webwise tracking cookie by embedding some https content on their page. Phorm can't strip the cookie from encrypted streams, so the website will get to see your unique user id. If the website doesn't want to pay for a certificate to read your UID, it should also work if they use a port other than 80.

Taking it one step further, the anti-phishing protection phorm claims to provide, is supposed to protect the sort of person who would be likely to click on a dodgy link in an email and provide their details, but just by tricking them into clicking on a link in an email you send them, you can capture their email address along with their webwise UID.

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

that would be a worrying thing since they said it wouldnt be reading emails.. How can you be sure for technology like this to be introduced you really need someone with a totally clean not tainted..

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

Another user posted regarding different individuals using the same connection and login account and the possibility of visiting a friend and being essentialy kept in the dark with regards to how his data was being handled and it got me thinking.

Is there intercompatibility between ISP's?

Lets say for a minuite that i opt in (purely for the sake of the argument) and i do this using my laptop's wifi whilst sitting at a cafe connected through BT.

Suddenly i hear that theyre out of blueberry muffins but that the cafe down the road has some, so i pack my gear and leg it down the street to secure some blueberry filled goodness.
I unpack my laptop and hook into the wifi which this time is provided by Carphone Warehouse (whos flown surprisingly low under the radar up till now)

Several questions arise at this point.
Will i still be opted in?
Will i be presented another opt in/out/shake-it-all-about screen?
Will my laptop melt under the strain of desperately trying to divide by zero?
Will the cookie provided by BT's cookiemongler (for want of a better term) be valid on carphone warehouses equipment?

on the last point regarding cookies i cant see this as being possable in a purely technical sense, i mean without going too far into moonspeak math/code jargon; numbers generated by a computer are not even close to random.

Take a playlist for instance, if you select randomise then it will go through every track in a seemingly random pattern till it plays all the tracks then it will stop.
In a truly random system however its more than likely that certain songs will be played more than once some may even be played several times.

The same kind of principle applies to the term UNIQUE ID, in that much like a playlist no string will be produced twice on the same system in order to maintain that each string is indeed UNIQUE.
However two systems are in play here and therefore the chances of me winding up with the same UID as Jonh Doe although extremely slim appear to be very real.
I mean the BT/PHORM equipment generates a random UID that it assigns to me.
The Carphone/PHORM equipment would do the same, and unless there was direct communication between the two ISP's equipment then neither cookiemongler would know which UID's where already in the system.

Doesnt this pose a significant problem for the actual database?
I mean a database frankly goes into meltdown when two unique keys are the same for two different tables (unless theres a secondary key to differentiate)

So am i completely missing something here or are the cookies assigned further down the equipment line where presumably multiple ISP's funnel the data through?

If so then this raises a further interesting question:
how can BT even begin to concieve of a setup thats a cookie free opt in/out/shake-it-all-about setup without having consultations with other ISP's that would most definately be effected by such modifications?

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

It does not matter that phorm will not be reading emails, if you can persuade someone to click on a link in an email, and you include a unique identifier in that link such as the email address you sent the email to, and embed some https content such as an image in the page you link to. Your browser will fetch the page and the website will get sent both the email address and the tracking cookie containing the UID of the person that received the email.

And the people you can't persuade to click on your link aren't likely to fall for a phishing email either, so wouldn't really benefit from phishing protection.