Originally Posted by Dephormation (Post 34587157)

Its all about context and volume of data.

A name alone - John Smith - might not identify an individual. With enough context it would certainly identify an individual.

You cannot allow a communication service provider (electronic or otherwise) to inspect all of your private communications and make a judgement for themselves about what is and isn't personal and private information before you've even had the chance to read it yourself.

You just can't do it.

Originally Posted by roadrunner69 (Post 34587195)

Even from this, very limited test, and disregarding the url its possible to identify several people (at least by user name (Paul Delaney?), who's political views (at least with regard to privacy matters) are known.
Once the inevitable function creep comes who knows where it will lead.
I'll try the same thing on a more personal site when I get time.

Originally Posted by Paul Delaney (Post 34587205)

I'm also Staribar, Darkskai, Kyle Reese, Jay808, The2ndLoser, 2ndLoser and T2L

None of those are my real name either

:D


EDIT: I even use an alias on Facebook for Christs Sake!

Originally Posted by Raistlin (Post 34587080)

In order for it to be 'personally identifying' the information would need to make it possible to directly identify an individual.

As many people in the UK could have the name 'Mercedes' the name on its own would not be classed as personaly identifiable.

Originally Posted by jelv (Post 34587186)

But it could be sufficient if the person has an unusual name. For example, is there more than one Kent Ertugrul?

Originally Posted by roadrunner69 (Post 34587195)

Just did a quick word frequency test with TextSTAT, a simple word analysis program (free) on a Cable-Forum page from this afternoon.

Discarded any term that occurs less than 5 times ((I seem to remember phorm stating they do this)
Discarded the chaff (the, at, is etc)
Now it starts getting harder to narrow down.
Discarded generic words that would probably not be relevent (service, data, posted etc)

And i'm left with:

Phorm
Media
Dephormation
NTLVictim
Webwise
BT
roadrunner69
Paul
Delaney
Cable
software
VM
ISP
ICO
government
warescouse
Sky
video
davethejag
Joe
Phone
Google

Even from this, very limited test, and disregarding the url its possible to identify several people (at least by user name (Paul Delaney?), who's political views (at least with regard to privacy matters) are known.
Once the inevitable function creep comes who knows where it will lead.
I'll try the same thing on a more personal site when I get time.

Originally Posted by Paul Delaney (Post 34587205)

I'm also Staribar, Darkskai, Kyle Reese, Jay808, The2ndLoser, 2ndLoser and T2L

None of those are my real name either

:D


EDIT: I even use an alias on Facebook for Christs Sake!

Originally Posted by icsys (Post 34587258)

The Phorm webwise technology assigns each user a unique identifier (UID) Thus phorm processes PII as it falls foul of the following:

Directive 95/46/EC on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data.

Article 2 Definitions

For the purposes of this Directive:

(a) 'personal data' shall mean any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person ('data subject'); an identifiable person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identification number or to one or more factors specific to his physical, physiological, mental, economic, cultural or social identity;

Originally Posted by Bobcat (Post 34587244)

I'm voting on KFO but why am I not seeing any comments on the site. I've written a couple and I'm sure many on here will have too. Any ideas or do you have to register for your comment to count and to see others?

Originally Posted by Dephormation (Post 34587322)

Even Phorm refer to it as a user identifier. What could be more personal? Its more personal than your phone number, your IP address, your home address. Its on a par with a social security number.

Originally Posted by Dephormation (Post 34587322)

Even Phorm refer to it as a user identifier. What could be more personal? Its more personal than your phone number, your IP address, your home address. Its on a par with a social security number.

Originally Posted by bluecar1 (Post 34587366)

we need to drop the fixation of ip address as pii, as phorm are not interested in it, as BTR only use dynamic addresses so ip is of no relevance to phorm, (not sure about tt or vm?)

and this is also the issue that causes them most grief as BTW controll the RAS servers i believe so that makes it difficult for BTR to do the account level opt out without the help of BTW (which i believe they are not allowed to do as they are ment to be different companies and NOT share data)

peter

Originally Posted by BadPhormula (Post 34587340)

Well the comments are supposed to be verified by a human (allegedly) and so I suspect is suffering from the 'human condition'... Laziness

---------- Post added at 21:37 ---------- Previous post was at 21:18 ----------



Phorm's pulling another fast one, their claim that the process is anonymous is a total sham. They are going around conning people like the ICO and Lords/Ladies/MPs with this b~llshit because those power brokers of British governance are technically illiterate. Phorm will use back channels of information along with their sneaky partners to marry up the information from many different sources. That data is being clocked and collated! No doubt about it. The only clever thing is Phorm can look you in the eye and say 'WE' aren't doing it, with this dodgy profiling system we are trying to distract your attention with... (looks away covers mouth with hand,,, and whisper mutters "Are friends are doing the un-anonymising for us *wink*")

I'm sure Richard Clayton could write another PhD on how that information is scattered and then pulled back into a central repository... Phorm is just doing a smoke and mirrors trick... How the ADMIN EDIT - DO NOT ATTEMPT TO BYPASS THE SWEAR FILTER can they say READING EVERYTHING IS A PRIVACY ENHANCEMENT???!!! it defies all logic.

C'mon Richard we need a nice research paper from you regarding all this sleight of hand trickery that's really going on.


Note: NebuAd's anonymising personal data has already been busted! Any CompSci student worth their salt knows that a oneway hash on a very small data set, IPv4 dotted quad, is virtually a lookup list.

Note2: I came across a complex Internet map of how the spammer/spyware/adware and advertizers are linked together and how they share cookie profile information with each other. Shame I cannot give you the URL it was fascinating and would scare the living crap out of everybody here that thinks it must be hard to track people across the Internet. Visit a dozen or so sites after deleting your cookies and web cache and you may find that the b~stards have aquired your personal profile again, against your wishes.

Has anyone else seen this map I'm referring to, or something similar? (I might have come across it on Slashdot or TheRegister about 5 years ago 'memory is fading')

Originally Posted by Toto (Post 34587396)

VM cable is supposed to use dynamic IP allocation, however I've had my address for a few weeks at least.

BTW, I agree with you, whilst there are many other aspects of Phorm we don't agree with, not getting the IP address of each user of the system is the one good thing out of all that crap.