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

I agree, but people need to send me a defined question in PM, this thread moves too quickly so I might miss something bearing in mind I am doing about 30 things at once.


Depends on the context. When I send him emails I greet him with Lord Northesk, but when I am talking about him, I use Earl of Northesk as that is his title. I did check before I sent my first email to him though several months ago as to what the most suitable salutation would be, and either Lord Northesk or Earl of Northesk are acceptable.

Indeed, this is a rare opportunity to engage the body politic at the highest levels and I am very respectful of that. It is important to make sure I don't waste his time.

Alexander Hanff

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

ZERO TOLERANCE WARNING

Some forum members continue to believe that they can bully, harass and insult other members with impunity. I would like to remind everyone, especially those who are closely following this thread, that the Cable Forum Team takes a dim view of such activity, especially in this discussion about Phorm which is of great importance to a large number of internet users in the UK.

We are taking a zero-tolerance approach when moderating this thread because we are satisified that we have posted more than enough warnings already. We have issued infraction points to FIVE different members today alone, resulting from comments they posted in this thread. We will hand out as many more as it takes to get people to calm down and discuss the issue rationally, without insulting each other, swearing at each other, or inciting other members to participate in bullying or harassing behaviour.

Everyone who is tempted to continue misbehaving - please consider this to be one more warning than you deserve. The next infraction we give out could be yours.

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

Guess I better answer as you're sounding a bit upset. Perhaps if you phrased your questions a bit more politely then you'd catch my attention quicker ? I'm attracting a lot of responses on this thread so please forgive me if I take time to answer something.

The answers to points 1 and 2 are available at http://www.phorm.com/about/faq.php

My ISP is BT, and as I have often said, I'll happily have Phorm.

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

I don't see answers to either of those two questions. The closest is "How does Phorm protect customer privacy?". That's not the same as "How does phorm enhance my privacy?"

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

Its only taken you three day to post a link that says nothing, see below


Where is the detail, that is nothing more than PR talk.

Its only taken you three days to respond, i knew it would get you to respond, which is why i worded that way first. Says a lot about you.

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

I'm not aware that Phorm are claiming to enhance your privacy so can't really think what to add ?
They are of course offering the free anti-phising service Webwise, but this is not what you're getting at I suspect.

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

Question to ask Lord Northesk...(already PM'ed to Alex)

"Given that when an account holder has to answer a number of security questions to access his/her account be it Virgin Media, BT or their banking services, how can BT be justified in allowing the current opt-out model using single cookies during a browsing session, which could easily be ignored/accepted by the non-account holder, without informed consent, or indeed, any knowledge at all (especially if the current user is a child)?"

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

Sorry Madslug, but I think you may be at cross-purposes here. I wasn't referring to the voice stuff per se, I just included that reference as what followed was directly related to the previous sentence.

I was attempting to draw attention to the article where HW said it supported Phorm, but when you read it, it doesn't. The only thing the article put forward was that people might be offered free broadband services in return for having their connection monitored. If this is an optional service and people really want to do it then I see no reason why they shouldn't. (Again this is deliberately ignoring the website aspect).

On a slightly different note, in reference to the US companies dropping the DPI products, this is really what I thought BT would do when news of what they were attempting was brought under public scrutiny. Internal policies are geared to prevent making a fuss from within hence the leak to El Reg.

I obviously gave BT upper management more credit than they deserved, because I was basing my opinion on the middle-management of which I had more day-day knowledge. If some of those managers had a say in the matter then I daresay we wouldn't be in this position today and BT would have wisely dropped this insidious product from their portfolio.

This simply serves to highlight that BT cannot respond to the market quickly enough to compete with US companies in the same space. The only reason they are where they are is because of their previous role as incumbent Telco. Any other business making such blunders would be out on their ear much more quickly but their massive resources and stranglehold buffer them from so much of their real world mistakes that they cannot appreciate just how much people were going to get up in arms about this.

Their recent email correspondence with the ICO made it very clear they were shocked that this storm was still going on. Arrogant management in Ivory towers. I feel sorry for the tens of thousands of BT employees who are horrified about *their* companys' actions in this matter. (I say 'their' because pretty much all full time BT staff are also shareholders).

If anyone other than the ex-BT Retail CEO had just taken over the company then there would have been heads rolling within BT (eventually) as this is perfect political assassination stuff.

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

From:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04...ial/page2.html

We think it is unethical of the Register to seek to undermine a technology that enhances online privacy - Phorm's system ensures that ads are served with no data storage - something that will benefit readers of the Register and other websites.

In the interests of balance, we would like the Register to reflect the improved privacy environment Phorm provides over the other major online ad targeting companies detailed in the attached table.

(My emphasis)

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

As a matter of interest, where have you got this information from ?

---------- Post added at 16:01 ---------- Previous post was at 15:59 ----------

Well online privacy with Phorm who do not keep any data, is surely better than anyone else who do keep data for long periods of time, such as Google. As shown in the diagram that Phorm used http://regmedia.co.uk/2008/03/31/phorm_comparison.jpg

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

The comparison with Google doesn't work as has been discussed before. Even if it did, the point would only be valild if phorm replaced google et al.

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

I hope you can appreciate that having already lost a great deal personally around disclosing private information that I'm not just going to divulge this on an open forum.

Suffice to say that I believe that the vast majority of BT employees (of whom there are tens of thousands) are not in full support of BT rolling out this product or having conducted secret trials which they then lied about, repeatedly.

Would you wish to be associated with such a company? (This is rhetorical btw in case you hadn't worked that out as I think you would be happy for the Devil to be your life-coach as long as you had shares in his company).

Edit: It's just occurred to me (I can be very naive at times as self-evidenced) that out of that whole critique I layed at BT's doorstep you only chose to pick on that one element. It doesn't take a ad-executive to work why.

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

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7488009.stm that looks bad for all who visit youtube.

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

Yeah I just read about it elsewhere. It isn't going to happen, Google will find a way to appeal the order. Furthermore, I doubt they keep videos which get removed (although I could be wrong) so it would be a very difficult order to comply with. I expect and private videos will probably be contested on the grounds of privacy. Privacy laws can change state to state in the US so some states will not be happy that a judge in a different state is violating their citizen's privacy rights.

Alexander Hanff

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

Something I forgot to mention, is that access to a Microsoft Home Server using their new software is HTTPS. If you try and enter HTTP in IE 7, it automatically changes it to HTTPS and they supply a free SSL Certificate with the software. So should that be OK. In Firefox 3.0 that I am using now it displays this:

The page must be viewed over a secure channel
The page you are trying to access is secured with Secure Sockets Layer (SSL).

Please try the following:

* Type https:// at the beginning of the address you are attempting to reach and press ENTER.

HTTP Error 403.4 - Forbidden: SSL is required to view this resource.
Internet Information Services (IIS)

Technical Information (for support personnel)

* Go to Microsoft Product Support Services and perform a title search for the words HTTP and 403.
* Open IIS Help, which is accessible in IIS Manager (inetmgr), and search for topics titled About Security, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), and About Custom Error Messages.

Colin