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

Yes, Kevin .. I choose who and when I want to reply to them. I don't necessarily do things in the order that you might expect. I think that is my right ?

Some questions can be answered quickly, in which case I will do so. Other questions may involve some research, in which case I will be a little later in responding.

<removed>

D_A

I look forward to your detailed reply in due course then.

I'm as impartial as you are...

Rchivist

18-07-2008 23:41

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

Quote:

Originally Posted by icsys (Post 34603211)

I have been catching up with the the previous 24 hours postings in the thread. I was reading the Lords questions session at the previously posted link :http://www.publications.parliament.u...ldtoday/02.htm however, I cannot find the section relating to internet privacy that a lot of posts were referring to and discussing. The transcript appears to jump from 11.12 to 11.19 Has it been removed?

Post with original link post11985

The old link was I think to a "today's page" in Hansard which has new content each day. The link to the "archive" of the debate is
http://www.publications.parliament.u...08071786000006

Sorry - didn't realise others had answered likewise as I was ploughing through several pages.

But while I am here... welcome to any guests,
:welcome:
especially first timers new to the Phorm business. If you want some links to get you started on your learning curve, read this post here
http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/34...post11849.html

Privacy_Matters

19-07-2008 00:10

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

Alex - I sent you an email, please check and respond

warescouse

19-07-2008 00:21

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

Quote:

Originally Posted by notophorm (Post 34603264)

Hi all

As a long time reader of the forum, I have finally come off the guest list.

Firstly I do not care if Phorm is legal or not. I pay VM for a connection to the internet. each month they send a bill that tells me I pay for Internet access only.

I do not pay for advert supported access
I do not pay for intercepted access
I do not pay for targeted advert access

It is not my fault that VM and others say they can not afford the costs of providing that access, and they need the revenue that adverts provide. Tough you set the costs of the access in the first place.

When I went shopping in Tesco this afternoon to get a pie for tea, I went to the checkout, was told the cost, and handed over the cash. The checkout person did not say, ...errrr sorry the price is too cheap we can not afford to sell you it, please read this page of adverts first.

The above example is exactly what BT, VM and others are doing regarding the Internet connection.

....sorry internet user, please look at targeted adverts first, we know you are interested in pies, please see a range of pie adverts first because we need extra revenue so you can use the internet.

And to cap it all the ISP's will steal our bandwidth that we pay for to profile us, then advertise to us, all in the interest of extra money for them.

I am not against advertising, however our ISP's have lied, possibly cheated and at least one has broken the law, and stolen intellectual property from the websites they profile. all in the intrest of making a little extra money.

What I want from my ISP

Good service
Good connection
Good communication when things go wrong

I do not want my data intercepted, in order to sell more junk.

Oh as for targeted adverts, I do my best to buy on brand products, and keep away from the brands that need to advertise that there product is the best on the market, keep you younger looking.

2 great inventions,
the FF button on a PVR, and adblock Plus.

Oh I would have loved to have been at the demo, unfortunately a 3 hour abdominal operation last Friday prevented me from travelling.

col

:welcome: notophorm, A very relevant and down to earth point. Why do ISP's think we need more than the basic necessities of service. Speed, reliability, good backup when things go wrong and privacy. None of those Webwise can ever provide.

madslug

19-07-2008 00:27

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

Quote:

Originally Posted by rryles (Post 34602884)

Pretty good article on ZDNet:

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1...48963-1,00.htm

Note there are 6 pages of text - 1 with each photo.

Thanks for the pointer to 6 pages of text. I had already looked at the 6 photos but missed the extra text as that was below the fold.

The comments from BT are most interesting.

"The protest against Phorm's technology, which BT will rebrand 'Webwise', would have no impact on BT's upcoming trial, said Morgan.

"There is a tiny but vocal minority who believe there is an issue here," said Morgan. "It is a very small protest. When we've spoken to customers, they've been interested and see the benefits. We don't get the impression it's a significant shareholder issue.""

And, Stephen Mainwaring's quote sums it all up for me "I have to comply with the Data Protection Act and, when this was going on, I had to assume the worst ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â‚¬Â that customer data had been compromised."

This next comment is not aimed at Stephen Mainwaring at all - just acknowledging the wisdom of that comment.

Not everyone uses ssh to communicate with their server. Most popular hosting does not offer control panels and database interfaces on https. Where the webmaster does not use https for the contact forms, do you think they will be more security conscious when it comes to looking at the content of the database that form has populated?
'You' may be careful and ensure that your internet connection is DPI free - what about the interception of the connection used by the Admin of the site you are sharing your data with?
We only have Phorm's word that they will not look at anything beyond a login.
It is very frightening to see browser logs showing, in the raw, the login and password for the control panel for each page within the control panel that I view for one of my hosting plans. (I don't want to frighten you, but this is one of the most popular cheap hosting control panels used by millions of site Admins to maintain their sites - and I am in the process of moving sites to more secure hosting - https login - for this very reason.)

[login urls: - do we just write all our URLs to look like logins so that the intercept script will ignore them? - so much easier than non-existent useragents for robots.txt and spending a lot of server resources doing reverse DNS look-ups to send phormed visitors to image only pages so that there is nothing for the profiler to harvest.]

davethejag

19-07-2008 00:37

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

Hi, Sam Knows -
http://www.samknows.com/broadband/ne...clear-405.html

For some reason I keep thinking about a "Red Telephone" tonight! Some of you may know why!

Goodnight all, Dave.

madslug

19-07-2008 00:48

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

Quote:

Originally Posted by phormwatch (Post 34602948)

Can anyone else confirm that Emma Sanderson has completely stopped answering emails regarding Phorm/Webwise?

I don't know if she has stopped replying, I only know that I am still waiting for an answer to my last mail which was dated 25th June. It was a rather technical query relating to how the sites put onto the blacklist would be excluded from the trial - "Is it possible for you to make public the process so that it can be given the same expert opinion and/or diagrammatic view as a comparison to that provided for the data stream/redirects followed re the opt in and opt out cookies process" - so it could be that someone is still working on an answer.

Do any squid users here know if there is available some logic along the lines of:
deny to [blacklist]
redirect 301 [dpi system hijack] [original URL request]

The problem is, if the blacklist goes anywhere near the DPI system, it is still an intercept - an intercept to tell you not to intercept. About as useful as intercepting to read an opt-out cookie so that the data stream is not intercepted.

I like to think that it is little technical problems like this that are the cause of the delay to the trial. Maybe Mr Morgan of BT was correct when he said that the protesters where not the cause of the delay. Compared with the technical problems, protests are just a little itch.

Where did I read (a marketing article?) that the whole PR stunt to date [early date] was to make the anti and tech community aware of the DPI process so that they would run out of stream and help to show up the vulnerabilities of the system. After this process, the DPI systems would be robust and free from any future criticism or weakness.

fidbod

19-07-2008 00:53

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

Quote:

Originally Posted by AlexanderHanff (Post 34603342)

Just as a good night farewell to the Pro Phorm investors who may be watching this thread. If Phorm are found guilty of being breach of RIPA and CMA the statutory penalties for the 2006 trials would amount to somewhere around:

Ãƒâ€šÃ‚Â£36 000 000 000.00 (thats based on the minimum Ãƒâ€šÃ‚Â£1000 per offence for 36M violations).

Your investment capital will vanish into nothing if Phorm are found guilty.

Good night :)

Alexander Hanff

Happy days, last time I looked at their financials they had 36 million in cash. they are on the edge, lets push.

Dephormation, you are one of the resident coding geniuses . What is the chance of a apache addin, in some form that will record IP address and allow the owner of content to bill BT?

G' night

Dephormation

19-07-2008 01:26

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

I can reveal exclusively on this forum who was on the end of the red telephone line. It was the same person who provided the extensive legal advice prior to the trials...

Spoiler:

---------- Post added at 00:26 ---------- Previous post was at 00:22 ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by fidbod (Post 34603399)

I'd say the chances were quite high. ;)

In fact, better than quite high. More like, designed, coded, tested, ready to deploy.

http://www.dephormation.org.uk/serve..._cdr/usage.php

The thing BT haven't yet grasped... there is an eternity of pain ahead when this launches. Endless, unending, utter misery ahead. Without even venturing into the realms of illegal hacking.

I'll spare the details. Pain agony endless suffering and more pain.

That's before anyone makes a DPA section 11 complaint, fraud complaint, computer misuse complaint etc.

Never mind the technical and operational issues of keeping this house of cards running long enough to say "thankyou for phoning the helpdesk - all our operators are busy".

madslug

19-07-2008 01:27

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

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wildie (Post 34602966)

found it i think

<snip>

i found at least 3 ref to allow you to block cookies but how can they say they not intercepting cos they must have to read the state of the cookie or lack off em to find out if you in or out so bang goes the pass through not looked at if they looking for cookies or lack off before you can surf.

Blocking cookies from www .webwise .net is just a 'con' - it just demonstrates a fall-over feature of the script, the same fall-over is used for the 'black box' being too busy: if it does not get a response from www. webwise. net it passes the data stream back to the original url request. However, it has still been intercepted - just passed down a different decision path. No mention of the effect on the forged domain cookies.

You forgot the most effective method - the hosts file!!!!! When that blocks, it is blocked.

Using the hosts file does speed up your surfing for so many reasons - the browser is not having to run its cookie decision routine and the server is not having to make requests to the internet for content that will be rejected by the browser.

For *nix users including Macs the hosts file is in the /etc directory. It is in different places on Windows machines - just search for a file called hosts [note: there is no dot and no extension]

Every host file comes with instructions, basically along these lines. Edit with a text editor (NotePad is ok - not WordPad). Save a backup before you start editing. Add the following:

Code:

www.webwise.net   127.0.0.1

www.webwise.com   127.0.0.1

bt.webwise.com    127.0.0.1

www.oix.com       127.0.0.1

webwise.bt.com    127.0.0.1

etc

for each webwise, phorm and oix domain

Check that the saved file has not had .txt added as an extension by the text editor - rename as necessary, it must be hosts or it will not work.

This is the block which prevents any surfing on a phormed connection. The claim is that the final version will not cause surfing to be blocked by this method [that means that the final version will be using a 'trusted' domain for the 307 redirects] so a full technical analysis becomes very important, if this is the case. (Or, will the intercept be running its own 'traceroute' from your computer to detect hosts blocks?)

alt3rn1ty

19-07-2008 01:44

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

madslug is that list of domains complete with all that has been found so far reference webwise and oix domain names, or are there likely to be more presenting a shifting target for hosts.
Also does anyone know if a wildcard can be used in the hosts file, ie
*.webwise.*
*.oix.*

pseudonym

19-07-2008 01:47

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

Wildcards do not work in the hosts file (well not on windows at least - not sure about linux)

other domains include
a.webwise.net
b.webwise.net
c.webwise.net

oblonsky

19-07-2008 01:56

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

Quote:

Originally Posted by Portly_Giraffe (Post 34603082)

Looking at this week's trades on iii, there appear to have been several Buys above the Ask Price for relatively small blocks. For example, today at 09:42:40, iii is showing a Buy of 500 shares at 11.00 against an Ask Price of 10.75.

My understanding of how share trading works dates from the late 1980s and is now probably a bit rusty and may not apply to AIM. However, I thought that as long as a trade was within Size then it would take place within Spread. And I would have thought that 500 shares would be within Size for PHRM.L.

Can anyone here enlighten me?

There is a mechanism for late trades, corrections and special instructions (such as limit-sell orders) to be introduced to the dealing record. This means the time recorded on the transaction record may not me the time the transaction completed , meaning the price may be above or below the current trading price because of the time lag.

pseudonym

19-07-2008 01:57

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

Quote:

Originally Posted by madslug (Post 34603423)

This is the block which prevents any surfing on a phormed connection. The claim is that the final version will not cause surfing to be blocked by this method [that means that the final version will be using a 'trusted' domain for the 307 redirects] so a full technical analysis becomes very important, if this is the case. (Or, will the intercept be running its own 'traceroute' from your computer to detect hosts blocks?)

Where have BT claimed that? I was still expecting blocking webwise.net to kill all browsing (unless you fake your own phorged cookies).

warescouse

19-07-2008 01:58

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

Quote:

Originally Posted by alt3rn1ty (Post 34603431)

alt3rn1ty, hosts files cannot use wildcards

{Edit, beat me to it - (how come everybody's not in bed?) }

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