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

Sorry I have been quiet everyone I have been studying for an exam. I am still watching the thread / reading all news etc. and if anything comes up I will post it. Should be more active again in about a week once this exam is out of the way.

I am working on some other stuff in the background too (some very exciting stuff actually, although not directly Phorm related) so will post some news on that in the next week too.

Telegraph and FT pulling back is a good bit of news, might be a good idea for people to write to them and commend that decision, just so they realise it is the right decision.

Speak to you all soon,

Alexander Hanff

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

And the super six are....

Britain’s six biggest service providers - BT, Virgin Media, Orange, Tiscali, BSkyB and Carphone Warehouse.

All have signed up to the scheme. In return, the Government has abandoned a controversial proposal to disconnect broadband services for users who had been caught out three times.

Hmmm... didn't TalkTalk say it is their role to 'protect the rights of their customers'?

Also no coincidence that Orange, Tiscali and BskyB have been 'looking' at behavioural advertising.

Orange, which occupies the number six spot in the UK broadband league, said: "We're always looking at ways to make the internet experience safer and more relevant for the individual. We have been in discussions with a number of companies - including Phorm - about this very interesting area."

Tiscali, which has more than two million broadband customers, told The Register it has looked into Phorm's system, but no decisions have been made.

Sky, the UK's fastest growing broadband network with about 1.2 million lines, said: "Sky is interested in exploring the potential for targeted online advertising and is talking with a number of companies operating in this area.

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

are they thinking of becoming content providers then ?

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

have a look at http://blog.quinthar.com/2008/07/sec...t-economy.html

seems an interesting take on things

peter

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

From the Reg.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/23/berr_isp_mou/




its our friends in BERR time for a FOI request. Who is going to FOI them ?

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

Actually they don't need to intercept anything for this. The RIAA have been finding illegal music sharers in the US for years without installing kit in ISPs. This is how it works for bittorrent - similar methods work for most P2P apps.

1. Search for torrent which looks like one of there copyrighted works
2. Connect to bit torrent swarm
3. Download the files whilst logging IP address/time stamp of any peers.
4. Verify that downloaded file is a copyrighted work by an artist they represent.
5. Get ISP to reveal name & address for each IP address.
6. Send the offender a nastygram
7. If they don't pay up, sue them.

There are certainly problems with this approach but intercepting communications isn't one of them. Using encrypted bittorrent won't stop this for the same reason. Using an anonymous P2P system should stop this method (but don't come crying to me if it doesn't).

(There are variations on this such as not downloading the whole file and hence not doing step 4 at all)

One of the biggest problems with this is how easy it is to frame someone for copyright infringement.

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

BT are selling something that can deal with this and the only down side is they will not put customer security / privacy at risk as there would be n o middle company with links to hacking/spyware/adwear etc...

ZYWALL USG 1000 http://www.shop.bt.com/productview.aspx?quicklinx=53TX

other downside for BT it wouldn't get payments for pimping customers.

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

I think I'd add to previous questions suggested

- What is the content of that MoU

I'll certainly bang off an FoI tonight.

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

I'll just make the point at this time that as I understand it the latest moves between the ISPs, BERR, and BPI, etc, with regards to the sharing of illegal content are very unlikely to be using the Phorm technology ;)

That means that all the current line of discussion is accomplishing is that it's diluting the discussion of Phorm, and it's taking this thread off-topic.

There are other threads already discussing these issues on Cable Forum, maybe it would be best to take this discussion there?

Unless I've completely misunderstood something that is ;)

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

I completely agree Rob M.

Unless we learn otherwise I would assume that this will not involve any dpi kit or any interception.

So getting back on topic:

Kent says, "We now exclude over a thousand webmail sites from being processed rather than the largest 25".

How many web mail sites are their in the world? Well lets look at my personal favourite webmail system: squirrelmail. It's relatively obscure so likely only represents a small to tiny portion of webmail deployments. The recent version was been downloaded over 117,000 times from sourceforge. That doesn't include people using older versions, or who download it via other routes (it's in the ubuntu repositories for example).

25 was pathetic. 1000 is an improvement, but it is far short of a complete list.

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

One point to note:

With Google, content ads are usually cheaper than ads displayed on the search results. The revenue from these content ads has reached a point where many web sites are giving up displaying them.

Now, with Google effectively failing the content providers, the other ad networks are going to be selling content ads at a premium?

The only sustainable business model I can see for that is for content to buy a click for less than the revenue earned from displaying ads. Google is already dropping selling clicks for this model so who is going to be selling the ads?

Are the ad networks saying that they are going into a market which Google and other search engines found did more harm to their business than the revenue earned? The big problem with this from the point of view of the content providers is that the lower they bid for a click, the lower the quality of the site where their ad will be displayed, the lower the quality of visitor coming to their site.

Is someone really hoping that everyone will be clicking on ads leading to more pages filled with ads, earning revenue for everyone on route and maybe getting a conversion to a brand at the end of the line.

The brand advertising departments welcome this model?

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

Some newer versions of traceroute can do this as well :)

traceroute -T -p 80 nodpi.org
traceroute -T -p 443 nodpi.org

This doesn't apply to the windows tracert though.

(It is possible though unlikely that you could trigger some intrusion detection systems on the host you are doing the traceroute to with this)

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

There is always the other side also with the higher inflation more wil be window shopping to try to build up esteem, dreaming of what they would have if they could afford it. These with what BT has planned would lead to a large number of adverts for say a new car that the person cannot afford to buy thus wasting the time of the ad, bandwidth up and down since BT add in both on your paid for capped limits for no end result since you were only sort of window shopping not actual shopping.. The present credit crunch will stop many actually buying online we all might look but then before you click any buy button you always do a quick check can you afford it.. Credit cards will start to tighten the purse strings if more and more people get into debt issues from over spending online..

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

One positive for phorm:

With the credit crunch interest rates are higher. Phorm's main income in 2007 was credit interest. They should ditch the whole advertising ploy and just lend their cash out. Just a pity they didn't do it sooner. They've waisted most of their capital on R&D.

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

For any tech head like me who was thinking trace route apps use ICMP echo packets over IP, see here

tcptraceroute is a traceroute implementation using TCP packets.

The more traditional traceroute(8) sends out either UDP or ICMP ECHO packets with a TTL of one, and increments the TTL until the destination has been reached. By printing the gateways that generate ICMP time exceeded messages along the way, it is able to determine the path packets are taking to reach the destination.
<snip>
By sending out TCP SYN packets instead of UDP or ICMP ECHO packets, tcptraceroute is able to bypass the most common firewall filters.

You learn something new every day. Interesting. That could come in very handy. :scratch: