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

..but today's beeb Phorm story is at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7303426.stm

Keep it coming...

[EDIT] Reading the above article, it sounds as if someone at the BBC has seen the 80/20 Thinking (a.k.a. Simon Davies of Privacy International) report that Phorm commissioned - anyone found a link to the report yet?

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

I was just coming to link that. This is a great article - Phorm's PR stooges have been trying to use this report as a whitewash, as in "look, these people say it's okay, so we're okay". Is anyone now surprised that they've been not telling the complete truth about what it said?

Just about everything they say is unravelling every time there's an update on the story. How long before VM decide to ditch this bunch of lying chancers?

[NOTE: VM, please ditch this bunch of lying chancers. I really like the V+ box and don't want to have to get rid of it because you've shacked up with a bunch of crooks who pulled the wool over your eyes.]

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

OMG, I hope that's not a true technical account of the technology and the way it is going to work - that is really, really scary stuff. Any trust that I might have had in VM has evapourated, if that's really the sort of system that they are even comtemplating on installing into the VM network.

I thought quietly taking a "tap" of all our web surfing was bad enough, but actually tampering with the data stream by redirecting and forcing our web browsers to load extra html and code has got to be blatant criminal cracker thinking.

I am just stunned, the idea of moving from a 20Mb cable modem to whatever sub 4Mb ADSL connection doesn't look quite so bad if the Phorm profiling boxes are going to that to my surfing and who knows what other IP traffic!!

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

Actually, the adblock plus guys don't recommend installing filterset.g. It slows things down too much & can cause other problems.

Link

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

I'll second that. :walk: (Me walking away...)

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

Good job I held off on sending my reply to Ian Woodham. This and the slashdot article are powerful stuff.

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

I will post any more links I find but I have now made arrangements for BT line and moving away lost trust and faith in VM.

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

From reading the bbc article, it seems that Simon Davies' preferred way forward is going to be more complexity and opportunity to obfuscate what this system is actually collecting on us all, by way of a system of blacklists of topics that the system won't collect info on (e.g. sexual orientation, medical conditions, etc.)
That just won't work: it'll result in a system that nobody will be able to keep track of, no accountability for security breaches, ample opportunity for Phorm to extract data that they shouldn't without anyone noticing, and no transparency whatsoever. ISP customers will have no idea of what information is likely to be collected or not, and will have no confidence in the "privacy" being claimed. Who will decide what goes on a blacklist? Who will monitor that those topics are not being collected? Who will maintain the lists and keep them up-to-date? (the content of the web changes minute-to-minute). And none of this alters the fact that it is the routing and mirroring of users' webclicks that is unacceptable on privacy grounds, even before there is any potential use of that information. Whatever hope I held out for the publication of the 80/20 report is fast evaporating - it sounds to me like this so-called "privacy advocate" doesn't have the same definition of my privacy as me.:(
The only acceptable result for me is the absolute assurance that none of my ISP traffic goes anywhere near any hardware or software related to Phorm. Better still, don't install any hardware full stop.

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

lucevans and others, can you go back and edit your posts to include some carrage returns now and then.

its really hard to read these single line posts ,Thanks.

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

It is similar to the way http://www.websense.com/global/en/ blocks access to the internet. Only as good as the blacklists and whitelists created and they need to update those all the time as sites change the way they are set out and new sites appear.

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

Better? ;)

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

wonderful ;)

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

In the absence of any information forthcoming from Phorm or Virgin Media, here are some more questions:

Tucked away in the small print of the scheme is the fact that a far more detailed record of the online activity of every customer will be stored in a "debugging" log for 14 days by Phorm, than will be stored in the "digest" (i.e. the aggregated, anonymized record they plan to hold on each of us for the purpose of targetting adverts at us).

What data fields will the debugging log contain? Will it include a user's IP address? Will it contain any of the information that was stripped-out of the digest to preserve the individuals anonymity or security? (By this I mean data like form fields, numbers, names, webmail data, etc.). Will it contain the raw data of encrypted pages that pass through the profiler?

It seems to me that by concentrating on the "anonymity" of the digest record of every customer, Phorm may be seeking to divert our attention from another, far more detailed, far less anonymous record that will be held "purely for administration and troubleshooting purposes"

Even if their intentions are honest regarding use of the debugging records (something I find hard to believe), surely these files would present a much more attractive target to hackers or criminal employees within Phorm or the ISPs, as they would contain lucrative personal information.

Who gets to see the debugging logs? (Russian spyware programmers, perhaps?) Are they exported outside the UK for "troubleshooting" by the "talented teams of programmers" that Phorm employ in the US and Russia? How do we know that they are irrecoverably destroyed after 14 days?

The questions just keep coming. Shame there are no answers.

---------- Post added at 20:36 ---------- Previous post was at 19:37 ----------

Thanks for the link - very interesting (and scary)!

If that is how the system is going to work, then surely opting-out by the method of domain blocking will really knacker my web connection?

If the Phorm hardware wants to check a Phorm cookie (be it the user ID or opt-out variety) then the system will have to wait until some time-out is reached with regard to the cookie check, to be sure that I really don't have a cookie, because my router will just drop all attempts to communicate with any of the Phorm domains, so every page load will be delayed hugely.

I've demonstrated this to myself already by going to http://webwise.bt.com/webwise/index.html and watching it attempt to contact the cookie server at the domain webwise.net The page doesn't fully finish loading for almost 60 seconds due to these repeated attempts, and presumably, if this system goes live then every page request I make will then be subject to the same futile attempts to connect to the phorm server?

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

According to an article on The Register today the government advisory panel has written to the info commissioner advising that Phorm is 'illegal'

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03..._fipr_illegal/

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

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03...egal/comments/
"
80/20 Thinking report

By Anonymous Coward
Posted Tuesday 18th March 2008 21:16 GMT
...is here:
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technolo...20final%20.pdf
"