Quote:
Originally Posted by Paddy1
I've been wondering about this. Why are BT et al allowed no access to the software running on the phorm box(s)?
From what we have been led to believe, all they are doing are some cookie placement, 307 redirects, ad placement and profiling of pages visited.
Cookies... duh!
307 redirects are a standard HTTP protocol mechanism.
Ad placement is just placing a pic in a given box based on a randomised or prioritised queue.
Profiling involves (from what I remember) removing chaff and generating a list of the most commonly used words on the page that was browsed and then categorising it.
None of this requires any commercially sensitive algorithms or coding. The whole system is actually pretty simple and I could probably have a good stab at writing it in a few hours.
There is NO reason why phorm could not supply the software to the ISPys in source code format and allow them to inspect the code and build and deploy it themselves.
Why the secrecy?
Why the apparent willingness of the ISPy network engineers to jeopardise potentially their careers and possibly time at her nibs's pleasure or loss of serious pocket money of the managers in allowing it?
I think we should be told.
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I've mentioned before how as an IT professional I find it offensive and unacceptable that anything on my network's internal infrastructure should not be accessible to me to monitor, manage, report and audit. If I (and others who've commented on this aspect) are as aghast as we are then how the hell are ISPs falling for the "You can trust us" approach?
Everything on a network infrastructure has to have an audit trail or changelog of some description. It's basic management stuff. By allowing an alien presence on your network the ISP is leaving itself wide open to abuse by Phorm (or whoever the provider is) which it cannot track or do anything about.
It all comes back to the keywords of openness, honesty and transparency.
Let's rearrange that into Honesty, Openness and Transparency. The HOT test. We could add Respect into the mix and make it the THOR test. Personally I don't like the way the word "respect" has been twisted in common parlance, so I'll stick with the HOT test.
And right now I don't think Phorm gets anywhere near passing the HOT test.