Quote:
Originally Posted by BetBlowWhistler
From the ZDNEt article..
""We're optimistic," said the spokesperson. "We're hoping to have [the technology] in place by the time we do the trial." "
Didn't they say that they were going ahead with this trial in it's 'current' cookie -opt-out phormat? I wonder why they've changed their tune. Couldn't have anything to do with them trying to avoid adding another 10000 RIPA offences to their list could it?
Yeah yeah, I know - it still breaks RIPA because of the web site consent not being obtained - but it does show that they are *very* worried.
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I hope they've thought carefully about how they will "invite" people onto the trial. Originally it was going to be a popup web page, but unless it pops up while I am logged on to my BTYahoo! customer account pages or logged onto as a customr at
www.bt.com, I will consider it an illegal interception of my browsing. They've kept quiet about that.
If you are a BT customer and get a trial invite, we need to know several things.
- What were you doing when the invite popped up? Were you browsing non-BT or BTY pages, or were you logged in to your BTY account, or your bt.com account? (the first would be an illegal interception, the second would be a customer service announcement)
- What did the page say? (full copy of page,including any FAQ links that are accessible BEFORE making a decision and before you click on any buttons) so that we can see how much inphormaton is being given about the TRUE nature of Webwise/Phorm, and inphormation about the potential legal challenges and liabilities of both ISP and customer if they switch it on, with respect to RIPA, DPA, Fraud Act and civil action from website owners as well as the risk of finding yourself locked out of many Webwise-resistant Dephormed sites if you browse to them with Webwise ON.
- What was the address of the invitation page? (?? Check browsing history or logs before doing anything with the page?)
- What action you took and what cookies you found on your machine afterwards, and what cookies started to appear when you browsed, and what began to show in your status bar when you returned to normal browsing (any strange redirections for example).
That's just my ill-inphormed non-technical guesses - can any of you clever guys and girls add to or improve this list? When I get a decent set of instructions for customers, I will do my best to get them circulated in the BT Beta forums and BT newsgroups, along with a list of urls that will allow them to phorm their own opinions.
IF the trial DOES go ahead, we need to make sure BT customers have a decent chance of finding out the truth behind the Ertugrul Webwise spin. There are between 2 and 3 million of them out there, 10,000 of whom are supposed to be getting invites, and most of whom don't understand a dingo's kidney about all of this and have probably never even heard of Phorm or Webwise and will happily sign up to "improved anti-phishing" technology that "gets rid of irrelevant adverts", which is what BT may well think of as informed consent.