[Phormic Acid]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHanff

Phorm claimed at the PIA Public Meeting that before they push a request through for a GET from a user to a website they will visit the document root for the domain to see if there is a robots.txt which allows Google access; if there is they will profile the pages the user requests.

Did they specifically refer to the Googlebot by name? Most disallows use a user-agent of *, which would, of course, include Google. Google’s a reasonable example. A quote attributable to Phorn in Richard Clayton’s paper is far more general.

We work on the basis that if a site allows spidering of its contents by search engines, then its material is being openly published. Conversely, if the site has disallowed spidering and indexing by search engines, we respect those restrictions in robots.txt.

Why restrict themselves to only Googlebot, what about MSNBot and Slurp, etc.?

Originally Posted by Dephormation

Oh for goodness sake, cheer up (and cheer me up too why don't you).

They won't win if you don't let them. Move to a non-Phorm ISP. Don't think about it, don't stall, don't sulk, don't hesitate... do it now. Its one call and you'll thank yourself afterwards. Vote with your feet.

We can’t afford to lose. Everyone deserves to keep their privacy and we can hardly restrict our private communications to only those using non-phormed ISPs. However, it turns out that Phorm on fixed-line connections is only one of a whole range of concerns, including:

• The use of Google and similar companies to store personal data.
• Wireless access points using Phorm, NebuAd, Front Porch or similar.
• The 45,000 UK users of comScore.
• Even services that claim to protect you, but which are no better themselves, such as AnchorFree’s Hotspot Shield.

Originally Posted by BenMcr

The particular clause we are talking about was added to ntl's terms in May 2005

http://web.archive.org/web/200511302...e/termschanges

While we’re trying to get a more balanced perspective, you might like to read Phorm (formerly 121Media) Under Fire. I hope Kent appreciates that I’ve never once said he’s bad… just mad. I know that blog entry’s contradictory. It concludes by saying Phorm are “doing right by end-users”, whereas earlier it states that Kent wasn’t interested in providing end-user value. That’s the problem: Phorm take everything from the user and give nothing back.