Thread: Virgin Media Phorm Webwise Adverts [Updated: See Post No. 1, 77, 102 & 797]
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Old 28-07-2008, 22:45   #12845
Dephormation
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Join Date: Apr 2008
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Services: Aquiss.net and loving it. No more Virgin Media, no more Virgin Phone, no more Virgin Mobile.
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Re: Virgin Media Phorm Webwise Adverts [Updated: See Post No. 1, 77, 102 & 797]
Quote:
Originally Posted by SimonHickling View Post
BT claim that because my content is available on the web, and not http authenticated, and because I haven't expressly asked for my site to be blacklisted, and it is referenced by Google, it's OK to make a copy.
Copyright theft isn't the most valuable thing that Phorm are trying to take.

What they really value is not the copy of the content (they discard that after they've extracted the keywords)... its the marketing intelligence they glean by linking a user to the sites and ecommerce businesses they are interacting with.

That's why the Home Office advice (that you could imply consent of web site operators for interception) is so completely wrong.

Its one thing to make content publicly accessible.

Its quite another to make the transmission of that content to a customer open to interception.

And that's what the Home Office's ridiculous advice document suggests is somehow legal. Sorry to the staff of the Office of Security, Counter Terrorism and Internet Advertising but it is plain stupidity on your part.

In effect it licences mass industrial espionage. The fact that our Government, particularly Shriti Vadera in BERR, are seemingly content to stand by and watch this happen is just staggering (to me).

It means that, perhaps within as little as 2 years or so, a large proportion of your interactions with UK web sites will likely be encrypted. IT consultants like me will be recommending SSL to our clients, because you can't trust UK ISPs not to steal your content and sell marketing intelligence to your competition.

Can you imagine the Post Office doing that? Opening all your letters. Making a note of the content, and selling all that data to the highest bidder? Its obscene.

And when that happens? When its all encrypted? Phorms 'targeted' adverts will be more or less useless, because they can't target on the basis of something they can't decrypt. And the Office of Security, Counter Terrorism and Internet Advertising will face the task of decoding masses of 128bit encoded SSL data in real time.

Genius

Pete.
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