Quote:
Quote:
Originally Posted by R Jones 
I have had en email with a series of questions about Phorm/Webwise answered (sort of) by a BT manager. My post with the questions (edited for brevity) and the answers is over on BT Beta forums and can be seen without registering.
http://www.beta.bt.com/bta/forums/th...ID=18175#18175
or http://tinyurl.com/4pyqhn
It took quite a bit of effort to get the answers with as much pressure as a mere customer is able to exert, but eventually the system did respond.
I'm not posting them here because it's not really appropriate to quote a BT manager answering questions about the BT Webwise system here on a VM forum, - but I'm sure people here will find the answers interesting. I'd be grateful for any comments you want to make either here or there.
I'll delay making my own comments until I have had some feedback.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by AlexanderHanff
Wow, there is so much to say from that. I will be writing a response here this evening, but I have to go an pick up my son first and then have my dinner. I just wanted to thank you for the link in advance of my reply.
Alexnder Hanff
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well i will post here as its not going to go missing and its easyer to reference later for searching then, although im not sure why Rjones didnt do it himself,but no matter.
R you do know this cable forum IS NOT an official Virgin Media Broadband site, as in NOT supported by VM,run for VM or run by VM dont you?.
its official status today is as a general purpose broadband help site and we have many non VM members helping and getting help in many subjects not mearly BB.
R Jones 
Posts: 175
Registered: 1/27/04 Re: BT Webwise Discussion Thread
Posted: Apr 18, 2008 6:16 PM
[img]Download Failed (1)[/img] in response to:
Mark W [img]Download Failed (1)[/img] Reply
Here are answers I received from a member of BT management today in response to the questions. The manager has edited the questions for brevity but I think the purport of each question is clear.
1) Reply from EU Information, Society & Media Commissioner Viviane Reding. Any comments?
I have no further comment to what BT, Phorm and others have already stated publicly regarding privacy ie no personally identifiable information is stored. We have also commented previously that we are comfortable that Webwise complies with relevant laws.
2) Presumably you know that the ICO are now opening cases relating to Webwise trial complaints.
As indicated previously we have been and continue to be in regular dialogue with the ICO.
3) Various other questions regarding the two previous small scale tests BT conducted...
I have nothing to add to our previous statements regarding the two previous small scall tests, which were completely anonymous.
4) Re the issue of javascript injection ?
Javascript tags will not be inserted as part of the forthcoming Webwise trial.
5) Is browser hijacking occurring NOW? - we note strange delays and issues with webpages!
No.
6) Please note, as the account holder for my ADSL account, I do NOT give consent for Webwise trials to be conducted on either my primary account OR any logins using my BTY broadband email sub accounts.
Your choice to accept or decline the invitation to participate in the forthcoming Webwise trial will be managed via the Webwise system itself. When the trial commences, if your broadband connection is among the group invited to participate in the trial, then you will be presented with a webpage which will give you the choice to participate in the trial or not. After this time, and at any point during the trial, you can go to
www.bt.com/webwise and click 'BT Webwise off' or BT Webwise on' to change your preference. Alternatively, as I believe you may done already, you can add
www.webwise.net to your browser's blocked cookies list at any point to ensure your computer is not part of the trial.
7) Consent to present you or BT broadband customers trying to visit your websites with the Webwise trial invitation page.
Adding
www.webwise.net to your browser's blocked cookies list means that you (and any other BT customers that do the same) will not be presented with the Webwise trial invitation page.
8) The issue of informed consent from Webmasters and your confirmation that you do not provide such consent for your own websites. How can web sites opt-out?
The system doesn't handle any HTTPS connections as such traffic is, by its nature, private. For HTTP traffic, we assume that if a website wishes to be found by the public through being profiled by major search engines (Google), then the site is in the public domain and therefore as long as we have consent from the requester of the page, we are permitted to profile the site. However we note that you have specifically requested that wimborne-baptist.org.uk and leighparkinitiative.org.uk be excluded and we will honour your request to exclude your websites from profiling within the BT Webwise system. We believe this approach is reasonable and is supported by the advice we have received.
9) Could you explain this cookie forging system please? I do NOT permit BT or Phorm or Webwise to forge or to place forged cookies that appear to come from my websites. I also deny you permission to copy the name of my website domains into any cookie that purports to come from my site. I formally and specifically withold consent for you (BT, Phorm, Virgin Media, Carphone Warehouse, TalkTalk, 121Media, BT Webwise or any associates involved in the Webwise operation) to use my domain names (wimborne-baptist.org.uk and leighparkinitiative.org.uk) in part or in full, within any cookie set by Webwise.
I will need to respond to this question on Monday when I can talk to the relevant person in BT (who is unavailable today).
10) Redirection of browsing traffic up to 3 times before we get to the sites we originally asked for in the first place, is not explained by Phorm. Could you explain that clearly and transparently?
I believe you mentioned you had read Richard Clayton's report - he covers this in some detail, I also understand that Phorm covered this at the event on Tuesday and confirmed that it should occur in fewer than 1% of web requests from the user, so to all intents and purposes, it will be unnoticeable from the user's point of view. We don't believe that this presents any risk and will obviously monitor this as part of the trial.
11) What will happen to the "browsing experience" of a BT customer who adds all the various oix/phorm/webwise domains to his/her HOSTS file, once Webwise/Phorm is in place? Will that "break" my browsing experience?
If a customer who is invited to participate in the trial adds
www.webwise.net to their local HOSTS file with the resolved address of 127.0.0.1, they will not be able to browse the Internet on HTTP port 80 on that PC for the period of the trial. This is because access to
www.webwise.net is required in order to process the consent status of the user during the trial. Instead, and as per the advice on the
www.bt.com/webwise site, the recommended approach for excluding a PC from the Webwise service if the user regularly deletes cookies is to add
www.webwise.net to the browser's blocked cookie list. As previously stated, in parallel with the forthcoming trial, we are developing a solution which will manage the choice of users without the use of cookies. We believe this approach is reasonable and is supported by the advice we have received.
12) What are the security implications of the cookie forging, and browser multiple redirections? How easily can a malicious website identify, copy and then sell on the Phorm user ID number from a visitor's computer?
The Webwise UID cookie contains no personal data and, as such, offers no commercial gain for malicous websites and cannot be associated to an individual. The Webwise UID is not presented to the website in the HTTP communication. We are aware of the communities concerns with regards to this subject and have taken appropriate actions to mitigate this.
13) What will happen to browsing (and the Phorm business model) when browsers like Firefox (and security software vendors) start to look at layer 7 redirection and treat it as suspicious activity?
It is not clear to me that they will do that. Phorm are talking to security software vendors etc about Webwise.
14) When will BT openly reveal the consumer research (including the questions used) that gave them the idea we as customers, WANTED this stuff?
It is not common practise for us to release our market research. At this stage we have no plans to release the research conducted by BT but that is not to say we will not provide details in the future. I can confirm that it was conducted by a third party market research agency on behalf of BT and others. It explored both aspects of the Webwise service separately - less irrelevant advertising and the additional protection against online fraud. Furthermore we will of course also review how our up coming trial of the service goes. Ultimately what is important though is that our customers will have a clear choice.
15) In response to the ICO's latest statement - can we have an UNEQUIVOCAL statement that the final implementation of Webwise/Phorm will be opt-IN?
We have not finalised our plans beyond the up coming trial and it would be premature to do so. We have committed though that Webwise will be optional and that our customers will have a clear choice.
16) How do BT customers, wishing to access BT pages, hosted on bt.com, find the Webwise FAQ please?
We will be add our Webwise FAQ's to the help and support pages on bt.com.
**********
I have a number of comments but I think I will just leave the answers here for others to comment on.
[Phorm Share Price|http://tinyurl.com/3p7j82]"
---------- Post added at 07:27 ---------- Previous post was at 07:21 ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by tdadyslexia
Spin, Spin & More Spin.  |
indeed, but i put the links in so that you can read them and see exactly were its leading, the trick is to read between the lines and it becomes clear were they want to lead the readers.
once you know that , the CF members can counter any such spin and sound bite with a far easyer fact based news story or four and a few fact based soundbites of our own to back it up.
did you have ago at writing one BTW!
---------- Post added at 08:04 ---------- Previous post was at 07:27 ----------
as a prelude to Alexanders spot on tuesday, the short version of "click!" on bbc1 (long version later this morning on news24 if you want to see it VM 601 11.30) just did a 10 second spot news, that put Phorm and NebuAd logo's on screen. nothing werth watching if your a reader here, but its in the news and building.
im trying to work out the interview spot times, and it seems as i said 30 seconds or so, perhaps a full minute, however this short version was all about wireless data connectivity in the hospitials and so covered several aspects of the same subject for the full program.
i expect the tuesday version will be around the IT show "The show will be recorded at Olympiad Exhibition Centre during ITSec next Tuesday" #
3834
they have given us a clue that NebuAd will most likely also be covered, so it might be werth getting upto speed with that too if it gets another 30 seconds.
NebuAd is virtually the same as Phorm but goes directly for the personal ISP given IP address and has an undisclosed way to track it over time, rather than the Phorm prefered put it on the ISP to annonymise that IP and cookie the data tracking AFAIK right now.
and they are sitting in the new UK office just waiting for the outcome of Phorm and our fight.....
it doesnt seem right to not include them as they might feel as though we dont care or forgotten about them
---------- Post added at 08:16 ---------- Previous post was at 08:04 ----------
hmm i didnt see a
book of UK Torts on your list BTW Alexander, did you forget tort isnt covered on the web very well, and it might be useful...
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Re: Virgin Media Phorm Webwise Adverts [Updated: See Post No. 1, 77, 102 & 797]
