Virgin Media Phorm Webwise Adverts [Updated: See Post No. 1, 77, 102 & 797]

[isf]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06..._banking_loss/

[tee cee]

I follow Frank's view. By indulging in page after page of verbal table tennis with trolls the worth of genuine contributions here is debased. It makes it more difficult to use the forum to reference valuable information with which to pursue our individual efforts and diverts attention from the very real issues that are being adressed.
One page of constructive discourse is worth more than a hundred pages of tit for tat.

Please ignore trolls

[HamsterWheel]

Now thats soo true - I think I'll spend some time reading the rest of your feelings on life, might take a while though - its an 85 page pdf

You've lost me there - there's a few HamsterWheel's on the net. That quote is not one of mine.

[Privacy_Matters]

Originally Posted by Privacy_Matters

@HamsterWheel

You know, I disagree with your sentiments on Phorm - but this quote:

"The Rat Race works like a hamster wheel: no matter how fast you run, you still will not get anywhere."

Now thats soo true - I think I'll spend some time reading the rest of your feelings on life, might take a while though - its an 85 page pdf

BTW Paivi - Linked in says your position at Phorm is the COO? Care to clarify what your exact position is?

Oh and hey, loving reading your Thai reports

[HamsterWheel]

Is this a board about privacy concerns, or one about conspiracy theories ?

Paivi ? I keep telling you I'm nowt to do with phorm. Alex will let you know when he returns from his cab shift.

Thai ? - only been there once, what reports are you linking me too ? [purely out of interest....]

[Privacy_Matters]

Originally Posted by HamsterWheel

Is this a board about privacy concerns, or one about conspiracy theories ?

Paivi ? I keep telling you I'm nowt to do with phorm. Alex will let you know when he returns from his cab shift.

Thai ? - only been there once, what reports are you linking me too ? [purely out of interest....]

You're rattled lol - didn't think anyone could connect you.

BTW, you missed your trip to Patagonia on your blogs etc.

Oh - and you think I am going to PUBLICLY give the info.

Hey, just to clear up - is it Paivi or Pivi? I mean is it Paivi only when you use the the accent?

Anyways, its established, proven, and out in the open....

You

work

for

Phorm

[HamsterWheel]

You

work

for

Phorm

No I don't.

As for Patagonia - already been posted on the thread above ! Nice try, but very amateurish.

[Privacy_Matters]

Pete

Check your PM.

[HamsterWheel]

I see there is an ad for Virgin Broadband at the top of this page.
How ironic.

Perhaps if the site owners signed up for Phorm they could have more targetted ads that would be better for the blood pressure of the regulars.

[NTLVictim]

Originally Posted by isf

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06..._banking_loss/

I wonder if they'll post my comment?

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by HamsterWheel

stuartc - phorm does not look at encrypted sites, so I don't have a problem. It also does not monitor passwords etc.

As far as you know.

Concerns about hackers are irrelevant - if they can hack into the ISPs computers, where the date will be held, then they can hack into everything anyway.

No. Concerns about hackers are *very* relevant. Phorm will store the data somewhere (even while it's being anoymised, it's still stored). Those phorm servers *could* potentially store a lot of personal information. They will be attacked by hackers because of this. We only have the assurances of a company that accidentally installed root kits on user's PCs that the servers are secure.

Why would a hacker bother with hacking an ecommerce site to get credit card details for a few thousand peoples, when they could hack the Phorm system and get all the credit card details for 10s or 100s of thousands of people?

thebarron - I too would not give such details as I don't want cold callers on the phone.
Phorm though doesn't keep any data for any significant period (argue away !) so does not invade my privacy in the same way.

You have only the assurances of them and their consultants of that.

Originally Posted by HamsterWheel

Is this a board about privacy concerns, or one about conspiracy theories ?

It's actually a board that attempts to help users with problems.

[MovedGoalPosts]

Let's move on from the debate of whether or not someone is or is not who they might be thought to be. By it's nature the internet does allow a level of anonyminity. Unless someone wants to admit to something, it won't easily be proveable.

[Wildie]

Originally Posted by HamsterWheel

I see there is an ad for Virgin Broadband at the top of this page.
How ironic.

Perhaps if the site owners signed up for Phorm they could have more targetted ads that would be better for the blood pressure of the regulars.

sorry i dont see adverts must be some thing to with a plug in ABP and adaware removing the ad`s saving me bandwidth, which is something we cannot do with phorm is block it stop it, hence the move to a non phorm isp.

[HamsterWheel]

Stuart - Ernst & Young have done a full privacy audit on what Phorm does. And they will no doubt regularly update it. And BT, Virgin and CPW will also have done their own work on the privacy aspects and data retention.

If you are going to say that you still don't trust them, then one wonders if you could ever trust anyone or any commercial organisation ?

And if there are any shenanigans, then BT etc will be the first to scream as it is their reputations that will be on the line.

Harping back to Phorm's background is getting a bit turgid now. The company is rather different now and has a hugely heavyweight board that would not be involved in anything inherently dodgy.

---------- Post added at 14:24 ---------- Previous post was at 14:23 ----------

Wildie - very happy that you don't see the ads, but without the revenue generated by them, the board would obviously not exist would it ?

[pseudonym]

Originally Posted by Phormic Acid

I managed to attribute the previous quote to the wrong New York Times blog entry about NebuAd. It should have been:

NebuAd Observes ‘Useful, but Innocuous’ Web Browsing

Mr. Dykes said that the company also examines other information about users’ computers in order to identify when an I.P. address is changed. But he declined to explain what that information is and how it is used.

Dykes also goes on about the benefits of the vagueness inherent in using only IP addresses. That article is dated early in April. It looks like things have moved on. I remember being puzzled by:

Infighting At ISPs Over Using NebuAD

I’m told NebuAD is even able to build profiles of individual people using the same IP address (ex: users behind a NAT device).

While it may have once been an IP address tracker, it certainly looks like a cookie tracker now. As you say, it’s not how often you can read the cookie, but when you read it. You only have to read the cookie when there is no referrer header. You can link up all the subsequent pages, with a high degree of reliability, using only the IP address and later referrer headers. You’ll have a root page and a fairly sparse tree.

I imagine only a handful of such root pages cover a very large proportion of all web browsing graphs.

I'd imagine you're right, and if you want to know a user's interests you'd ideally want to identify the root pages commonly visited by them, as many of them will be the user's bookmarks - which would typically be given away by the presence of a cookie and no referer in the header of the initial request.

If I was designing a MITM system, I'd be very tempted to capture a hash of the user's cookie whenever they are updated for those sites, that way I'd have a good chance of IDing them next time they visit the site from their initial request just by comparing the cookie hash.

Only manipulating the datastream to read a user's master cookie when you need to, would make it less likely for end-users to notice the interventions and also minimise the risk of causing browsing artifacts. If that is what Nebuad are doing, then Phorm's system is very primative in comparisson.