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

[roadrunner69]

Originally Posted by Dephormation

Its all about context and volume of data.

A name alone - John Smith - might not identify an individual. With enough context it would certainly identify an individual.

You cannot allow a communication service provider (electronic or otherwise) to inspect all of your private communications and make a judgement for themselves about what is and isn't personal and private information before you've even had the chance to read it yourself.

You just can't do it.

Just did a quick word frequency test with TextSTAT, a simple word analysis program (free) on a Cable-Forum page from this afternoon.

Discarded any term that occurs less than 5 times ((I seem to remember phorm stating they do this)
Discarded the chaff (the, at, is etc)
Now it starts getting harder to narrow down.
Discarded generic words that would probably not be relevent (service, data, posted etc)

And i'm left with:

Phorm
Media
Dephormation
NTLVictim
Webwise
BT
roadrunner69
Paul
Delaney
Cable
software
VM
ISP
ICO
government
warescouse
Sky
video
davethejag
Joe
Phone
Google

Even from this, very limited test, and disregarding the url its possible to identify several people (at least by user name (Paul Delaney?), who's political views (at least with regard to privacy matters) are known.
Once the inevitable function creep comes who knows where it will lead.
I'll try the same thing on a more personal site when I get time.

Originally Posted by roadrunner69

Even from this, very limited test, and disregarding the url its possible to identify several people (at least by user name (Paul Delaney?), who's political views (at least with regard to privacy matters) are known.
Once the inevitable function creep comes who knows where it will lead.
I'll try the same thing on a more personal site when I get time.

I'm also Staribar, Darkskai, Kyle Reese, Jay808, The2ndLoser, 2ndLoser and T2L

None of those are my real name either




EDIT: I even use an alias on Facebook for Christs Sake!

[popper]

the little sideline weekend fun from KFO looks fun today, currently Phorm is ranked No.1 Kent went from 5 to 4 back down to 5, and now stands at No.4 again for an hour or so, BT is trailing at No.13 atm but is the largest climber since yesturday.

[roadrunner69]

Originally Posted by Paul Delaney

I'm also Staribar, Darkskai, Kyle Reese, Jay808, The2ndLoser, 2ndLoser and T2L

None of those are my real name either




EDIT: I even use an alias on Facebook for Christs Sake!

You and I both, but many people I know use the same or similar across all their registered sites. 's

[Bobcat]

I'm voting on KFO but why am I not seeing any comments on the site. I've written a couple and I'm sure many on here will have too. Any ideas or do you have to register for your comment to count and to see others?

[icsys]

Originally Posted by Raistlin

In order for it to be 'personally identifying' the information would need to make it possible to directly identify an individual.

As many people in the UK could have the name 'Mercedes' the name on its own would not be classed as personaly identifiable.

The Phorm webwise technology assigns each user a unique identifier (UID) Thus phorm processes PII as it falls foul of the following:

Directive 95/46/EC on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data.

Article 2 Definitions

For the purposes of this Directive:

(a) 'personal data' shall mean any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person ('data subject'); an identifiable person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identification number or to one or more factors specific to his physical, physiological, mental, economic, cultural or social identity;

[lucevans]

Originally Posted by jelv

But it could be sufficient if the person has an unusual name. For example, is there more than one Kent Ertugrul?

exactly right. I have an unusual name, and a google of it brings up reference to only one other individual on the entire internet, whose name is similar to mine, but not the same (and no, it's not my username here). So how does being an "anonymous" member of a group of 2 protect my privacy, Phorm??

[Florence]

Originally Posted by roadrunner69

Just did a quick word frequency test with TextSTAT, a simple word analysis program (free) on a Cable-Forum page from this afternoon.

Discarded any term that occurs less than 5 times ((I seem to remember phorm stating they do this)
Discarded the chaff (the, at, is etc)
Now it starts getting harder to narrow down.
Discarded generic words that would probably not be relevent (service, data, posted etc)

And i'm left with:

Phorm
Media
Dephormation
NTLVictim
Webwise
BT
roadrunner69
Paul
Delaney
Cable
software
VM
ISP
ICO
government
warescouse
Sky
video
davethejag
Joe
Phone
Google

Even from this, very limited test, and disregarding the url its possible to identify several people (at least by user name (Paul Delaney?), who's political views (at least with regard to privacy matters) are known.
Once the inevitable function creep comes who knows where it will lead.
I'll try the same thing on a more personal site when I get time.

With my name any websites i have about me would have them thinking I was on about the town called Florence.. So I presume i wil get adverts related to that, nice one and irrelvant.

---------- Post added at 20:16 ---------- Previous post was at 20:14 ----------

Originally Posted by Paul Delaney

I'm also Staribar, Darkskai, Kyle Reese, Jay808, The2ndLoser, 2ndLoser and T2L

None of those are my real name either




EDIT: I even use an alias on Facebook for Christs Sake!

I used to have a fake name but due to problems caused by one ex member of this forum and an admin on thinkbroadband I was told I had to change my fake name so I was in a mood and just used my real name...

[BadPhormula]

KFO Update:

With a sterling effort from everybody 'We' have managed to place Phorm into #1 postion over on KFO, let's hope the message sinks in.

Kent Ertugrul is at #3 just behind Robert Mugabe and ahead of George Bush.

I've setup a thread over on Badphorm as a placeholder reminder for people wanting to keep Phorm and their **** entourage right at the top of the KFO rankings as the most disgusting unpopular pile of crap on the entire Internet.

http://www.badphorm.co.uk/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?7028

[Dephormation]

Originally Posted by icsys

The Phorm webwise technology assigns each user a unique identifier (UID) Thus phorm processes PII as it falls foul of the following:

Directive 95/46/EC on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data.

Article 2 Definitions

For the purposes of this Directive:

(a) 'personal data' shall mean any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person ('data subject'); an identifiable person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identification number or to one or more factors specific to his physical, physiological, mental, economic, cultural or social identity;

Even Phorm refer to it as a user identifier. What could be more personal? Its more personal than your phone number, your IP address, your home address. Its on a par with a social security number.

[BadPhormula]

Originally Posted by Bobcat

I'm voting on KFO but why am I not seeing any comments on the site. I've written a couple and I'm sure many on here will have too. Any ideas or do you have to register for your comment to count and to see others?

Well the comments are supposed to be verified by a human (allegedly) and so I suspect is suffering from the 'human condition'... Laziness

---------- Post added at 21:37 ---------- Previous post was at 21:18 ----------

Originally Posted by Dephormation

Even Phorm refer to it as a user identifier. What could be more personal? Its more personal than your phone number, your IP address, your home address. Its on a par with a social security number.

Phorm's pulling another fast one, their claim that the process is anonymous is a total sham. They are going around conning people like the ICO and Lords/Ladies/MPs with this b~llshit because those power brokers of British governance are technically illiterate. Phorm will use back channels of information along with their sneaky partners to marry up the information from many different sources. That data is being clocked and collated! No doubt about it. The only clever thing is Phorm can look you in the eye and say 'WE' aren't doing it, with this dodgy profiling system we are trying to distract your attention with... (looks away covers mouth with hand,,, and whisper mutters "Are friends are doing the un-anonymising for us *wink*")

I'm sure Richard Clayton could write another PhD on how that information is scattered and then pulled back into a central repository... Phorm is just doing a smoke and mirrors trick... How the ADMIN EDIT - DO NOT ATTEMPT TO BYPASS THE SWEAR FILTER can they say READING EVERYTHING IS A PRIVACY ENHANCEMENT???!!! it defies all logic.

C'mon Richard we need a nice research paper from you regarding all this sleight of hand trickery that's really going on.


Note: NebuAd's anonymising personal data has already been busted! Any CompSci student worth their salt knows that a oneway hash on a very small data set, IPv4 dotted quad, is virtually a lookup list.

Note2: I came across a complex Internet map of how the spammer/spyware/adware and advertizers are linked together and how they share cookie profile information with each other. Shame I cannot give you the URL it was fascinating and would scare the living crap out of everybody here that thinks it must be hard to track people across the Internet. Visit a dozen or so sites after deleting your cookies and web cache and you may find that the b~stards have aquired your personal profile again, against your wishes.

Has anyone else seen this map I'm referring to, or something similar? (I might have come across it on Slashdot or TheRegister about 5 years ago 'memory is fading')

[bluecar1]

Originally Posted by Dephormation

Even Phorm refer to it as a user identifier. What could be more personal? Its more personal than your phone number, your IP address, your home address. Its on a par with a social security number.

we need to drop the fixation of ip address as pii, as phorm are not interested in it, as BTR only use dynamic addresses so ip is of no relevance to phorm, (not sure about tt or vm?)

and this is also the issue that causes them most grief as BTW controll the RAS servers i believe so that makes it difficult for BTR to do the account level opt out without the help of BTW (which i believe they are not allowed to do as they are ment to be different companies and NOT share data)

peter

[Toto]

Originally Posted by bluecar1

we need to drop the fixation of ip address as pii, as phorm are not interested in it, as BTR only use dynamic addresses so ip is of no relevance to phorm, (not sure about tt or vm?)

and this is also the issue that causes them most grief as BTW controll the RAS servers i believe so that makes it difficult for BTR to do the account level opt out without the help of BTW (which i believe they are not allowed to do as they are ment to be different companies and NOT share data)

peter

VM cable is supposed to use dynamic IP allocation, however I've had my address for a few weeks at least.

BTW, I agree with you, whilst there are many other aspects of Phorm we don't agree with, not getting the IP address of each user of the system is the one good thing out of all that crap.

[Florence]

Originally Posted by BadPhormula

Well the comments are supposed to be verified by a human (allegedly) and so I suspect is suffering from the 'human condition'... Laziness

---------- Post added at 21:37 ---------- Previous post was at 21:18 ----------



Phorm's pulling another fast one, their claim that the process is anonymous is a total sham. They are going around conning people like the ICO and Lords/Ladies/MPs with this b~llshit because those power brokers of British governance are technically illiterate. Phorm will use back channels of information along with their sneaky partners to marry up the information from many different sources. That data is being clocked and collated! No doubt about it. The only clever thing is Phorm can look you in the eye and say 'WE' aren't doing it, with this dodgy profiling system we are trying to distract your attention with... (looks away covers mouth with hand,,, and whisper mutters "Are friends are doing the un-anonymising for us *wink*")

I'm sure Richard Clayton could write another PhD on how that information is scattered and then pulled back into a central repository... Phorm is just doing a smoke and mirrors trick... How the ADMIN EDIT - DO NOT ATTEMPT TO BYPASS THE SWEAR FILTER can they say READING EVERYTHING IS A PRIVACY ENHANCEMENT???!!! it defies all logic.

C'mon Richard we need a nice research paper from you regarding all this sleight of hand trickery that's really going on.


Note: NebuAd's anonymising personal data has already been busted! Any CompSci student worth their salt knows that a oneway hash on a very small data set, IPv4 dotted quad, is virtually a lookup list.

Note2: I came across a complex Internet map of how the spammer/spyware/adware and advertizers are linked together and how they share cookie profile information with each other. Shame I cannot give you the URL it was fascinating and would scare the living crap out of everybody here that thinks it must be hard to track people across the Internet. Visit a dozen or so sites after deleting your cookies and web cache and you may find that the b~stards have aquired your personal profile again, against your wishes.

Has anyone else seen this map I'm referring to, or something similar? (I might have come across it on Slashdot or TheRegister about 5 years ago 'memory is fading')

Well can see the news soon peoples data lost while working online from home the MP's in question didn't do anything wrong except use BT total for internet and allow Phorm to be set into the network.
This news follows on from last weeks where secret plans for moving our boys back from the front line where intercepted and only link we can find is this person is again a BT total customer.

Police are investigate..

Can see that in large print soon since they seem unable or unwilling to listen...

Phorm will do this http://www.spywareinfo.com/articles/hijacked/

Not sure if this has been highlighted in thread agreed it was 2007 but then again BT's illegal trials were 2006/2007.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070129/233453.shtml

[bluecar1]

Originally Posted by Toto

VM cable is supposed to use dynamic IP allocation, however I've had my address for a few weeks at least.

BTW, I agree with you, whilst there are many other aspects of Phorm we don't agree with, not getting the IP address of each user of the system is the one good thing out of all that crap.

if BTR used static ip's then yes phorm would be after them like a shot,

what we need to find out is what is in the diagnostic logs that are kept for up to 14 days and who has access to them and are they then shipped and stored

i suspect they are similar to the logs from the illegal trials which gives ip, and various other pii to show how the system is performing

peter