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

Originally Posted by phormwatch

What's Emma's email address? I will ask her if she thinks it would be OK if people commercially exploit BTs websites for the same reasons.

BT websites are copyrighted.

Strange then that they insist that all other websites are freely available for copying.

I do not believe that BT obtained any legal advice pertaining to this issue as any lawyer would have been able to tell them that you only have a Limited Lecence when you are sent a webpage - that's right; it is sent to you contrary to the popular concpet of being visited.

This is exactly the same arrangement that exists when you purchase a CD. The disk is your property bu the content is alaway and only the property of the copyright holder. You have a Limited Licence which allows you to play the disk and listen to the content but there are restrictions including not being allowed to "broadcast" i.e allow other people to listen to it in a shop or pub as well as transmitting it through any media and you absolutely can not make copies.

It is especially interesting that Emma S refers specifically to "copies" in her reply to Robert as this indicates to me that she is not quoting from or has not understood any legal advice regarding the ownership and licensing of any form of content on any media.

We need BT to qualify their claims that they sought legal advice especially with regards to the areas of the system that such advice covered. I suspect that the only advice that they sought was to see if they could use the word "Webwise".

[Tarquin L-Smythe]

I have followed this thread for many weeks now and am concerned at the amount of OT posting referring to bets/investments made in the former Co 121 media now known as Phorm and of some people manipulating and diluting the course of this thread it was never intended to be used as an advertising platform for Phorm .as I have had knuckles wrapped for earlier posting,I feel that future discussion on stock prices and and those associated with it be moved to another thread.Having said this I see no reason why one post at the close of trading would suffice .Needless to say that the postings on the illegalities of Phorm today have been shown the best way forward.
Guys I don't understand the tech stuff but the invasion is totally abhorrent to many ,keep fighting for us little guys as a person with mobility issues I rely on my PC as my main contact with the outside world.

Many thanks to you all Tarqin

[phormwatch]

So is anyone going to give me Emma's email address? Or would they like to ask Emma themselves whether BT websites are, by the same logic, commercially exploitable?

[madslug]

Originally Posted by Ryewolf

I use AVG, which has an inline link checker for all search results on the major search engines, it's completely free and updates automatically, and gives visual clues to the safety of the links on the page. Best of all it doesn't require me to having my entire browsing history profiled.

I am thinking of blocking all visits whose visit profile looks like they are using AVG as it is using 2 visits before the human sees the page - 3 times bandwidth cost.

Problem is, all those visits from Google could be human or they could just be the AVG script - no way of knowing. Have to just ignore the increase in traffic, factor it down by 3 and know that I am getting near to real visitor numbers.

BT will be upset by AVG too as they will be being hit for interceptions made by AVG on BT customer accounts. But then, that is what happens when you allow people to use software that spoofs someone else's IP address.

AVG currently use just one useragent, so it is possible to eliminate the scrapper visits. However, they are planing on removing that identifier as they want to minimise the risk of phishing sites giving the script a clean page and sending the human to the malware page.

If you use AVG, trust it about as much as you will trust Webwise and its ability to protect you from phishing.

Common sense, that is the best protection.

Never click on ads - they are used to redirect via malware sites before sending you on to the real site (since before April 2007, to my knowledge). AVG only checks the final destination URL and does not follow all the redirects from the ad (else they would be generating as many 'fraudulent clicks' as they are phantom visitors)

Sorry, slightly off topic. Just shows that if you are relying on someone's software to protect you, it is only as good as the control mechanisms programmed into it. And if it annoys the innocent, you may find yourself tarred as guilty by association.

BlueCoat offer similar, and it is free. Webmasters only need to contact BlueCoat who will then cache your sites once and fit it into a category: else they do the 2 scrapping visits before human visitor too. At least BlueCoat uses its own IP address so visits are easy to track.

Rant over.

[Ryewolf]

Originally Posted by davews

This latest offering from AVG has been strongly criticised in many circles. It not only looks at all the links in a Google response page but also downloads those pages and analyses them to see if they look like phish. Exactly like Phorm is doing with its profiling. Many web authors are up in arms about all the increased traffic their sites are getting from this new AVG 'feature'.

Now thats something I didn't realise, I thought it was just checking the links on the page against a database.

[isf]

The domain names of my web sites are none of BT's concern. Search services are providing a useful service, still some webmasters elect to exclude their sites from the search index or from caching (by both proxies and search engines). If BT want to take the position that Phorm can be excluded, what is the UA name used in requests from Phorms profiler? On some sites I may exclude them from all or part of a site using robots.txt, on others I'd like to use a rewrite engine or server side UA sniffing to send them garbage -- as is my right.

Then there's the issue of passing off when they phorge a tracking cookie (as previously noted this could potentially contravene a sites privacy policy). There's certainly no implied consent from me for Phorm/BT to be setting these cookies for my domains.

Something else I've been wondering. HTTP cookies are limited to 20 per domain, what happens if this limit is reached? Do Phorm overwrite a legitimate cookie?

[Privacy_Matters]

@ Alex

Please PM me the Press release, I will adapt it if required for the Scottish Media, and send to a list I've compiled.

[madslug]

Originally Posted by phormwatch

What's Emma's email address? I will ask her if she thinks it would be OK if people commercially exploit BTs websites for the same reasons.

I have already asked, noting to her that the bt sites no longer carry any copyright statement, plus there is identical content hosted on non-bt domains. Maybe she is still looking for the duplicate content on other domains, or else it is being published under licence from BT, even though the site is silent on this fact.

Anyway, I think E and I were getting close to giving up email communicating as I never received a reply.

BT email addresses are of the format firstname dot lastname at bt dot com.

[JackSon]

I don't think a user-agent of Phorm is entirely of any relevance, as the Phorm/WebWise kit isn't actually making any connection with a website. It just intercepts the connection made between the end user and website (once all the 307 dance is completed and a communication is allowed to and back from the real website), so the only user-agent to be seen will be that of the user. Convenient for them, eh?

A theory of mine after my limited understanding of the reports I must add.

Sometimes a small diversion into the sideline can help stop a thread like this from becoming too dry.

In this case watching shares fluctuate during the day can tell us more than simply looking at the end of day prices especially as there are strong signs that Phorm have trying to pump the price of their stock through press releases claiming new contracts and early start dates for the BT trial.

Investors often "hear" about developments that take a while to filter down to the rest of us so watching the share price during the day is a kind of litmus test that make a quick search around the internet worth while.

Apart from that, there is a very real chance that Phorm will go bust before thier system even gets up and running and that is something that is worth watching for.

A lot of the current discussion about 12Media's shares stems from claims made by one particular member and while it could be argued that it's better to ignore such posts it might be having a look at the BT Forum. I posted a comment on there that there must be many hundreds or even thousands of peopl who read these forums without being active participants and a number of people joined and posted on there to say that this was true for them.

Because of that it is important to make sure that posts regarding Phorm's past business practises and their current commercial standing and viability are accurate and that no-one is allowed to post unsubstantiated or inaccurate comments and remain unchallenged otherwise you run the risk of having this forum subverted into another outlet for Phorms' spin doctors and investors trying to artificially inflate the value of their shares.

[icsys]

Originally Posted by davews

This latest offering from AVG has been strongly criticised in many circles. It not only looks at all the links in a Google response page but also downloads those pages and analyses them to see if they look like phish. Exactly like Phorm is doing with its profiling. Many web authors are up in arms about all the increased traffic their sites are getting from this new AVG 'feature'.

I use AVG 8. The issues are primarily around bandwidth usage and site stats but this is another topic entirely and should be discussed elsewhere. Incidentally the link scanner does not appear to work with Firefox.
I think it is unfair to brand AVG with the likes of Phorm .

---------- Post added at 17:32 ---------- Previous post was at 17:27 ----------

Originally Posted by Peter N

Sometimes a small diversion into the sideline can help stop a thread like this from becoming too dry.

I would agree but there have been occasions when the topics of posts have clearly diverted. However your comments are relevant.

@all

People need to remember who has posted here (Baroness Miller for example) and who may be following the debate. I am sure the last thing everyone wants is for the last five months of effort to lose its credibility.

Light relief is one thing but flaming and badgering is another. certain individuals will try to divert the thread but they should be ignored.

[JackSon]

Originally Posted by icsys

I would agrre but there have been occasions when the topics of posts have clearly diverted.

I think in this case things ought to be judged on their merit, obviously there are degrees of relevance, not just individual 'channels' of interest. Pigeon holing things into discrete categories? Sounds like a horrible premise for an advertising solution, and seems mighty familiar...

Originally Posted by madslug

I have already asked, noting to her that the bt sites no longer carry any copyright statement, plus there is identical content hosted on non-bt domains.

From BT's terms and conditions...

You agree that any content, software or other copyright material we supply to you is for your own private use, and that you must not copy, change or publish the material or supply it to any other person or use it for any business purpose.

[phormwatch]

I've sent an email to our dear Emma.

Let's see if she refers to the Ts and Cs.

---------- Post added at 17:44 ---------- Previous post was at 17:43 ----------

Originally Posted by Peter N

From BT's terms and conditions...

You agree that any content, software or other copyright material we supply to you is for your own private use, and that you must not copy, change or publish the material or supply it to any other person or use it for any business purpose.

Not everyone is a BT customer.

[isf]

Originally Posted by JackSon

I don't think a user-agent of Phorm is entirely of any relevance, as the Phorm/WebWise kit isn't actually making any connection with a website. It just intercepts the connection made between the end user and website (once all the 307 dance is completed and a communication is allowed to and back from the real website), so the only user-agent to be seen will be that of the user. Convenient for them, eh?

A theory of mine after my limited understanding of the reports I must add.

It's BT who are making the google comparison and mentioning robots.txt as an opt-out for site operators, the user won't be requesting that file. As previously noted, not every site has access to the document root. If Phorm can append themselves to the user agent string, this gives web masters the ability to opt-out in a way that stands BT's comparison with googlebot.

I also see max cookies per domain is now 50 in modern browsers and browsers will delete cookies when that limit is reached. How are Phorm proposing to handle that?