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

[SelfProtection]

[QUOTE=HamsterWheel;34619801]

Originally Posted by SelfProtection

Since the amount of control Shareholders have over this company is in doubt the amount the BT Execs are paid is partly relevant to this debate.

QUOTE]

How is it in doubt ? They've just had their AGM where all the resolutions were passed with at least 90% support. A tiny 3% of voters voted against adopting the remuneration committee's report. 92% were in favour.
If Florence is a BT shareholder, she is in a tiny minority who don't agree with the bosses pay. If she doesn't like it, she can always sell her shares.

More cost effective for Shareholders to try to remove said Execs & rebuild a decent company so the Shares invested provide a decent dividend & not a constant loss for the BT shareholders.

I wouldn't sell at a loss just because the company is being badly managed!

I'm leaving it there, back to the proper debate.

[HamsterWheel]

[QUOTE=SelfProtection;34619806]

Originally Posted by HamsterWheel

More cost effective for Shareholders to try to remove said Execs & rebuild a decent company so the Shares invested provide a decent dividend & not a constant loss for the BT shareholders.

I wouldn't sell at a loss just because the company is being badly managed!

Sorry to repeat myself, but the huge votes in favour of all the AGM resolutions PROVE that the vast majority of shareholders are happy with the management team.

[Florence]

[QUOTE=SelfProtection;34619806]

Originally Posted by HamsterWheel

More cost effective for Shareholders to try to remove said Execs & rebuild a decent company so the Shares invested provide a decent dividend & not a constant loss for the BT shareholders.

I wouldn't sell at a loss just because the company is being badly managed!

Same here the shares cost more than they are worth now.

Originally Posted by HamsterWheel

Sorry to repeat myself, but the huge votes in favour of all the AGM resolutions PROVE that the vast majority of shareholders are happy with the management team.

With the large scale buyin of shares BT were doing towards the AGM what would you expect plus there are a large number of shareholders who just allow the chair to vote for them. I was guilty once of this but never again since BT have shown me I cannot trust them I will be closely looking at everything and will be more vocal. I also think BT shareholders need to be more active sadly many are retired staff who had shares as part of the payoff.


But Hammy still waiting for replies instead of homing in on the shareholder part what about answers to the Phorm related part of my post.

[Deko]

Cough..... back on track now.

Has Alex had an update from the police on the file that was submitted to them ?

[HamsterWheel]

Florence - I refer you to my first reponses.
I'll not waste time defending pre-launch guesses about Phorm. Much better to wait until it actually launches then you can have a pop about what aspects you still have a problem with.
Guesses (however inphormed) about EXACTLY how Phorm will work down to the tiniest bit of code are not worth debating until they are shown to be part of the finished product.

[Rchivist]

Originally Posted by tarka

I think that could well be classed as click fraud. Probably best not to go any further down that route.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_fraud

Fine, after all we have to obey the law!!!

I withdraw the suggestion.

[Florence]

The most important part of all this is if I don't opt-in will I go through the profiler it is a smiple yes or no?

[rryles]

Originally Posted by Deko

Has Alex had an update from the police on the file that was submitted to them ?

I'm sure if he had, he would be quick to post it here. Do we have any idea of the expected timescale for this or is just a case of wait and see?

---------- Post added at 14:59 ---------- Previous post was at 14:58 ----------

Another Reg first:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08..._phorm_letter/

[phpscott]

If BT and Phorm had been more forth coming with information and not PR spin and standard cut and paste responses then a lot of this 'speculation' wouldn't be around.
Since the latest trail has been on hold since early this year, and mixed messages about when it will actually occur, what more can we do but take the evidence that we have and go with it. BT and Phorm don't seem to want to clear any 'speculation' up.

[HamsterWheel]

Originally Posted by Florence

The most important part of all this is if I don't opt-in will I go through the profiler it is a smiple yes or no?

I'm sure that info will be disclosed before launch. You will then be able to make an inphormed decision on whether to opt in.

My suspicion is that is the reason for the delay, so once Phorm becomes wholly opt-in you lot will have nothing to complain about on the privacy side as individuals (I accept that the argument will then move on to the copyright one, but I think this is very weak).

---------- Post added at 15:01 ---------- Previous post was at 15:00 ----------

Originally Posted by phpscott

If BT and Phorm had been more forth coming with information and not PR spin and standard cut and paste responses then a lot of this 'speculation' wouldn't be around.
Since the latest trail has been on hold since early this year, and mixed messages about when it will actually occur, what more can we do but take the evidence that we have and go with it. BT and Phorm don't seem to want to clear any 'speculation' up.

You could adopt the old "wait and see" approach and stop spending half your lives worrying about it ?

[Florence]

Originally Posted by HamsterWheel

I'm sure that info will be disclosed before launch. You will then be able to make an inphormed decision on whether to opt in.

My suspicion is that is the reason for the delay, so once Phorm becomes wholly opt-in you lot will have nothing to complain about on the privacy side as individuals (I accept that the argument will then move on to the copyright one, but I think this is very weak).

---------- Post added at 15:01 ---------- Previous post was at 15:00 ----------



You could adopt the old "wait and see" approach and stop spending half your lives worrying about it ?

As for the copyright one I will buy ssl and move my websites to https which phorm will not be allowed to intercept.

Will Phorm be using its own ID or hijacking Googles?

[HamsterWheel]

Originally Posted by Florence

As for the copyright one I will buy ssl and move my websites to https which phorm will not be allowed to intercept.

there you go then, nothing to worry about.

[rryles]

Reposting just in case it got lost at the end of my post.

Significant Phorm Related article on the Register:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08..._phorm_letter/

[Rchivist]

Originally Posted by icsys

News stories continue to appear through the 'lesser' news channels.
Is Phorm getting to BT?

Market analyst Gartner even suggests that telco's should gain revenue from advertising and application services based on what they know about their customers.
Delcroix, a Gartner research vice-president, said the issue of customer profiling was overblown. "Telcos do not know as much about their customers as Google or FaceBook know about theirs," he said. Gartner called for regulators to allow telcos to compete on level terms with search and social network firms.

The thing is, BT already have this option. They have a partnership (often forgotten) with Yahoo!. Many years ago, when ISP's were mere conduits of data, Compuserve had slidden out of site, and AOL was offering dumbed down internet for the masses, BT decided to partner with Yahoo and give all its customers a Yahoo! home page, and Yahoo! webmail. BT ISP became an AOL clone. Content was the buzzword. Delivering targetted customisable content to your customers, not just connectivity. We moaned at the time, but we got used to it, and learned to use it when it was useful, and get our information and services where we wanted to - sometimes via the Yahoo! portal, sometimes just via the wild wild web.

We got all or most of the ancillary Yahoo! services like photo pages, and Launchcast internet radio, and Yahoo Groups, and the great bonus (?) of targetted advertising channels. All quite tacky, but perfectly legal, and if you didn't like it you could always use Firefox, a hosts file, Adblock, and block most (if not all) the ads.

Then BT also decided a few years later to get back into exploiting its own brand identity and after pushing the ISP customers to the off to the edge of the BT group identity, (partly because of competition regulations) dragged us back into the centre of BT Group again, giving us "aligned" billing all dealt with via bt.com, and a bt.com login to manage our phone lines and even our now rebranded yet again BT Broadband internet accounts and our BT Vision accounts, and our BT Anywhere mobile accounts - you name it - BT sold itand it all happened on bt.com. With the bt.com site, came a whole new list of ad partnerships, and of course much more cookie placing.

Again - a perfectly legal form of behavioural targetting of BT's own customers when they as individuals had logged in with a username and password to a BT web page. The sort of thing the quote above refers to..

Not, note, when we were "on the internet" but only when we chose to login to either a BTYahoo! or www.bt.com site.
Not confusing every individual on the home network, with the same IP address, but behind an password protected login page - each individual having their own login.

I may not have "liked" this but it was easy to avoid and it was legal and worked well. And presumably earned BT Retail money.

But then they got greedy. They wanted not just to monitor what I did while using the Yahoo Home page, but what I did while online no matter where I was. Hence the use of DPI, the man in the middle technology.

Hence the current mess they are in.

[phormwatch]

You mean this one:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08..._phorm_letter/