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

[OF1975]

Originally Posted by mark777

It's a strange place for a 'network designer' to post.

Could anyone with posting rights there ask him to come over to CF for a discussion?

I just came back to read the thread for the first time since friday evening and have posted to iii suggesting they come over here to post.

[popper]

the comments in this story are informative and one person compares the Phorm/Advertsing companies to a ...
well ill let you read and comment on it there, as i dont think its good to bring such things into this longest informative thread...

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/0...ref=technology

heres the 3 main US news stories ragarding the FBIs interception plans.... something to consider for the longer term, given the UK always wants to follow the US in many things.


9.
April 25th,
2008
11:41 pm
The response from the ‘Paranoia Choir’ comes in the form of:
http://www.news.com/8301-13578_3-992...=TheIconoclast
"...
These are remarkable statements. The clearest reading of them points to deep packet inspection of network traffic--akin to the measures Comcast took against BitTorrent and to what Phorm in the United Kingdom has done, in terms of advertising--plus additional processing to detect and thwart any "illegal activity." (See the complete transcript here.)

"That's very troubling," said Greg Nojeim, director of the project on freedom, security, and technology at the Center for Democracy and Technology. "It could be an effort to achieve, through unknowing consent, permission to monitor communications in a way that would otherwise be prohibited by law."

Unfortunately, neither Issa nor Mueller recognized that such a plan is probably illegal. California law, for instance, says anyone who "intentionally and without the consent of all parties to a confidential communication" conducts electronic surveillance shall be imprisoned for one year. (I say "probably illegal" because their exchange didn't offer much in the way of details.)

"I think there's a substantial problem with what Mueller's proposing," said Al Gidari, a partner at the Perkins Coie law firm who represents telecommunications providers.

"He forgets the states have the power to pass more restrictive rules, and 12 of them have.

He also forgets that we live in a global world, and the rest of the world doesn't quite see eye to eye on this issue. That consent would be of dubious validity in Europe, for instance, where many of our customers reside."

..."
http://www.news.com/8301-13578_3-992...=TheIconoclast
http://www.news.com/8301-13578_3-992...=TheIconoclast
I’m sure these will provide the discerning reader with more than just a bit of ‘discordant harmonies’.
— Posted by J. M. Schneider, Chicago, IL

Originally Posted by Bonglet

Just got off the phone with vm who rang me to see what problem i had with phorm.

I explained what was happening why i didnt trust them and the guy was denying that they had undertook any trials with phorm then i pointed out that phorm had said themselves that all the 3 isps had undertook trials, then he changed story and said it only did trials on ex ntl area's (im ex-telewest) and they were fully inphormed about it before taking part.

Any ex-ntl'ers here who undertook or saw such a trial because first i have heard about it?.

further into the conversation he said if any future trials or deployment of phorm was done i would be fully inphormed i said he wouldnt need to as id be cancelling it straight away.
He also said that they have had lots of phone calls about the subject and were noteing and putting our points across to more senior positions.

The whole phone call just seemed a phone call to assure the customer that if anything happens you'll be inphormed, just wasnt reassuring enough for me sorry to say .

Someone has quoted your post over on the VM Newsgroups and Alex Brown has responded:-

Originally Posted by Alex Brown

As with many things on such forums, this is not the case. If the
original poster wants to provide some evidence - including account
details and who they spoke to - we're happy to feed this back
accordingly.


Alex

--
Alex Brown
Senior Product Manager
Product Management, Virgin Media

[Rchivist]

Originally Posted by JohnHorb

Someone has quoted your post over on the VM Newsgroups and Alex Brown has responded:-

Gosh - you mean your VM executives actually post on the VM newsgroups? We'd all have coronaries if a BT executive or even engineer posted on our support newsgroups. Support staff and customers only.

Mind you this Phorm/Webwise crisis has got the executives out of their offices engaging a bit more with customers - I've never seen this level of activity before, in terms of answering questions asked by mere mortals called paying customers. They must be really rattled.

[Bonglet]

Inform him i have already replied in a webmail to them the call details should be on my customer account if he wishes to get in touch with me or has contact details no problem.

I assure you guys why would i be lying to anyone im not phorm or anyone with something to hide, my wife was in the room with me when vm phoned.

[popper]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Alex Brown
As with many things on such forums, this is not the case. If the original poster wants to provide some evidence - including account details and who they spoke to - we're happy to feed this back
accordingly.

Alex
--
Alex Brown
Senior Product Manager
Product Management, Virgin Media

Originally Posted by JohnHorb

Someone has quoted your post over on the VM Newsgroups and Alex Brown has responded:-

Alex Brown and team has been asked to come over here before or as his boss Neil Berkett puts it....

Neil Berkett said:"In the UK, attitudes towards service providers are at something of a crossroads,"

he said. "If we can simultaneously demonstrate we're engaging with these complex issues and capture the excitement and opportunity of our services, we could emerge as the enablers of choice in an industry that is sometimes regarded as a bit sterile and remote."

currently and in this special case it appears he's just taking the "sterile and remote." stance, why is that Alex?, cant you find a few minutes to come here and Engage with your paying customers here in this CF forum.

an antiquated VM controlled usenet feed is all well and good, but most people prefer the easy and moden indipendant web based messageboard Forum that's easy to use, contribute to and index for reference, get with it Alex Brown, and come post your thoughts here directly if you dare!

[mark777]

Originally Posted by R Jones

...
Mind you this Phorm/Webwise crisis has got the executives out of their offices engaging a bit more with customers - I've never seen this level of activity before, in terms of answering questions asked by mere mortals called paying customers. They must be really rattled.

Perhaps they are getting out of their offices while they can. Some of them may only be allowed half an hour exercise per day in the near future.

---------- Post added at 15:50 ---------- Previous post was at 15:42 ----------

Originally Posted by popper

Alex Brown and team has been asked to come over here before ....

Alex @ VM

[Florence]

Originally Posted by mark777

Perhaps they are getting out of their offices while they can. Some of them may only be allowed half an hour exercise per day in the near future.

---------- Post added at 15:50 ---------- Previous post was at 15:42 ----------



Alex @ VM

Is Alex @ vm related to Alex @ phorm?

[popper]

Alex @ VM

yeah... you can understand Alex Brown and team not wanting to post officially here though, they might not want their future InPhormed posts to be intercepted and used for profit, you cant blame them can you

after all they know how such http based thorums can be intercepted being so close to the tech themselves...

[Kursk]

Steady on guys, let's not get adversarial with our ISP at least until we know whether they intend to honour the privacy of their customers and not deploy the Phorm technology.

They may yet do the decent thing and show that their customers are important to them. Subscribers are the core business after all; a good way to engage them would be to support their point of view in relation to intrusion.

No need to throw down the gauntlet in this crusade. Not yet anyway.

[vicz]

In defense of Alex Brown if you look back thru the VM and BY newsgroups he has consistently been evenhanded and professional in his posts, especially given the difficult position he finds himself in, and the often 'colourful' way some VM customers choose to express themselves. He has also spoken of his own acquaintance with Phorm in the VM labs and personal conviction that no trials have been done on live accounts. Of course he may well be getting the mushroom treatment from VM senior management but it would not be up to him to decide whether to deploy phorm nor should he have to justify its deployment should that be what VM management choose to do.

[CaptJamieHunter]

Originally Posted by vicz

In defense of Alex Brown if you look back thru the VM and BY newsgroups he has consistently been evenhanded and professional in his posts, especially given the difficult position he finds himself in, and the often 'colourful' way some VM customers choose to express themselves. He has also spoken of his own acquaintance with Phorm in the VM labs and personal conviction that no trials have been done on live accounts. Of course he may well be getting the mushroom treatment from VM senior management but it would not be up to him to decide whether to deploy phorm nor should he have to justify its deployment should that be what VM management choose to do.

Of course, if Virgin Media had actually made a public statement about Phorm rather than hoped their statement to customers would get cascaded out via forums such as CF, any VM manager sticking his head above the parapet might be looking at less of a questioning response than they are currently.

That's not Alex's fault but surely he is in a position to at least press for a public statement as he's on a front line and copping some flak. Surely he realises that as Phorm have so completely failed the HOT test (that's Honesty, Openness and Transparency), VM's association with Phorm will colour customers' perception of VM.

Straight questions, honest answers and a properly issued public statement would help a lot here.

[Valerie]

Got a reply from Which?

They agree it's a 'deeply worrying development' and think its likely they'll report on the issue again and they appreciated the info on this forum thread.

Let's hope they can look at it soon

[warescouse]

The longer VM dither on Phorm the worse their PR will get and if the announce they will roll it out it will get a hell of a lot worse. While I am certain Phorms product is illegal all the many ways Nicholas Bohm's recent letter to the home office suggests http://www.fipr.org/080423holetter.pdf there are other reasons people don't want Phorm.

One is mistrust. Mistrust in an organisation whose roots (and kits) lies in adware products involving 121 Media otherwise now known as Phorm. For years ISP's have been plagued by customers complaining about broadband problems which turn out to be not the fault of their ISP but the customer themselves having spyware, Trojans and the like. Customers then find out that the organisation behind this webwise proposed interception and profiling is a company that was possibly the reason behind a percentage of these help calls to the ISP's. It seems beyond belief that an ISP would not distance themselves from a company with this history for obvious reasons. Where is your self respect? I could go on...

Secondly, in my opinion Phorm have not been up front in some of their actions. It seems to me that they had a huge PR machine in place to regurgitate advertised blurb to people who had legitimate concerns. They seem not to directly answer questions which could put to bed certain worries and they have a politicians stance when answering difficult questions and don't answer the question (Questions are only difficult when they don't have an answer or the answer is not what they wish to say).

Thirdly, Phorm have had a long time to think about this product and we the general public have only had about ten weeks to scrape what knowledge we have so far. As new ideas are realised about the affects of Phorm directly and indirectly it becomes more and more worrying in its implications. I feel it would be wise for ISP's to ask Phorm, where is that UK legal advice Phorm claims it has (no longer the Home Office) and do what good academics should do when learning. Debate, look at all legal arguments and also consider the affect on the direct paying consumer of your services - your billing customers. You may have 95% of your customers of Day 1 VM Phorm, but you will probably lose many more over time as the Phorm business model is educated to your paying customers and they react. Customers will not trust or forgive you if you try to put this in under the horizon and they will never trust you if they are not happy when they discover the technical shenanigans that go on to make this work.

[vicz]

Originally Posted by CaptJamieHunter

<Snip>
That's not Alex's fault but surely he is in a position to at least press for a public statement as he's on a front line and copping some flak. Surely he realises that as Phorm have so completely failed the HOT test (that's Honesty, Openness and Transparency), VM's association with Phorm will colour customers' perception of VM.

Straight questions, honest answers and a properly issued public statement would help a lot here.

Yeah well strangely enough telling your senior management that they are behaving like a bunch of morons is generally not a great career move, whether it is true or not...