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

[TheBruce1]

Originally Posted by popper

You're not going to believe this, but the APWG:
http://www.antiphishing.org/index.html
Has allowed Phorm to join their ranks, as you can see here:

Unbelievable.

What is Phishing and Pharming?
Phishing attacks use both social engineering and technical subterfuge to steal consumers' personal identity data and financial account credentials. Social-engineering schemes use 'spoofed' e-mails to lead consumers to counterfeit websites designed to trick recipients into divulging financial data such as credit card numbers, account usernames, passwords and social security numbers. Hijacking brand names of banks, e-retailers and credit card companies, phishers often convince recipients to respond. Technical subterfuge schemes plant crimeware onto PCs to steal credentials directly, often using Trojan keylogger spyware. Pharming crimeware misdirects users to fraudulent sites or proxy servers, typically through DNS hijacking or poisoning.
http://www.antiphishing.org/index.html

Hello, sound like phorm to me, how can they accept phorm knowing what they where before, looks like phorm trying to gain respectability within the anti-Phishing community. Kaspersky Lab is one of APWG partners, they(Kaspersky)have already said they will detect and remove the OIX.net cookie, so i wonder how this will sit with Kaspersky.

[Kursk]

Originally Posted by Wild Oscar

Good post Kursk! .. and I think we've all been 'distracted' by this 80/20 Thinking/Privacy International merry-go-round for way too long!! .. it's wasted energy in my view, and not where the real battle lies!
Hounding Simon at every turn and trying to trip him up with clever word play is not getting us anywhere ..

Thanks Wild Oscar . Simon is nobody's fool and he has a job to do. Putting our Plan Into Action (or PIA for short ) is more important to us than the other PIA that Simon is working on.

Originally Posted by SMHarman

Yet Phorm wants to be on by default.

You can't beat them for bare-faced cheek eh?!!

[Rchivist]

Originally Posted by Bobcat

I've just been looking at a completely OT thread over on BT forums and noticed that folk on there were mentioning the proposed introduction of Phorm/Webwise as part of their disatisfaction with their service.
The word is obviously spreading at last to users of other forums.

Could you give a url for that please - I'd like to pop over. BT have been trying to keep Webwise out of the other forums and moderating pretty heavy handedly to do it. So I'd like to have a look before they can the posts.

[BadPhormula]

Originally Posted by SMHarman

Hmmm, MS IE7 has antiphishing turned off by default. Lets stop and think about this for a moment. Why?

Well because it means that you are sending aspects (not even all) of your data stream to MS to check for Phishing and they did not want the world sending their data streams there without the world knowing they were doing it. The sort of class action that could even manage to cripple MS.

Yet Phorm wants to be on by default.

Hold on I think everyone is missing the Elephant in the room here. Phormscum couldn't give a damn about anti-phishing being on by default... this is classic conman sleight of hand by K*nt Etrugrul... what K*nt wants on by default is his profiling spyware which happens to have this totally irrelevant redundant phishing scam switched on in parallel.

Btw this is how easy it is to turn a proper phishing feature on, the one in IE7

http://www.microsoft.com/protect/pro...ingfilter.mspx

[Florence]

Originally Posted by BadPhormula

Hold on I think everyone is missing the Elephant in the room here. Phormscum couldn't give a damn about anti-phishing being on by default... this is classic conman sleight of hand by K*nt Etrugrul... what K*nt wants on by default is his profiling spyware which happens to have this totally irrelevant redundant phishing scam switched on in parallel.

Btw this is how easy it is to turn a proper phishing feature on, the one in IE7

http://www.microsoft.com/protect/pro...ingfilter.mspx

Also a lot safer no Iframe that can drop behind and hide malicous downloads unlike phorm

[SMHarman]

Originally Posted by Paul Delaney

Being involved with various trade unions in my career there are only 2 sides yours and the opposition.

Those sides are rarely black and white and usually two similar shades of grey.

Originally Posted by Kursk

Write to your MP
Write to your ISP: Virgin Media; BT; TalkTalk
Write to your EU representative
Sign the Downing Street petition
Serve a section 11 Data Protection Notice on your ISP
Watch this
Read this
Go here for a summary
BT, Virgin Media and Talk Talk ISP addresses
Sample letters

Spread the word on the web and ask everyone you know to do the same.

And if you are lurking, please sign up and get stuck in!

When I saw your first list I though 'Good post'. Then I saw this one. Great post Kursk!

---------- Post added at 09:33 ---------- Previous post was at 09:28 ----------

Originally Posted by popper

hmmm
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05...ding/comments/
"
Phorm allowed into the 'Anti-Phishing Working Group'

By phormwatch
Posted Saturday 3rd May 2008 19:59 GMT
You're not going to believe this, but the APWG:
http://www.antiphishing.org/index.html
Has allowed Phorm to join their ranks, as you can see here:

http://www.antiphishing.org/sponsors.html
I suggest people write to the APWG and 'inphorm' them about Phorms background and illegal activities:
http://www.antiphishing.org/contactus.html
"

Looks like Phorm has "Sponsoring Vendor membership"

Eligible technology and solution provider organizations may join the APWG as Sponsoring Vendor members, with unlimited membership for employee and contractors. This includes access to the APWG Work Site and working sub-groups, subscription to the APWG news and discussion newslist, eligibility to participate in APWG meetings and eligibility to access the Phishing Repository. Sponsoring Vendors receive a series of marketing/sponsorship benefits, including being listed as sponsoring vendors on the Anti-Phishing Working Group public website, posting whitepapers on the public website, posting corporate and solution profiles on the public website.

And they've paid $7500 for it. When and if we can get a proper defensive solution in place to combat Phorm perhaps we should distribute it and join APWG - A "Badphorm joins APWG" headline would be nice eh? If only a solution for Phorm being "in the middle with our ISP" was that easy...

Hank

---------- Post added at 09:37 ---------- Previous post was at 09:33 ----------

Originally Posted by R Jones

Could you give a url for that please - I'd like to pop over. BT have been trying to keep Webwise out of the other forums and moderating pretty heavy handedly to do it. So I'd like to have a look before they can the posts.

Could have sworn you were there already RJ! But I guess putting the link here does no harm, none at all, whatsoever!!!

http://beta.bt.com/bta/forums/thread...ID=19874#19874

Hank

---------- Post added at 09:48 ---------- Previous post was at 09:37 ----------

I mentioned on Saturday that I'd had a letter from the Earl of Northesk. I did not ask if I could publish so I'll just paraphrase.

I have to say, the man is a noble man (no pun intended) - In my letter I did say that I appreciated he is not an MP, and that means he has no secretaries to answer the emails and postal communications he receives. Yet, from thousands of miles away he apologises for the delay and does indeed respond in detail.

He's certainly going to be pursuing the challenges which Phorm and the Government's failure to tackle the issues raised presents.

He is awaiting responses to two new questions he asked the Government as "QfWA" (Questions for Written Answers).

He's provided me with links to the best ways to check for these Qs & As, so when I get home later in the week I'll get them posted if anyone wants them.

Have to agree with some of the other posters here in the last 36 hours. The argument needs to be taken up via MPs etc and not with Simon Davies. Let's focus on them because parliament is where the power is...

Alexander: I read (I think in a paper from you) that we would follow up with Parliamentary Omburdsman complaints - when does that start, any detail on process for that - what has to be done/exhausted first?

Hank

[SelfProtection]

Originally Posted by Kursk

Write to your MP
Write to your ISP: Virgin Media; BT; TalkTalk
Write to your EU representative
Sign the Downing Street petition
Serve a section 11 Data Protection Notice on your ISP
Watch this
Read this
Go here for a summary
BT, Virgin Media and Talk Talk ISP addresses
Sample letters

Spread the word on the web and ask everyone you know to do the same.

And if you are lurking, please sign up and get stuck in!

Might also be worth lobbying through your Local Law Enforcement Structure, the more avenues explored the more the pressure increases!

http://www.apa.police.uk/apa
http://www.apa.police.uk/APA/About+Police+Authorities/

[Frank Rizzo]

(edited by Frank Rizzo to be more critical of 80/20 rather than personal of Simon)

80/20 Thinking: You are tainted; you are in bed with the enemy. Your whole task is to make Phorm work. Rather than just polish the turd your task is to make the turd edible for the people and this is what I do not like and what you do not seem to understand.

The whole PIA issue is going to be a whitewash pure and simple. It is not an independent public enquiry such as after a train crash, or a report on airport expansion: it is a paid for assessment where Phorm will have influence on what the PIA report will say.

Can 80/20 say that the report will be released as-is and never be seen by Phorm in draft form? Will your report go straight from your desk to the general public? Will Phorm get to change bits they do not like?

This is the whole point of me banging on about this. If Phorm pay the piper they call the tune. If they don't like the tune they get it changed and the public will not get to hear the bum notes.

No one should stand up for 80/20 just because of what some of the representatives have done in the past as Privacy International. 80/20 is tainted. Representatives of 80/20 are a modern day Neville Chamberlain.

If you are against Phorm full stop you have stop those who are working on a solution to appease the public.

[Rchivist]

Originally Posted by Hank

some snips

---------- Post added at 09:37 ---------- Previous post was at 09:33 ----------



Could have sworn you were there already RJ! But I guess putting the link here does no harm, none at all, whatsoever!!!

http://beta.bt.com/bta/forums/thread...ID=19874#19874

Hank

---------- Post added at 09:48 ---------- Previous post was at 09:37 ----------

I mentioned on Saturday that I'd had a letter from the Earl of Northesk. I did not ask if I could publish so I'll just paraphrase.

I have to say, the man is a noble man (no pun intended) - In my letter I did say that I appreciated he is not an MP, and that means he has no secretaries to answer the emails and postal communications he receives. Yet, from thousands of miles away he apologises for the delay and does indeed respond in detail.

He's certainly going to be pursuing the challenges which Phorm and the Government's failure to tackle the issues raised presents.

He is awaiting responses to two new questions he asked the Government as "QfWA" (Questions for Written Answers).

He's provided me with links to the best ways to check for these Qs & As, so when I get home later in the week I'll get them posted if anyone wants them.

Hank

Thanks Hank - I am in fact already there, one of the few still active in fact. The forum you mentioned is the ONLY BT Beta forum that is allowed to discuss Webwise But as the BT Beta forums are the only ones that the mass of BT customers are likely to see, its important to keep the one that does remain, genuinely active, as otherwise it drops down off the front page of the General Broadband Support thread list. A search in BT Beta forums on "Webwise" or "Phorm" shows several mentions around the BT Beta forums but every thread it comes up on, gets locked, and only one survives. Because of this most active posters have given up and migrated over here or to BadPhorm - but sadly that means they are preaching to the converted. Personally I'd like to see all the BT customers mirroring what they post here over on the BT threads. In fact it wouldn't do any harm to pop up discreetly all over the Beta forum support groups and ask innocent questions about Webwise, with a mention of a few key links. That way OTHER BT customers might be alerted. It needs people who aren't recognised by the forum mods to just crawl around and make one post in say two forums, starting new threads, without putting Webwise or Phorm in the title, (no need to make it too easy for the mods to spot) with links to somehwere like http://www.inphormationdesk.org/attributions.htm
and the three threads I mentioned below
http://www.beta.bt.com/bta/forums/th...=3152&tstart=0
http://www.beta.bt.com/bta/forums/th...art=0&tstart=0
http://www.beta.bt.com/bta/forums/th...=3152&tstart=0

- and then quietly retire. Sure, the mods will eventually spot the thread and lock it, but each time more "ordinary" support customers can be informed.

I don't want to do that myself, or the mods will ban me - I think they already have me in their sights and I'm being very careful to keep the rules while trying to keep the pot boiling in ways they can't hammer me for.

They started a Webwise Q&A thread, about the technical trials
http://www.beta.bt.com/bta/forums/th...art=0&tstart=0
where one of their managers was supposed to answer questions but that got a bit too hot for them to handle and the manager, Adam Liversage simply stopped answering questions and then a little while later the thread was locked. They then told us the answers were going on the official Q&A (hosted on non-BT Fasthosts servers on the bt.webwise.com site !!!) They have now mirrored the FAQ at my inistence, on their main servers, so people who have bt.webwise.com blocked, can still read the FAQ.

These threads are well worth a read, especially the latter pages on the Q&Q thread, just to get a feel for the intense anger.

Maybe it is the first post that embarrasses them, the one that announces the start date of the trials, as mid-March (and that the threadincludes discussion of earlier rumours, started by BT staff themselves, that the trials had already started (which in a way they had, two years earlier but that wasn't what they meant!). Anyway those trials haven't yet got on the road, I think wheels are being reshaped, and the engine is still on the workbench, and the seats aren't ready yet (they were going to have the seats facing backwards with the steering wheel in another vehicle but someone told them that was illegal so they are redesigning/retrophitting).

You guys who are VM customers are in a slightly different position to us over at BT. You're trying to stop something happening that hasn't happened yet. Over on BT we already know we have been lied to, illegally intercepted, and that our ISP is frantically backtracking, and manouevering behind the scenes while trying to maintain a smooth PR exterior (and failing). And they have already broken the law, and are trying to do the same thing again while telling us its good for us. The hypocrisy, doublethink, newspeak and panic are quite clearly visible. But even now, I reckon most of BT's 3 million customers don't know what is going on, and if BT get away with it, will be conned into accepting Kent Ertugruls illegal interception of their browsing, and think he is doing them a favour. And web content all over the world will be sucked into his money making machine without anyone's consent having been sought or obtained.


On your second point re. Parliament
The links I have for following this are:
Early Day Motion Don Foster et all
http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDe...52&SESSION=891

Lord Northesk questions
http://www.publications.parliament.u..._2140_wad.html
with the Phorm one at
http://www.publications.parliament.u...08042112001130

and the house of Lords Science and Technology Committee membership here
http://www.parliament.uk/parliamenta...ct_members.cfm

[HaveToBeAnon]

Guys,
Just a quick word of thanks from a BT employee, Broadband user and shareholder. Rest assured that the vast majority of BT employees are also very aggreived by this. It came as a complete shock to us, just as it did for you. Its a real puzzle why we are continuing with it - it strongly stinks of corruption, although I have no evidence whatsoever, it just 'feels' odd.

Also dont be too hard on any call centre folks who give you mis-information. Its pretty certain they are in the dark as much as anyone.

Good luck with the fight - and don't forget you have allies in all sorts of unexpected places.

Anon. (For obvious reasons)

[manxminx]

Originally Posted by BadPhormula

I got shot down when I even mentioned the consiracy to profile everyone as supported by the EVIDENCE here!

http://www.badphorm.co.uk/e107_plugi...topic.php?5080

As I've said more than once (but keep getting ignored) Richard Clayton said the Phorm technology could become part of the "Critical National Infrastructure" (CNI).

It is a fact that the CNI is partly run by MI5

And again I ask people to consider, who would benefit most from the interception and scanning of the contents of UK internet data streams?

The answer, of course, is MI5.

This is NOT 'tin hat' stuff, to be joked about and laughed off. We live in a surveillance society - that's a fact!

Ali.

[vicz]

Originally Posted by BadPhormula

Hold on I think everyone is missing the Elephant in the room here. Phormscum couldn't give a damn about anti-phishing being on by default... this is classic conman sleight of hand by K*nt Etrugrul... what K*nt wants on by default is his profiling spyware which happens to have this totally irrelevant redundant phishing scam switched on in parallel.

On the negative side, this is potentially a loophole re RIPA, it can be argued that providing an anti-phishing service is a legitimate exception, in the same way that eg running an anti-spam service is.

On the other hand, they may just be looking for something to make opting-in seem more attractive to the great unwashed.

[piggy]

Originally Posted by manxminx

As I've said more than once (but keep getting ignored) Richard Clayton said the Phorm technology could become part of the "Critical National Infrastructure" (CNI).

It is a fact that the CNI is partly run by MI5

And again I ask people to consider, who would benefit most from the interception and scanning of the contents of UK internet data streams?

The answer, of course, is MI5.

This is NOT 'tin hat' stuff, to be joked about and laughed off. We live in a surveillance society - that's a fact!

Ali.

and that is why it will happen....the isp makes money the government has the finger on the pulse who cares about customers!! a win win for the policy makers.

[vicz]

Originally Posted by manxminx

And again I ask people to consider, who would benefit most from the interception and scanning of the contents of UK internet data streams?

The answer, of course, is MI5.

This is NOT 'tin hat' stuff, to be joked about and laughed off. We live in a surveillance society - that's a fact!

Ali.

This would concern me far less than being profiled in order to line the pockets of spyware **** and incompetent ailing ISPs.

There is a separate debate to be had about individual freedoms v national security. In fact MI5 or whoever wouldn't need something as sophisticated as phorm to spy on your data stream.