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

[icsys]

Originally Posted by OF1975

Alexander, sorry to ask this as I know you are very busy with stuff you have to get done for Uni etc but have you heard anything back from that person you spoke to at the FT about the jump in the Phorm share price?

Hopefully it will be established that Phorm deliberately misrepresented the potential value of the company by stating they had signed a deal with VM, (who have now made it clear that they never signed any contract to use Webwise). Effectively conning the stock market and share buyers into believing that they had an extremely valuable contract with a huge company.

Phorm could be in serious trouble, their shares could be suspended and they could face fines and possible prison sentences for any individual who is proven to have been involved in what is effectively fraud.

Maybe this current price surge is related? Announcement of a potential non-deal?

It was also suggested on the BT forums that an investigation into this matter is already underway but there is no confirmation of this from any source.

[roadrunner69]

VM still backing off

http://www.techradar.com/news/intern...osition-365327

http://www.virginmedia.com/customers/webwise.php

[Florence]

See they have the news of ISPreviews poll this link takes you to the results and yes the quoted part is the exact question asked and the selected responses. Brettpoos is barking up the wrong tree trying to say it is how you asked the question.. It is phorm and the ISPs that hide the questions behind offers.

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/news/EkEpVlpupVMXbvZieH.html

[lucevans]

Originally Posted by Florence

See they have the news of ISPreviews poll this link takes you to the results and yes the quoted part is the exact question asked and the selected responses. Brettpoos is barking up the wrong tree trying to say it is how you asked the question.. It is phorm and the ISPs that hide the questions behind offers.

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/news/EkEpVlpupVMXbvZieH.html

Q. "Would you leave your ISP if they adopted Phorm?"

- No - 2.3%

That would be Kent's "vast majority of users", then?

[Phormic Acid]

Originally Posted by Florence

Brettpoos is barking up the wrong tree trying to say it is how you asked the question.

I would say that brettypoos is right. It is how you ask the questions. Unfortunately… there are some who warn that you can’t build a new product using surveys. From Identity - should be more about greed than fear:

I shared a few beers with a friend of mine who works at Saatchi here in London and his view is that the data you get from surveys is “complete tosh� - in his opinion, the only way to get good data is to run creative workshops in which you get people to design a product or service they might buy.

I’m sure that Webwise is consistent with the questions that Phorm had members of the public answer. But now, when presented with the final product, we’re resoundingly saying that it’s not something we want. The blog entry also goes to the point that’s been raised before: There’s nothing in it for us. Where’s the good free stuff, the even cheaper broadband or the cold, hard cash?

[Dephormation]

More copyrights fun. Its not just BT who are in deep doodah. Phorm could be in trouble too if copyright is upheld;

24 Secondary infringement: providing means for making infringing copies
(1) Copyright in a work is infringed by a person who, without the licence of the copyright owner�
(a) makes,
(b) imports into the United Kingdom,
(c) possesses in the course of a business, or
(d) sells or lets for hire, or offers or exposes for sale or hire,
an article specifically designed or adapted for making copies of that work, knowing or having reason to believe that it is to be used to make infringing copies.
(2) Copyright in a work is infringed by a person who without the licence of the copyright owner transmits the work by means of a telecommunications system (otherwise than by broadcasting or inclusion in a cable programme service), knowing or having reason to believe that infringing copies of the work will be made by means of the reception of the transmission in the United Kingdom or elsewhere.

[BenMcr]

Can I just point out on this that ISPreview is wrong about Virgin changing its T&Cs to allow Phorm

The part they have quoted (G2) is in the original T&Cs issued in Feb 2007.

Web archive link http://web.archive.org/web/200702141...ble/terms.html (archived on 14/02/2007)

[r1ch]

TOR itself might not be a great solution to get around Phorm, but it did get me thinking about some other possibilities... Phorm's ability to match advertising to content is already pretty limited but we could further reduce its effectiveness by create a plugin that:

Screws up profiling with dummy requests
- The more dummy requests are sent out, the more the profiling is polluted and the less use it becomes
Creates huge numbers of Phorm user ids for each user
- Given that Phorm can't store the user IP address they can't know how many user ids a user has. This could seriously damage the efficiency (and scalability) of their system and, of course, it reduces the effectiveness of the profiling. In the extreme, we could even create a new Phorm id for each request.
Shares user ids between users
- The wider a user id is shared the more worthless it becomes
Blocks any OIX adverts
- The less hits the ads receive the less their clients will be willing to pay.
At the end of the day, the point of Phorm is to make money. If we can do anything to make it more expensive for them to do business and reduce their income then we can increase our chances of getting rid of them.

I'm locked into a BT contract for a while longer (unless I can argue my way out due to the T&C changes) so I might give it a go.

[Bonglet]

Originally Posted by BenMcr

Can I just point out on this that ISPreview is wrong about Virgin changing its T&Cs to allow Phorm

The part they have quoted (G2) is in the original T&Cs issued in Feb 2007.

Web archive link http://web.archive.org/web/200702141...ble/terms.html (archived on 14/02/2007)

Thats so true BenMcr, thing is vm put this in when they rebranded and would have been used like ive said all along to test out phorm (in either stealth capabilites, network impact report, testing the profiler or just even the redirect part of the kit) and hope they were covered incase of a big spotted turd being seen in public.

[Dephormation]

Originally Posted by r1ch

I'm locked into a BT contract for a while longer (unless I can argue my way out due to the T&C changes) so I might give it a go.

Be careful. If Phorm really is legal (and like hell it is) those acts could be treated as a computer crime (misuse, denial of service etc).

You are better serving notice on BT immediately and walking away from your contract, on the grounds that your service has been significantly changed from that which you contracted to purchase (by changes to T&C, or the operation of a system which you consider is a risk to operate).

Its easy to do, click here.

Ultimately, I guess what price your privacy, safety and security?

Its cost me a few quid, but I don't care. VM aren't trustworthy any more, and the quality of my net connection is too important.

Pete.

[Cumulus]

Originally Posted by oblonsky

Exactly. Phorm cannot know if the user has logged on.

---------- Post added at 06:54 ---------- Previous post was at 06:45 ----------




They haven't explained how it will work because it cannot work. Phorm have indicated that they will password authentication, which can be taken to mean Basic Authentication (RFCs 1945 & 2616) and Digest (RFCs 2069 & 2617).

But so many websites now use bespoke cookie-based authentication mechanisms that it will be a challenge to say the least to work out and ignore each of these.

---------- Post added at 07:00 ---------- Previous post was at 06:54 ----------

Yes, I agree with the fact they are bespoke makes it very difficult to identify authenticated sessions. Webmasters can currently can use any method that *they* regard as appropriate for their security/privacy requirements as there is no commonly-accepted standard.

And we shouldn't forget other methods webmasters use to protect content such as difficult-to-guess urls (yeuchh!), IP address deny/allow etc. Deep packet inspection techniques ride roughshod over either of these attempts by webmasters to ensure the security of their data, and Webwise/OIX opt-out solutions using robots.txt are clearly inappropriate for either of these, even if opt-out was acceptable in the first place.

Originally Posted by oblonsky

It is believed that JavaScript can get around intercept laws e.g. Googlemail (even though gmail servers are based abroad so not covered by UK intercept laws). The script reads the page after it has been "opened" by the user therefore is not intercept but a consent for someone to come to your house and watch you opening your mail.

HOWEVER because the JavaScript was most likely injected at the ISP level then there would then still be some level of intercept involved to achieve that.

Yes you are correct, there must have been some interception to add the Javascript. Incidentally, the Javascript injection in the PageSense system was relatively minor and consisted of not much more than a tag pointing to the rest of the Javascript used for page scanning etc. The bulk of the Javascript was then downloaded from a webserver, typically from one or both of the sysip.net domains (ntp. and/or dns. - I can't remember right now).

[Phormic Acid]

Originally Posted by BenMcr

Can I just point out on this that ISPreview is wrong about Virgin changing its T&Cs to allow Phorm

The part they have quoted (G2) is in the original T&Cs issued in Feb 2007.

Shh... don’t spoil a good story. Section G has come from section 8 of ntl’s old Terms & Conditions. What was previously 8.3.i now appears as G.2.

It appears to me that it was intended to cover the purchase and use of services provided directly by ntl, and was never written with Phorm in mind. But, it does mean that when, presented with the question of Phorm, Virgin Media’s lawyers would have been able to say that Virgin Media were probably covered already.

[CWH]

In theory, those changes in T &C's could well be directly connected to Phorm. They, Phorm, were in existence then, and we don't know when the initial talks started between Phorm and any possible partners.

Colin

[Florence]

The fact that Phorm changed cookies would have resulted in problems on ISPr where I have admin since they use cookies to allow people to be auto signed in.

[BenMcr]

Originally Posted by CWH

In theory, those changes in T &C's could well be directly connected to Phorm. They, Phorm, were in existence then, and we don't know when the initial talks started between Phorm and any possible partners.

Colin

The particular clause we are talking about was added to ntl's terms in May 2005

http://web.archive.org/web/200511302...e/termschanges