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

[G UK]

Coming up to 10000 posts as well!!!

[mark777]

Originally Posted by Damien

Is there are more information about Phorm and Virgin Media? What about this opt-out?

Damien, thanks for the post and asking. VM appear to be very quiet, the policy they have adopted for months.

5 or 6 weeks ago there were rumours that VM were going to drop phorm (Guardian and The Register), but my honest feeling is that VM have been a lot smarter then BT over this. I suspect VM started those rumours, and are just creating a breathing space for themselves.

It's bought them several pressure free weeks. They are, just like the government, just waiting to see what happens.


Opt-out is anybodies guess. Everything should be opt-in (according to the ICO). Given the various regulatory bodies attitude on this, opt-in may mean not-noticed.

We hope the EU may have other ideas.

EDIT : Make sure 10,000 is a gert great ad for the demo. Alex should have the honour.

If not, do this link.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7299875.stm

[Frank Rizzo]

He's usually up at this hour. Like Churchill - can get by on 4hrs sleep.

---

Here's a good posting today to counteract the PR drivel which has popped up in various places

Smelling The Almonds Or Will ISPs Take The Phorm Cyanide Pill

My colleagues Dan Taylor, Jen Simpson and I just took a briefing with Kent Ertugrul, the CEO of Phorm

The way the system is set up (forcible inspection of HTTP traffic, cookie forging) seems a lot like a wiretap to me

All of this leads me to conclude that ISPs who adopt Phorm would be putting a cyanide capsule in their mouths. The worst-case scenario is suicide-by-public-relations.

[OldBear]

Originally Posted by Frank Rizzo

<snip>
Smelling The Almonds Or Will ISPs Take The Phorm Cyanide Pill

That's an excellent article, Frank; great find.

Must really hack Kent off when he thinks a meeting with someone will mean a good write up and then the guy goes away and tears Phorm to shreds in his finished article instead.

OB

btw.

Alex should have the honour.

Agreed, post 10,000 should be Alex's.

[warescouse]

Originally Posted by Frank Rizzo

He's usually up at this hour. Like Churchill - can get by on 4hrs sleep.

---

Here's a good posting today to counteract the PR drivel which has popped up in various places

Smelling The Almonds Or Will ISPs Take The Phorm Cyanide Pill

Good article but what always confused me is comments such as “once consumers understand our system and its benefits, they will like it.� that Phorm regurgitates. Like what?????? What planet is Kent on?

I think I am a fair minded guy but I really struggle to see even a single benefit compared to what I have already. Forgetting for one moment all Phorms sins (and their are lots of them IMHO)

Targeted Adverts - yes we all love them don't we? That's why I make the coffee while the football is on and come back to watch the adverts. NOT......
I would rather save my bandwidth!

Anti Phishing toolbar. - Sorry I have that protection already and I didn't like what I saw of 121Medias last toolbar!

err I think that is about it.

That should bring it to 9995 :-)

[popper]

regarding the trials lets not forget Chris M's Jun 13, 2008 8:50 PM betaBT post

they were expecting to run an 8 months large scale trial, thats a very long time just to see if it scales well.

you might be forgiven for thinking it could be just long enough to try and recoop their investment in the hardware and related costs from the advertisers profits before it got pulled...

and anyone care to run the No. of potential RIPA violations extrapolated from the figures we already know ,never mind the other laws, broken copyright might be another good one to estimate

i hope he kept a copy of that T&C (one more A4 printout for the court documents some day),as true to Phorm, its now missing on that link.

http://www.beta.bt.com/bta/forums/me...ID=26542#26542
"I hadn't/haven't been invited to take part but, out of curiosity, I thought I'd have a look and upon reading the T&Cs of: https://www2.formwize.com/run/survey3.cfm?ID=1081, I noticed under the heading: "Service Schedule" this line:
* The duration of the next generation speed trial is at our sole discretion but is initially scheduled to run from February 2008 to October 2008.
....
"

[Phormic Acid]

Originally Posted by pseudonym

If I was designing a MITM system, I'd be very tempted to capture a hash of the user's cookie whenever they are updated for those sites, that way I'd have a good chance of IDing them next time they visit the site from their initial request just by comparing the cookie hash.

That certainly has potential. However, I think it would be very tricky to apply it as a general technique to all websites. Cookies can be set by JavaScript (and Java), so you can’t rely on the Set-Cookie headers from the server alone. If you were to look at the Cookie headers sent by the browser, you won’t have information on the path, domain or, most importantly, the expiry time.

If you’re not going to store raw information, but only one-way hash values, even using Set-Cookie headers has limitations.

• Cookies are assigned not just to a particular domain, but to a particular path within each domain. I don’t usually allow cookies to be set, but I’ve gone around trying to pick up a representative sample. They all had path=/. So, in practice, you might be able to recognise the same user accessing any page of a website, using the cookie hash for any other page.
• Cookies have an expiry time. If you wanted to recognise the same user using both the same browsing session and a different one, you would need to create two different hash values – one containing all cookies and one containing only long-lived cookies. The occasional cookie with an expiry time in the very near future could be treated the same as a session cookie.
• Cookies for a domain can be set by more than one website. For example, site1.example.com and site2.example.com can both set cookies for the same domain of .example.com. So, site1.example.com could return cookies set by site2.example.com, and vice versa.

You could try to hash the cookie header sent with the request for the final object within a page that’s stored within the same domain as the page itself. However, it might be better to teach the system which cookies are important. If an international user clicks on, say, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7470304.stm, you’ll see something like:

GET /adj/bbccom.live.site.news/news_africa_content;... HTTP/1.1
Host: ad.doubleclick.net
Referer: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7470304.stm
Cookie: id=80000282f0e0ca4

If the user got to that BBC page by clicking through one of your doctored search pages, even if DoubleClick aren’t one of your advertising networks, you can now link that user’s DoubleClick identifier to your own one for that user. You now get to track them across all websites that use DoubleClick, which I believe is a lot.

[Florence]

Originally Posted by popper

regarding the trials lets not forget Chris M's Jun 13, 2008 8:50 PM betaBT post

they were expecting to run an 8 months large scale trial, thats a very long time just to see if it scales well.

and anyone care to run the No. of potential RIPA violations extrapolated from the figures we already know ,never mind the other laws, broken copyright might be another good one to estimate

i hope he kept a copy of that T&C (one more A4 printout for the court documents some day),as true to Phorm, its now missing on that link.

http://www.beta.bt.com/bta/forums/me...ID=26542#26542
"I hadn't/haven't been invited to take part but, out of curiosity, I thought I'd have a look and upon reading the T&Cs of: https://www2.formwize.com/run/survey3.cfm?ID=1081, I noticed under the heading: "Service Schedule" this line:
* The duration of the next generation speed trial is at our sole discretion but is initially scheduled to run from February 2008 to October 2008.
....
"

Interesting the link to ww2.formwize now returns..

Oops! An error has occurred
Error Diagnostic Information

Template: /run/survey3.cfm
Message: Invalid data 1081, for CFSQLTYPE CF_SQL_INTEGER.
The error occurred on line 25.
Date/Time: Tue Jun 24 00:50:36 BST 2008
Browser: Opera/9.50 (Windows NT 5.1; U; en)
Remote Address:
Referrer: http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/12...-page-667.html

Someone watching this thread very very carefully and removing what they can from sight fast..

[popper]

Alexander has got the 10000 spot

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7299875.stm

"Web creator rejects net tracking

The creator of the web has said consumers need to be protected against systems which can track their activity on the internet. Sir Tim Berners-Lee told BBC News he would change his internet provider if it introduced such a system.
...
Sir Tim Berners-Lee has fears over the future of the internet

...
"

a link to the official BT Phorm Gifted DPI (Deep Packet Inspection/interception)device network Gif showing clearly that you have no choice in having all your datastreams intercepted, collected, collated, processed.

and finally at some point later, any data they deem Valuable from this wiretap, is anonymised,and sent to the Phorm Unlawful "Derivative work" without paying you for the use of your copyrighted Unique datastream weather you Opt-in or not.

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/at..._diagram70.gif

it clearly shows, and there is no other choice given to you.
all your data Must pass through the Interception device.
http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/12...l#post34524675

it clearly shows they place an Unlawful cookie on your machine,store data on your machine, and retrieve data from your machine, and using your computer resources without your explicit informed consent if you refuse or otherwise opt-out of this ISP/Phorm wiretap (DPI, aka "Layer 7" network switches).

pecr_reference
http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documen...part2_1206.pdf
clearly shows this is against the legal statute #3951

[AlexanderHanff]

July 16th - Protest at the Barbican Centre

On July 16th 2008 there will be a protest rally at The Barbican Centre (The Barbican Theatre) in London. The purpose of the event is to protest against plans by BT Group PLC, Virgin Media and Car Phone Warehouse to deploy intrusive technology across their broadband networks for the purpose of profiling the behaviour of their customers which is then sold to Phorm Inc. (formerly 121Media) and used for their Open Internet Exchange (OIX) service.

You can read updates regarding the event on the following web page:

https://nodpi.org/category/events/
How it works?

Phorm Inc have signed exclusive contracts with Virgin Media, BT Group PLC and Car Phone Warehouse (TalkTalk) to install Layer 7 network switches within the core broadband networks in the UK. Without getting too technical the system (branded as WebWise) intercepts every single web based communication you initiate in your browser unless they are encrypted - which most are not.

It then inserts software cookies on to your computer for the purpose of gathering behavioural statistics based on the web pages you view; it also makes a copy of every web page you view as it is being sent to your PC and builds a list of key words based on the contents of the web page.

This type of behavioural profiling is very rich data and can be used to determine many things about your life and who you are such as:

1. Topics you are interested in
2. Your Political Opinions
3. Your Health
4. Your Financial Status
5. Your Sexual Preferences
6. Where you live
7. When you are or are not at home
8. Your Investments
9. Who you communicate with
10. What you type on web forums or social network sites

This type of information is very useful for advertising companies as it allows them to target you with commercial advertising when you visit web pages. However this type of information is also protected by many laws within the UK and EU because it is classed as personal information which most people believe should be private. For example, do you really want advertising companies to know what investments you have or the contents of your emails?

You can read more about the issues surrounding this technology by reading the other pages on this web site and following some of the links in the right hand margin.
Event Details

Date : 16th July 2008

Time : 10:00am - 5:00pm

Place: Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London. EC2Y 8DS

Directions

Image from Barbican Website

We will be gathering outside the main entrance for the majority of the day. The best route to the main entrance is from the barbican tube, but go right to the end of Beech street and turn right as per the map.
Purpose

The purpose of the protest is twofold:

1. To raise public awareness on the issues surrounding behavioural advertising and threats it places on privacy.
2. To present the City of London Police with a case file based on covert trials carried out by BT and Phorm (then 121Media) in 2006/2007.

The Covert Trials

In 2006 and 2007 Bt and Phorm (then 121Media) carried out two covert trials of this technology (called PageSense in 2006, ProxySense in 2007 and WebWise in the present) which means they did not seek the consent of their customers. These trials constituted criminal and civil offenses under various laws. You can read more information about this on the following web page:

https://nodpi.org/2008/06/04/bt-covert-trials-in-2006-the-facts-about-pagesense/

And for the legally minded, you can read my legal analysis of the covert trials here (PDF):

https://nodpi.org/documents/phorm_paper.pdf
How Can You Help?

Obviously the easiest way for people to help is to turn up for the protest event and help us to spread the word about the dangers and legal issues surrounding this technology.

If you have a web page or you use web based forums and social network sites you can help by placing one of the banners available at https://nodpi.org/gallery/ on your web pages and linking them to https://nodpi.org/events.

Alexander Hanff

[Tezcatlipoca]

And post 10,000 in the Phorm Uber-Thread goes to Alexander Hanff

[roadrunner69]

Originally Posted by Florence

Someone watching this thread very very carefully and removing what they can from sight fast..

The direct url still works fine. Looks like we may have been barred

[icsys]

Originally Posted by popper

florence ,edit your post its got your Ip in it.

now your ip icsys

waiting for you to edit it florence than ill delete this post

Noticed your message and deleted the post
(Just as well I deleted it, it was the 10,000th)

Thanks

[AlexanderHanff]

Well it was a good suggestion and having info about the protest at this stage in such a long thread serves as a good reminder. So thanks to everyone who held off posting to give me a chance to get it in.

Also, now would be a good time to thank everyone here at Cableforum for their support and for hosting what has at times been a very emotional thread. Without these boards this thread would not have become the resource it has and I am very grateful to you all for that (staff and users alike). Lets hope we manage to stop Phorm BEFORE this thread reaches 20 000 posts eh?

Alexander Hanff

[icsys]

It's been a pleasure so far, and will no doubt continue to be.

Thanks Alex for your hard work and dedication.

And on that note I'll bid you all good night and get off to bed.