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

[Dephormation]

Originally Posted by Peter N

If Phorm's system adds, say, a 1% overhead, you then have to factor in all of the other points in the chain where such inspections can take place. Every picture hosted off-site could involve another scan and so it goes on. In a very short time span the internet would end up with 1% useful traffic and 99% interception which will leave the ISPs having to purchase far greater bandwidth than at present. The very systems that the ISPs believe will make them money will cost them many more times as much as they make from a few adverts or they will be forced to raise their charges to the end-users.

The authorities are looking at the situation in terms of one interception per data request. That's not how it will happen and the internet will be massively overloaded within months unless action is taken to keep the internet open and free from any unnecessary interceptions.

'Network Parasite Neutrality' as illustrated on parasitestxt.org;

[img]Download Failed (1)[/img]

---------- Post added at 09:14 ---------- Previous post was at 08:11 ----------

Originally Posted by R Jones

As people here will be aware, I'm always interested in what ISNT said, and what questions ARENT answered.

...

Now - anyone got any fairly simple legal or other technical questions of the sort that could be asked of BT (or VM or TalkTalk when it is their turn), and which they might not yet have answers to?

The sort of question I'm after is the sort that might make the BT "lawyer" or exec say "oh ***** we didn't think of that!" - or "oh ****** - we hoped no one would notice that!" - and cause a further delay.

Any thoughts anyone, and I'll compile a list.

So many its hard to know where to begin. Fundamentally, the question I'd like them to answer is "Are you insane? Have you completely lost your minds?".

Bearing in mind I think Phorm should be stopped on ethical/civil liberties/human rights/freedom of speech grounds... I'm not particularly interested in debating the tech detail with BT. There are much bigger issues at stake here than resolving tech trivia.

If you were willing to debate with BT however, examples of questions they will not address;

"What was the customer research that convinced you customers want this service?"
"Do you think eCommerce business will welcome the interception of their private, unencrypted communication data?"
"How do you propose to obtain consent for interception from 108 million web sites?"
"How do you propose to obtain copyright licences from 108 million web sites?"
"What are the black lists of web sites? White lists of user agents? How will customers be able to see them before making an 'informed decision' to opt in?"
"What are the demographic characteristics you will use to categorize customers, what are the 'channels', how can customers view this data to make an 'informed decision' to opt in?"
"How will you anonymise ambiguous text such as 'Kent is in the south east of England', or 'send me an IM, Dephormation99', or foreign language text such as 'Bei der Laterne wollen wir steh'n Wie einst Lili Marleen', and how about this '張九齡 感遇四首之一'?" (with apologies to people without Chinese language support installed).
"How will you account for the presence of cookies on sites which did not set cookies, and undertake never to do so?"
"How will you comply with DPA section 11 notices?" (get yours here)
"If my privacy/security is breached, what level compensation will you pay me?"
"Why can't I have a phishing filter without being subjected to profiling? It works for child abuse, why not phishing too?"

Honestly, its such a ridiculous unethical stupid idea, I could probably go on for hours. I'll stop here. If its not enough, just ask

[Wild Oscar]

Originally Posted by alt3rn1ty

Thanks pseudonym, and warescouse , and apologies I should have done this first....

--snip--

Forgot to mention the above should ideally be added to the best hosts file imo found so far which is located here...
http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm

But have a good read first. Its updated occasionally.

Thanks all for the info about the hosts file!

Originally Posted by BadPhormula

Do you have any advice to give BT customers that might help them through frustrating time ahead. Any hints on getting their MAC code when the complaint lines are fully engaged and their operators are not turning up for work due to stress related illnesses? (maybe drop in emergency centres with checkin lanes?)

I have a hint for anyone wanting to leave BT. Tell them:

1. To check the line of the person they need to put you through to in order to get your MAC code. They have a habit of losing you or when it gets through you hear a message saying sorry we're closed.

2. You know they might have had problems with their computer system that generates the code you need but via is not your issue.

3. You know your rights and within 5 working days from now you want that code or you will speak with the ICO.

I had to do the above and then I was given the code.

i think I said this already, but I emailed Emma at BT and told her why I had got the code ready to leave. I copied Christine a secretary and Jillian Lewis (? customer service director) and had a 'sorry you are leaving' email back from Emma's email account 5 minutes later which she copied to Jillian.

[HaveToBeAnon]

Hi Guys,

Still here. Nothing at all to report from within BT - we are all still as much in the dark as you. No real suprise, the oxygen of publicity is like death to the parasitic pond life known as phorm.

I have just a few observations to throw into the mix.

1. The campaign is continuing to develop, the rate of posting to this thread is actually increasing as more people discover it. It took 20 days to go from 1000 to 2000 posts, but only 14 to go from 11000 to 12000. I'd like to know similar figures for individual posters, could a moderator give such info?

2. If the trial ever starts, this campaign will go stratospheric. Its small now only because so few now about it. Just wait until 25,000 people get the request to join, and start investigating for themselves.

3. Do whatever you can to get a anti-webwise page near the top of of google search for webwise!

4. A question - Why does the share price fluctuate so much, when volumes bought and sold are absolutely tiny? Selling 0.01% of shares affecting prices by over 10% - doesnt make sense.

5. Bt have said that they will add websites to an exclusion list, provided the webmaster contacts BT and says so, providing proof that he is in fact the webmaster. What about foreign language websites. Anyone know a website owner in, say Hungary. Get them to write to Emma, *in hungarian*, asking to not be profiled. Would be interesting to see what happens! Repeat for as many bizarre languages as possible.

6. I wish to once again thank everyone for their considerable time, effort and expense in this. I hope and expect that you succeed. Don't get me wrong, I am loyal to BT, and think it (well my bit of it anyway) is great. Broadband is a fantastic product, and it has made the internet much more accessible. However I, along with most of the employees, think this will do serious damage to BT if it goes ahead, so that why I'd like it stopped.

Keep going all, you are winning.

Anon.

[Rchivist]

Quote - HaveToBeAnon - answering in line:

Hi Guys,

Still here. Nothing at all to report from within BT - we are all still as much in the dark as you. No real suprise, the oxygen of publicity is like death to the parasitic pond life known as phorm.

I have just a few observations to throw into the mix.

snip just leaving the ones I am answering:

3. Do whatever you can to get a anti-webwise page near the top of of google search for webwise!

It's pretty good at the moment on google - we just can't beat the BBC whose Webwise page holds "pole" position (watching Grand Prix)

5. Bt have said that they will add websites to an exclusion list, provided the webmaster contacts BT and says so, providing proof that he is in fact the webmaster. What about foreign language websites. Anyone know a website owner in, say Hungary. Get them to write to Emma, *in hungarian*, asking to not be profiled. Would be interesting to see what happens! Repeat for as many bizarre languages as possible.

I think I'll write a letter in Bulgarian/Cyrillic - I can just about manage that. I'll provide a brief explanatory paragraph in English, to make the point that they could get a lot of those!

Keep going all, you are winning.

Anon.

Your comments and encouragement much appreciated.

---------- Post added at 14:04 ---------- Previous post was at 13:59 ----------

Originally Posted by Dephormation

'Network Parasite Neutrality' as illustrated on parasitestxt.org;



---------- Post added at 09:14 ---------- Previous post was at 08:11 ----------



So many its hard to know where to begin. Fundamentally, the question I'd like them to answer is "Are you insane? Have you completely lost your minds?".

Bearing in mind I think Phorm should be stopped on ethical/civil liberties/human rights/freedom of speech grounds... I'm not particularly interested in debating the tech detail with BT. There are much bigger issues at stake here than resolving tech trivia.

If you were willing to debate with BT however, examples of questions they will not address;

"What was the customer research that convinced you customers want this service?"
"Do you think eCommerce business will welcome the interception of their private, unencrypted communication data?"
"How do you propose to obtain consent for interception from 108 million web sites?"
"How do you propose to obtain copyright licences from 108 million web sites?"
"What are the black lists of web sites? White lists of user agents? How will customers be able to see them before making an 'informed decision' to opt in?"
"What are the demographic characteristics you will use to categorize customers, what are the 'channels', how can customers view this data to make an 'informed decision' to opt in?"
"How will you anonymise ambiguous text such as 'Kent is in the south east of England', or 'send me an IM, Dephormation99', or foreign language text such as 'Bei der Laterne wollen wir steh'n Wie einst Lili Marleen', and how about this '張九齡 感遇四首之一'?" (with apologies to people without Chinese language support installed).
"How will you account for the presence of cookies on sites which did not set cookies, and undertake never to do so?"
"How will you comply with DPA section 11 notices?" (get yours here)
"If my privacy/security is breached, what level compensation will you pay me?"
"Why can't I have a phishing filter without being subjected to profiling? It works for child abuse, why not phishing too?"

Honestly, its such a ridiculous unethical stupid idea, I could probably go on for hours. I'll stop here. If its not enough, just ask

Yes - that is the sort of thing I had in mind. It's not that I think they will actually answer - but it's good to be on record, as having asked/warned about certain things in advance, because when it goes pear-shaped, I want to be able to point to those questions, asked and ignored, and say - why didn't you listen? You are NOT innocent - you DID have these things pointed out to you. You DIDN'T do due vigilance - you were reckless and arrogant and you ignored all the people who told you that you were headed for a cliff edge.

Thanks for those.

[HaveToBeAnon]

Oh, just another thought while I'm here.

BT have, as you would expect, a whole team of security experts who's job it is the keep the backbone infrastructure secure and reliable, and it has to be said do a pretty good job. What you would not expect is that they weren't even consulted, and discovered about phorm at the same time as the rest of us, ie February, and their head man, I won't mention names so lets call him JR, went absolutely ape-s..t on hearing about it.

Thats an indication of just how secret this has been within BT, keeping it from people who would instantly recognise it for what it was.

[phormwatch]

Don't forget to leave a review of BT Broadband here:

http://www.broadband-help.com/providers/provider/3

[warescouse]

Originally Posted by HaveToBeAnon

Oh, just another thought while I'm here.

BT have, as you would expect, a whole team of security experts who's job it is the keep the backbone infrastructure secure and reliable, and it has to be said do a pretty good job. What you would not expect is that they weren't even consulted, and discovered about phorm at the same time as the rest of us, ie February, and their head man, I won't mention names so lets call him JR, went absolutely ape-s..t on hearing about it.

Thats an indication of just how secret this has been within BT, keeping it from people who would instantly recognise it for what it was.

As an ex BT man myself I know that what you say is true insomuch as BT do have teams of real experts in various fields.

It is for that reason that the likes of the ICO I guess instead of correctly checking claims, just take BT's word that they are doing all things legally, correctly and by the book. After all they have their own experts

If what you state is true and I have little reason to doubt it, with this in mind it is even more important for a full investigation to take place by the police. If the correct experts within BT were not even consulted on this matter, it smacks to me of something untoward and fishy. There may be even more involved than what we imagine.

On a side note:
I must say I like the diagrams shown on here over this weekend. A picture tells a thousand words. Hope we see many more of them.

For any newcomers, here is a link that has already been mentioned previously which I think portrays a good example of where the overall privacy (none privacy) issues are going. I leave it to your imagination what data could be sold by Phorm (ex 121Media) to third parties as a result of their snooping. He was only ordering a Pizza You need to be able to run Flash.

[madslug]

Originally Posted by HaveToBeAnon

Oh, just another thought while I'm here.

BT have, as you would expect, a whole team of security experts who's job it is the keep the backbone infrastructure secure and reliable, and it has to be said do a pretty good job. What you would not expect is that they weren't even consulted, and discovered about phorm at the same time as the rest of us, ie February, and their head man, I won't mention names so lets call him JR, went absolutely ape-s..t on hearing about it.

Thats an indication of just how secret this has been within BT, keeping it from people who would instantly recognise it for what it was.

My one hope is that those same experts are able to ensure that any little black boxes BTR (residential customers only - no homeworkers, SOHO and SME working from home?) adds to 'monitor' the personal use by their customers does not also sit on the same routers which are used by BTR business and the independent ISPs who also purchase network capacity from BTW.

Just now I go from my router direct to the ISP network router, and that is all I ever want to see.

[Rchivist]

Originally Posted by HaveToBeAnon

Oh, just another thought while I'm here.

BT have, as you would expect, a whole team of security experts who's job it is the keep the backbone infrastructure secure and reliable, and it has to be said do a pretty good job. What you would not expect is that they weren't even consulted, and discovered about phorm at the same time as the rest of us, ie February, and their head man, I won't mention names so lets call him JR, went absolutely ape-s..t on hearing about it.

Thats an indication of just how secret this has been within BT, keeping it from people who would instantly recognise it for what it was.

That's comforting. If you can chat to him, one document that BT are covering up at the moment is "Premium Browsing: Research Findings" which is supposed to be the survey that shows BT customers gagging for Phorm/Webwise.

[Anonymouse]

Not sure how on-topic this is, but I read recently BT are planning to - finally - replace copper with fibre-optic cable to upgrade the entire network. They're talking about 50MB or even 100MB services becoming available.

But if the network is being choked (strangled?) by DPI at every stage, what'll that do to this wonderful new network? What about possibly millions of unsatisfied subscribers who sign up to 100MB and get maybe, I don't know, 10 or 20?

As for IMP - true, it's still only a concept. But it should remain so; unless legislation is changed accordingly, that is NOT legal and if the EU doesn't want mass emigration it'd better stay that way. People in this country talk about emigrating to get away from our surveillance state - I've debated it myself - but where can EU citizens go if every EU country starts doing this?

How fast will the EU part of the Internet be if everyone starts encrypting traffic as a matter of course instead of restricting it to online transactions?

Governments, especially ours, seem to be afraid of their own citizens, which is why they seem to regard 1984 more as an instruction manual than anything else. That's why they want to monitor us. The trouble is, they are frightening us. A common reaction to fear is anger - so perhaps they have reason to be afraid, as their citizenry is getting angrier and angrier. What they don't realise is that they are creating that fear and anger in the first place.

Peaceful protests are only the start. Unless this nonsense ceases, it won't end there. If people get desperate, they start to take desperate measures.

It's got to stop. Somehow, it's got to stop. We will never advance as a species unless we start to trust each other.

(Er...hey, mods, what's happened to my rep? That can't be right, surely - I've never had gold pips before and didn't have 'em yesterday! What the hell?)

[Matari]

To R Jones

I was promised a reply from my complaint to BT within 48 hours. It is now going on 72 hours. So using your questions I want to put a complaint in writing. Can you advise me who to write to at BT please?

M

[Dephormation]

Originally Posted by Matari

To R Jones

I was promised a reply from my complaint to BT within 48 hours. It is now going on 72 hours. So using your questions I want to put a complaint in writing. Can you advise me who to write to at BT please?

M

Three names to offer you

Sir Michael Rake (Chairman)
Ian Livingston
Gavin Patterson
Emma Sanderson (director of value-added services at BT Retail)

BT Group plc,
BT Centre,
81 Newgate Street,
London
EC1A 7AJ

You probably will not get a reply.

You might also write to the ICO to explain, "BT are not engaging with their customers..." (use that phrase verbatim, its a direct contradiction of a phrase in an ICO press releases). You could also write to OFCOM. And you should write to your MP too (see www.writetothem.com).

Make it clear to BT, this is something you do not want anywhere near your internet connection, full stop.

[madslug]

Originally Posted by R Jones

It strikes me that BT have delayed the trials because of unanswered questions that either they hadn't thought of, or that they didn't think the public would care about. And they have been retrofitting that trial like mad to try and make it "fit" the new climate. And they aren't ready yet.

<snip>

So what else might BT not have thought about, or be hoping that no one actually asks them?

As the cookie is set at browser level and not at account level, why is there a change to the account holder's terms and conditions? Surely it is the responsibility of the person connecting through a behaviour targeting advertisement sponsored connection to agree to any T&Cs relating to the service. [Reference the T&C used by the free Wi-Fi connections which are using similar profiling techniques to fund the service.]

Why is there no login provision to ensure that only those individuals who have consented to the interception are able to be intercepted?

What complaints procedure is in place? Who will be liable for accepting a contract to intercept usage where the person agreeing to that contract is not legally able to accept the terms.

Is BT maintaining an audit trail to show when each individual browser is allowing their data to be processed through the profiler?

What about an audit trail to show that those who are not opted into the profiler are not having any part of their data stream redirected to any part of the profiling system.

Legality: who is the legal entity responsible under law for the operation of each of the different elements of the profiling system? The diagram on the BT Webwise site shows different areas: 5 blue areas, 3 green areas, firewall, 2 orange areas, 1 pick area. Which laws apply to each area and which jurisdiction will any claim fall under? Where the legal entity is not a UK resident business, is BT the legal representative of that foreign business for the purposes of any claims under the law?

Who is responsible for the audit trail on each of the different coloured areas? Is there any area which does not provide an audit trail? [It has already been indicated that the anonymous nature of the whole system means that no one knows which user and which website is processed through the Data Mirror and the Profiler. Who has verified this and, if there is no audit trail, what control mechanisms are in place?]

What part, if any, of the Home Office report titled "Targeted Onlie Advertising: interception of communications or not? It it is, is it a lawful interception?" has been used to form the legal interpretation of whether or not BT's implementation of the OIX advertising exchange is legal?

What systems are in place to ensure that interceptions which fall outside the scope of the above Home Office report are not intercepted and processed by the profiling system: both BT and non-BT elements of the system. Who is legally responsible for any such interceptions?

Are BT and Phorm jointly and severally responsible under the law for everything and anything relating to the interception, monitoring and profiling systems?

[AlexanderHanff]

Originally Posted by HaveToBeAnon

5. Bt have said that they will add websites to an exclusion list, provided the webmaster contacts BT and says so, providing proof that he is in fact the webmaster. What about foreign language websites. Anyone know a website owner in, say Hungary. Get them to write to Emma, *in hungarian*, asking to not be profiled. Would be interesting to see what happens! Repeat for as many bizarre languages as possible.

Thanks for posting but I would like to remind everyone that it is NOT the responsibility of content owners to inform BT of anything or request to be opted out. It is 100% the responsibility of BT to obtain your consent to OPT-IN so please people, DO NOT send these letters to BT or you are playing right into their hands.

Instead add explicit terms to your website stating that you categorically deny the right for BT or Phorm or any agents thereof to copy, mirror, cache your web site for the purpose of commercial use such as behavioural advertising. Once you have done that (and the more the merrier) we wait for the trials to start, we find out the IP ranges of the trial clients and we take action for criminal copyright infringement under section 107 of Copyright, Designs and Patents Act.

It is very simple to detect who is in the WebWise trial by using SSL you can grab the cookie and check if it has been Phormed without them being able to strip it from the communication.

It is very important that if content owners want to be taken seriously that they do this the correct way, and the correct way is not how BT want you to do it.

Alexander Hanff