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

[AlexanderHanff]

Sorry I have been quiet everyone I have been studying for an exam. I am still watching the thread / reading all news etc. and if anything comes up I will post it. Should be more active again in about a week once this exam is out of the way.

I am working on some other stuff in the background too (some very exciting stuff actually, although not directly Phorm related) so will post some news on that in the next week too.

Telegraph and FT pulling back is a good bit of news, might be a good idea for people to write to them and commend that decision, just so they realise it is the right decision.

Speak to you all soon,

Alexander Hanff

[icsys]

Originally Posted by SimonHickling

I've not seen this mentioned yet.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7522334.stm



I'd be keen to see the intersection of that set of six with the set of ISPs planning to intercept for advertising. Although as BT and Virgin have both sent letters on the matter recently, perhaps not that surprised.

So now they appear to want to act as investigator, judge and jury over file sharing. Oh and I suppose they'll HAVE to intercept the communications to do that. And not just on port 80. As anyone who legally [down/up]loads Linux distributions over P2P will know, you can use any port you like.

Bring on the self signed certificate - and then they'll know I'm a terrorist because I'm encrypting all my traffic. I really do hate the technology that pays my mortgage, when it gets into the wrong hands.

And the super six are....

Britain’s six biggest service providers - BT, Virgin Media, Orange, Tiscali, BSkyB and Carphone Warehouse.

All have signed up to the scheme. In return, the Government has abandoned a controversial proposal to disconnect broadband services for users who had been caught out three times.

Hmmm... didn't TalkTalk say it is their role to 'protect the rights of their customers'?

Also no coincidence that Orange, Tiscali and BskyB have been 'looking' at behavioural advertising.

Orange, which occupies the number six spot in the UK broadband league, said: "We're always looking at ways to make the internet experience safer and more relevant for the individual. We have been in discussions with a number of companies - including Phorm - about this very interesting area."

Tiscali, which has more than two million broadband customers, told The Register it has looked into Phorm's system, but no decisions have been made.

Sky, the UK's fastest growing broadband network with about 1.2 million lines, said: "Sky is interested in exploring the potential for targeted online advertising and is talking with a number of companies operating in this area.

[Wildie]

are they thinking of becoming content providers then ?

[bluecar1]

have a look at http://blog.quinthar.com/2008/07/sec...t-economy.html

seems an interesting take on things

peter

[Deko]

From the Reg.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/23/berr_isp_mou/

According to the BBC this week's deal takes the form of a Memorandum of Understanding between the ISPs and the Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform (BERR). Under it, ISPs are reported to have committed to achieving a significant reduction in illegal filesharing, and to educate their customers on copyright. They need only follow the shining examples of the RIAA and the BPI and lo, it will be done. (are you sure about this? - ed) ®

its our friends in BERR time for a FOI request. Who is going to FOI them ?

[rryles]

Originally Posted by SimonHickling

So now they appear to want to act as investigator, judge and jury over file sharing. Oh and I suppose they'll HAVE to intercept the communications to do that. And not just on port 80. As anyone who legally [down/up]loads Linux distributions over P2P will know, you can use any port you like.

Actually they don't need to intercept anything for this. The RIAA have been finding illegal music sharers in the US for years without installing kit in ISPs. This is how it works for bittorrent - similar methods work for most P2P apps.

1. Search for torrent which looks like one of there copyrighted works
2. Connect to bit torrent swarm
3. Download the files whilst logging IP address/time stamp of any peers.
4. Verify that downloaded file is a copyrighted work by an artist they represent.
5. Get ISP to reveal name & address for each IP address.
6. Send the offender a nastygram
7. If they don't pay up, sue them.

There are certainly problems with this approach but intercepting communications isn't one of them. Using encrypted bittorrent won't stop this for the same reason. Using an anonymous P2P system should stop this method (but don't come crying to me if it doesn't).

(There are variations on this such as not downloading the whole file and hence not doing step 4 at all)

One of the biggest problems with this is how easy it is to frame someone for copyright infringement.

[Florence]

BT are selling something that can deal with this and the only down side is they will not put customer security / privacy at risk as there would be n o middle company with links to hacking/spyware/adwear etc...

ZYWALL USG 1000 http://www.shop.bt.com/productview.aspx?quicklinx=53TX

other downside for BT it wouldn't get payments for pimping customers.

[Dephormation]

Originally Posted by Deko

From the Reg.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/23/berr_isp_mou/

its our friends in BERR time for a FOI request. Who is going to FOI them ?

I think I'd add to previous questions suggested

- What is the content of that MoU

I'll certainly bang off an FoI tonight.

[Raistlin]

I'll just make the point at this time that as I understand it the latest moves between the ISPs, BERR, and BPI, etc, with regards to the sharing of illegal content are very unlikely to be using the Phorm technology

That means that all the current line of discussion is accomplishing is that it's diluting the discussion of Phorm, and it's taking this thread off-topic.

There are other threads already discussing these issues on Cable Forum, maybe it would be best to take this discussion there?

Unless I've completely misunderstood something that is

[rryles]

I completely agree Rob M.

Unless we learn otherwise I would assume that this will not involve any dpi kit or any interception.

So getting back on topic:

Kent says, "We now exclude over a thousand webmail sites from being processed rather than the largest 25".

How many web mail sites are their in the world? Well lets look at my personal favourite webmail system: squirrelmail. It's relatively obscure so likely only represents a small to tiny portion of webmail deployments. The recent version was been downloaded over 117,000 times from sourceforge. That doesn't include people using older versions, or who download it via other routes (it's in the ubuntu repositories for example).

25 was pathetic. 1000 is an improvement, but it is far short of a complete list.

[madslug]

Originally Posted by bluecar1

have a look at http://blog.quinthar.com/2008/07/sec...t-economy.html

seems an interesting take on things

peter

One point to note:

With Google, content ads are usually cheaper than ads displayed on the search results. The revenue from these content ads has reached a point where many web sites are giving up displaying them.

Now, with Google effectively failing the content providers, the other ad networks are going to be selling content ads at a premium?

The only sustainable business model I can see for that is for content to buy a click for less than the revenue earned from displaying ads. Google is already dropping selling clicks for this model so who is going to be selling the ads?

Are the ad networks saying that they are going into a market which Google and other search engines found did more harm to their business than the revenue earned? The big problem with this from the point of view of the content providers is that the lower they bid for a click, the lower the quality of the site where their ad will be displayed, the lower the quality of visitor coming to their site.

Is someone really hoping that everyone will be clicking on ads leading to more pages filled with ads, earning revenue for everyone on route and maybe getting a conversion to a brand at the end of the line.

The brand advertising departments welcome this model?

[rryles]

Originally Posted by madslug

It looks like only BT gets hopped around. I have similar hops from the DNS router out to google for the 216 address.
Has anyone checked the internal BT hops from mid-June when there were also multiple hops? - I thought that was less than the current 7 hops?

How does one check for a traceroute on port 443 - i.e. to nodpi.org?

It would be really interesting to be able to see if port 443 traffic has the same 7 internal hops.

Some newer versions of traceroute can do this as well

traceroute -T -p 80 nodpi.org
traceroute -T -p 443 nodpi.org

This doesn't apply to the windows tracert though.

(It is possible though unlikely that you could trigger some intrusion detection systems on the host you are doing the traceroute to with this)

[Florence]

Originally Posted by madslug

One point to note:

With Google, content ads are usually cheaper than ads displayed on the search results. The revenue from these content ads has reached a point where many web sites are giving up displaying them.

Now, with Google effectively failing the content providers, the other ad networks are going to be selling content ads at a premium?

The only sustainable business model I can see for that is for content to buy a click for less than the revenue earned from displaying ads. Google is already dropping selling clicks for this model so who is going to be selling the ads?

Are the ad networks saying that they are going into a market which Google and other search engines found did more harm to their business than the revenue earned? The big problem with this from the point of view of the content providers is that the lower they bid for a click, the lower the quality of the site where their ad will be displayed, the lower the quality of visitor coming to their site.

Is someone really hoping that everyone will be clicking on ads leading to more pages filled with ads, earning revenue for everyone on route and maybe getting a conversion to a brand at the end of the line.

The brand advertising departments welcome this model?

There is always the other side also with the higher inflation more wil be window shopping to try to build up esteem, dreaming of what they would have if they could afford it. These with what BT has planned would lead to a large number of adverts for say a new car that the person cannot afford to buy thus wasting the time of the ad, bandwidth up and down since BT add in both on your paid for capped limits for no end result since you were only sort of window shopping not actual shopping.. The present credit crunch will stop many actually buying online we all might look but then before you click any buy button you always do a quick check can you afford it.. Credit cards will start to tighten the purse strings if more and more people get into debt issues from over spending online..

[rryles]

One positive for phorm:

With the credit crunch interest rates are higher. Phorm's main income in 2007 was credit interest. They should ditch the whole advertising ploy and just lend their cash out. Just a pity they didn't do it sooner. They've waisted most of their capital on R&D.

[Dephormation]

Originally Posted by rryles

Some newer versions of traceroute can do this as well

traceroute -T -p 80 nodpi.org
traceroute -T -p 443 nodpi.org

This doesn't apply to the windows tracert though.

(It is possible though unlikely that you could trigger some intrusion detection systems on the host you are doing the traceroute to with this)

For any tech head like me who was thinking trace route apps use ICMP echo packets over IP, see here

tcptraceroute is a traceroute implementation using TCP packets.

The more traditional traceroute(8) sends out either UDP or ICMP ECHO packets with a TTL of one, and increments the TTL until the destination has been reached. By printing the gateways that generate ICMP time exceeded messages along the way, it is able to determine the path packets are taking to reach the destination.
<snip>
By sending out TCP SYN packets instead of UDP or ICMP ECHO packets, tcptraceroute is able to bypass the most common firewall filters.

You learn something new every day. Interesting. That could come in very handy.