Virgin Media Phorm Webwise Adverts [Updated: See Post No. 1, 77, 102 & 797] - Page 258

AlexanderHanff · 17-04-2008, 18:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by ceedee

I'd go even further.

Alexander, why not let Kent have specific *legal* questions, say 24 hours before, so that he can't use "not having a QC handy" as an excuse for not answering?

He'd look a right plonker if you can then ask him on camera: "You've had 24 hrs notice, is your legal team in Moscow too?"

It won't be possible to ask any questions on the legal issues (for the same reason it wasn't at the PIA meeting) so it would be fruitless me wasting the little time I have trying to force questions which are either not going to be answered or are likely to be shot down by the host.

I am not going to say what I am going to talk about because as we know Phorm are right here watching and I wouldn't want to give Kent an unfair advantage.

We need to look at this as a public awareness exercise. BBC "Click" is part of the BBC World section of the BBC and airs to literally hundreds of millions of people, so it is a perfect opportunity to get the message out to the public who don't read forums, or blogs or online news sites. I fully intend to take advantage of that because I am confident that the more people know about this issue, the less likelihood it has of ever coming into fruition.

Alexander Hanff

Ravenheart · 17-04-2008, 18:28

Interesting article, Two consumer groups in the US have asked the Federal Trade Commission to create a "do not track list" that would allow computer users to bar advertisers from collecting information about them.

http://www.reuters.com/article/techn...080416?sp=true

CaptJamieHunter · 17-04-2008, 18:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by OF1975

Ok its now fastly approaching 48 hours since the meeting took place and still no sight of the professionally filmed footage being made available. I am starting to get suspicious as to the reasons why. In the spirit of "transparency" which was mentioned at the meeting at the very least we should be given some information on when and where this footage will be made available.

OF1975 · 17-04-2008, 18:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by AlexanderHanff

My understanding is that 80/20T have been out of the country on other business since yesterday morning, which would explain the delays. That information is just based on some chat at the gathering on Tuesday night, so I don't know how accurate it is and therefore don't offer it as a statement of fact.

Thanks for the important information Alexander. I will cut them some slack then in the interests of fairness

Quote:

Originally Posted by AlexanderHanff

That was answered in the meeting on Tuesday, but it might have been in the Q&A part at the end of the meeting which would explain why people may not be aware of it.

Allegedly the logging mechanism has now been changed and only errors and network messages are stored in the Debug logs now.

Alexander Hanff

Thats great news if it got answered as I cant tell you how frustrated I was by the fact that Phorms PR team just would not answer that question. I lost count of how many times I asked it here. I asked the PR team questions about the "research and debug logs" numerous times on other blogs too so I look forward to seeing it on the footage. With the logging mechanism now changed as you described I am somewhat reassured.

It was that word "research" that had me most concerned because if you remember back to the AOL debacle of 2006 that "anonymised" (cough, cough) information was released under the guise of research.

ceedee · 17-04-2008, 18:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by AlexanderHanff

It won't be possible to ask any questions on the legal issues (for the same reason it wasn't at the PIA meeting) so it would be fruitless me wasting the little time I have trying to force questions which are either not going to be answered or are likely to be shot down by the host.

Damn!
Of course, you're right. Does that mean we'll only get to 'cross swords' on the legal aspects if it gets into court?

Quote:

I am not going to say what I am going to talk about because as we know Phorm are right here watching and I wouldn't want to give Kent an unfair advantage.

We need to look at this as a public awareness exercise. BBC "Click" is part of the BBC World section of the BBC and airs to literally hundreds of millions of people, so it is a perfect opportunity to get the message out to the public who don't read forums, or blogs or online news sites. I fully intend to take advantage of that because I am confident that more people know about this issue, the less likely it has of ever coming into fruition.

(Sorry, that's the nearest I could find to 'running around the room waving my hands in the air'!)

solitaire · 17-04-2008, 18:36

Hi all. My first post

This is an email I recently sent to the following euro MP's

Dear Arlene McCarthy, Gary Titley, Chris Davies, Robert Atkins, John
Whittaker, Sajjad Karim, Den Dover, Brian Simpson and David Sumberg,

I am writing to enquire as to whether or not EU rules cover the
possible implementation of the PHORM advertising, possibly to be used
soon by Virgin Media, BT, Talk Talk etc. The use of this adware/spyware
will be, in my opinion a breach of privacy laws and or data protection
laws. I just can't believe that these companies could be so cavalier in
their approach to their customers online privacy. Thank you for your
attention.

Yours sincerely,

Mr. George Blocksidge

This is the reply I have just received

Dear Mr Blocksidge,

Thank you for your email regarding the issue of Phorm.

I would like to assure you that Sir Robert considers this to be a very
serious and important issue. I have passed your email on to the office
of Malcolm Harbour MEP, who is the Conservative coordinator on the
Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee. I will inform you as
and when I have received an answer from him on this matter.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if I can be of any further
assistance.

Kind regards,

William Thavenot (Political Assistant)

Hopefully one more person to help get rid of this horrible spyware

AlexanderHanff · 17-04-2008, 18:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by ceedee

Damn!
Of course, you're right. Does that mean we'll only get to 'cross swords' on the legal aspects if it gets into court?

No I don't think it does. We can already see more and more interest from our MPs, MEPs and Lords all based on the legal issues. The Register article about the Home Office today does nothing but damage the reputation of government and makes them look more and more complicit.

At the moment (until such time as we get to court) our best strategy on the legal implications is to continue pressure on our MPs, MEPs and Lords clearly defining each legal issue we are concerned about. Hopefully my paper will help people to do that as I have written it on an Act by Act basis. I know it is not finished yet but I am sure you can all appreciate how incredibly busy I have been; however, the main legal points are all there, the only work left to do is the round-up under Council of Europe's Convention on Cybercrime and the conclusion. Both these sections are basically summaries of the rest of the paper and the issue as a whole.

Alexander Hanff

OF1975 · 17-04-2008, 18:55

Hello PhormUKPRteam its good to have you back with us again. Hope you aren't too stressed out and weary from all your terra-phorming (explanation here: http://www.urbandictionary.com/defin...terra-phorming ).

Please do tell us how is kent taking the share price continuing to collapse?

Rchivist · 17-04-2008, 19:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by AlexanderHanff

OK some more details on next week. It is going to be a kind of David and Goliath scenario, just myself and Kent will be present, so I am going to pick out the pebbles which will give the most accurate flight from my sling.

The show will be recorded at Olympiad Exhibition Centre during ITSec next Tuesday.

This of course means, I will be at ITSec before and after the interview so if any-one is at the conference and wants to meet up for a coffee and a chat at some point give me a shout via PM on these boards.

Alexander Hanff

My first post here - as a BT invader.

First - thanks Alexander - great work. I'm a BT customer and our forums are being rather heavily censored at present and an active Q&A thread and a Discussion thread have been locked by moderators. We are getting zilch from our ISP at present in terms of answers and the one BT Beta forum thread we have left, is rather quiet.

I have posted a list of my personal unanswered questions on the BT Beta forum

http://www.beta.bt.com/bta/forums/th...ID=17985#17985

The post is R Jones, Posted: Apr 17, 2008 12:25 PM

my questions are: (some of them are obviously BT specific and will be batted back by Phorm as needing an answer from the ISP concerned)

1 - the issue of informed consent from Webmasters for Webwise/Phorm to intercept and profile the data exchange with their website visitors remains unanswered - both publicly and privately. My sites explicitly refuse consent for Webwise/Phorm to profile data exchanged with visitors and Phorm have not yet said how they will respond to that. How are Webwise/phorm establishing informed consent from webmasters?

2 - the issue of user-agent identity or other means that Phorm can be selectively individually blocked in robots.txt remains unanswered - how do we block Webwise/Phorm from our sites while allowing in search engines that we want to crawl our sites?

3 - Phorm (Kent Ertugrul) still seem to think that layer 7 interception of ALL web traffic is the same as a surfer voluntarily choosing to visit google.co.uk (and a user can already anonymise their google cookie if they wish to using third party tools).

4 - website cookie forging by Webwise/Phorm remains murky and unexplained by Phorm - who gave anyone permission to forge a cookie purporting to come from one of my registered domains?

5 - redirection of browsing traffic up to 3 times before we get to the sites we orginally asked for in the first place, is not explained by Phorm but only discussed by the indpendent reviewers.

6 - What will happen to the "browsing experience" of a BT customer who adds all the various oix/phorm/webwise domains to his HOSTS file, once Webwise/Phorm is in place, remains unexplained

7 - What are the security implications of the cookie forging, and browser multiple redirections? How easily can a malicious website identify, copy and then sell on the Phorm user ID number from a visitors computer? Dr Richard Clayton indicates this will be a relatively simple process to carry out. The malicious site then have a useable, saleable item to combine with any information they already have gleaned about the individual concerned - the malicious website information plus the Phorm user ID are worth a fair bit on the open scumware market.)

8 - What will happen to browsing (and the Phorm business model) when browsers like Firefox (and security software vendors) start to look at layer 7 redirection and treat it as suspicious acitivity? (Much as they have with popups, phishing protection, and 3rd party cookie detection)

9 - when will BT openly reveal the consumer research (including the questions used) that gave them the idea we as customers, WANTED this stuff? It's no good Emma Sanderson going on TV and talking about customer research if she won't openly publish the evidence. We have gone well past the stage where we trusted anything a BT or Phorm spokesman said in public - too many documented examples of BT saying things publicly that turn out later to be untrue.

Once again, Alexander, thanks for all the hard work, and also to Captain Jamie for the videos.

Deko · 17-04-2008, 19:12

Just a concerned Geek, currently with plusnet so not directly effected. But this if it happens is a very slippery slope.

I am in london so if people want to meet to possibly go over this judical review application that would be good + chance to get a few jars down my neck

Anyhow now for some light humour.

Phorm in my side.
You know thats all you ever were.
A bundle of lies.
You know thats all that it was worth...
I should have known better
But I trusted you at first.
I should have known better
But I got what I deserved...

To run away from you
Was all that I could do.
To run away from you
Was all that I could do.

Phorm in my side.
You know thats all youll ever be.
So dont think you know better
cause thats what you mean to me...
I was feeling complicated.
I was feeling low.
Now everytime I think of you
I shiver to the bone...

(chorus repeats...)

Florence · 17-04-2008, 19:14

Can someone point me into the direction where it is said that the Home Office is the place to get an investigation started when RIPA rules have been susspected broken. I need it to point Simon to on my next reply since he says it is the police who deal with criminal investigations.

I feel that if those members of the public who were used in the 2006/2007 trials al joined forces and placed their evidance at once with support from many others who were not involved but would like this sorted out and guilty people punished for their part in the deals. We need to all stay on track and stay focused do not allow them to devide us.

gaz1 · 17-04-2008, 19:21

have you all seen the shares of phorm this afternoon as its been sell sell and only a minimum buy from one person

http://www.iii.co.uk/investment/deta...&timeframe=480

looks like where defenatly wipeing the value off of phorm webwise lol

OldBear · 17-04-2008, 19:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by AlexanderHanff

It is rumoured that Kent didn't want me there as he feels I am not representing any specific group and so I am not relevant. So nice to know he looks on me with such high regard.

Perhaps it's the opposite, Alexander; perhaps he fears you. Don't forget we are talking about a man who probably never expected anyone to know about what he was up to, never mind trying to stop him. As a knowledgable 'voice of the people' you are his worst nightmare come true.

Quote:

No gentleman's handshake, not even a hello.

Benefit being, at least you can be assured that all your fingers are still there without having to check.

Geo.

TehTech · 17-04-2008, 20:21

[QUOTE=CaptJamieHunter;34531083[/QUOTE]

Check ur PM's mate

ceedee · 17-04-2008, 20:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by Deko

Just a concerned Geek, currently with plusnet so not directly effected. But this if it happens is a very slippery slope.

I am in london so if people want to meet to possibly go over this judical review application that would be good + chance to get a few jars down my neck

Welcome to CF, Deko.

Have you arrived via El Reg's comments?
If so, it's Alexander's attention you'll need to snag -- he's got plenty on his plate right now but he'll be at Olympia next Tuesday.

I'm sure he'll be back around shortly.

---------- Post added at 20:31 ---------- Previous post was at 20:27 ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by gaz1

have you all seen the shares of phorm this afternoon as its been sell sell and only a minimum buy from one person
http://www.iii.co.uk/investment/deta...&timeframe=480
looks like where defenatly wipeing the value off of phorm webwise lol