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

[Florence]

This puplic meeting seems to have answers for many questions is it after he re listened to what he said decided it couldn't be released since he put his foot in his mouth again?

Wellif it is never released then what ever kent says phorm will only do you can be sure once in he will adjust the get commands and remove more information from your PC than phorm was supposed to do..

Also knowing todays volitile society where power mad extremests are hidden under nearly every rock I have a hypethetical question..


Who will be held responsible if it came to pass that Phorm was hacked reprogrammed and caused all the ISPs customers online to do DOSS attacks on governement servers, military etc?

Since the number of PC's they say phorm will have total access to over theinternet what was it Kent said 70% could cause some damage..

[popper]

its nice to see some of the other unlawful interception companys, comScore in this case,getting some more ElReg coverage, shame the other news sites dont seem so interested.....

it might be time to think about sending that Data Protection Act Notice to Experian and Equifax data and CallCredit to stop them collecting and processing your personal data.

see the CAG surlyBonds threads and coments on how to do that including this
http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk...d-removal.html

it might even be a good thing if Alexander can get hold of Surely,he's been absent from CAG for a while now so it might be hard to find him, but im sure
it would be well werth the effort, and make good use of your growing lords and EU contact lists between the two of you on stopping this unlawful interception subject.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05...ore/page3.html
Explores stream of unconsciousness

Page: < Prev 1 2 3
By Cade Metz in San Francisco → More by this author
Published Monday 12th May 2008 12:02 GMT

page3
"
According to Ari Schwartz, the vice president and chief operating officer of the The Center for Democracy and Technology, a well-known privacy watchdog, this sort of "email append" is common.

"Experian, for instance, offers an email append service, so if a company provides your email address, Experian can provide your household information," Schwartz told us. "Companies will say 'Sign up for our mailing list,' and they can go out and get all of your other information."

Experian owns HitWise, a comScore competitor, but it seems that HitWise doesn't collect quite as much personal information that comScore does. HitWise licenses most of its data from ISPs, and the company says this ISP data is kept completely anonymous. But more on that later.

We're looking at comScore. The difference with comScore is that it can match Experian data with your internet habits.
Mouse movements and keystrokes

Once comScore knows who's in your house, its software can track the behavior of each individual user. Scrutinizing mouse movements and key stokes, it can easily distinguish between you and your wife and your daughter. "We can attribute over 90 per cent of the behavior to a specific person - though there is some ramp-up time, from a day to a couple of weeks," Chasin said.


Again, this only happens in certain cases.

The company tracks individual users for its main "Media Metrix" research service, but not with other services, including qSearch, specifically for search data, and comScore Marketer, for marketing info. These track at the machine level. Each month, 150,000 American users and 45,000 UK users play into the company's Media Metrix data.
Josh Chasin

But even with Media Metrix, Josh Chasin says, comScore does not share personal data with outside companies.

.....
"

"Well, he does acknowledge that the company may share your name or address with an outside firm in order to nab that Experian and Equifax data. "

[Rchivist]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHanff

I have made my contact in Google aware that there is some talk from webmasters with regards blocking Googlebot in robots.txt in order to try and stop Phorm doing the dirty. I expect they will not be very happy with the news

Alexander Hanff

Campaign to get webmasters to post concerns to Google is under way.

The route for filling out a Google "contact us" form is as follows:

Sing into your Google account then go to Help Centre, and put "legal" into the search box, (All Google Help) then choose the option "how can I inform Google about a legal matter?" and then choose the options "contact us" at the top of the next page, then choose "Report a legal matter" and "Google's Trademark" which will result in a Contact Us form (not easy to find Contact Forms on Google!).

Then tell them about Phorm and how Phorm are equating themselves with Google and using Google robots.txt declarations to imply consent from webmasters, and that you may have to consider blocking Google from your site as that seems to be the only way of blocking Phorm according to the statements that BT and Phorm have made in public (and also the ones they have declined to make, like declaring a user agent, or declaring how Phorm/Webwise may be banned via robots.txt.

Indicate that you feel this may damage their business model.

I haven't posted links as it is a signed-in site, so my links probably wouldn't work.

And do post on the blogs along with me and jelv.
http://groups.google.com/group/Googl...90386b9ad852d0

and don't forget to rank our posts if you agree with them.

This is a timely moment to be raising the "webmaster concerns" profile of Webwise with Google management and also Google Webmaster Tools users.

[AlexanderHanff]

Originally Posted by R Jones

Campaign to get webmasters to post concerns to Google is under way.

The route for filling out a Google "contact us" form is as follows:

Sing into your Google account then go to Help Centre, and put "legal" into the search box, (All Google Help) then choose the option "how can I inform Google about a legal matter?" and then choose the options "contact us" at the top of the next page, then choose "Report a legal matter" and "Google's Trademark" which will result in a Contact Us form (not easy to find Contact Forms on Google!).

Then tell them about Phorm and how Phorm are equating themselves with Google and using Google robots.txt declarations to imply consent from webmasters, and that you may have to consider blocking Google from your site as that seems to be the only way of blocking Phorm according to the statements that BT and Phorm have made in public (and also the ones they have declined to make, like declaring a user agent, or declaring how Phorm/Webwise may be banned via robots.txt.

Indicate that you feel this may damage their business model.

I haven't posted links as it is a signed-in site, so my links probably wouldn't work.

And do post on the blogs along with me and jelv.
http://groups.google.com/group/Googl...90386b9ad852d0

and don't forget to rank our posts if you agree with them.

This is a timely moment to be raising the "webmaster concerns" profile of Webwise with Google management and also Google Webmaster Tools users.

I have been in some discussions with a friend at Google this morning and have been passing on the concerns raised here. It is definitely being discussed so hopefully I might have some official feedback in the not too distant future.

Alexander Hanff

[Dephormation]

Originally Posted by pippincp

Haven't read all the thread as it's too long but this may have been mentioned before. If you use Firefox as your browser then download the dephormation add on available. Just Google for it.

Hi - don't rely on Dephormation. It doesn't give you much in the way of protection (I wrote it). Its a fig leaf.

If you are relying on Dephormation you should move to a new ISP at the first opportunity.

Pete

[windowcleaner]

I was looking at a simple query response from google & saw that it used chunked and gzip compression - wonder how phorm is going to handle that on the fly?

Http header

Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Content-Encoding: gzip

[OF1975]

"There has been a great deal of commotion recently about Phorm, a company that aims to help advertisers better target consumers by monitoring their web browsing habits. At first glance, what Phorm is proposing seems absolutely outrageous and quite possibly illegal under UK data protection laws. Take a closer look, and Phorm’s technology is more subtle than it might appear , but no less dangerous and insidious for all that."

Full story here:

http://www.itweek.co.uk/itweek/comme...rs-put-3986634

I added a comment at the bottom but I don't think the editors have had chance to clear it yet.

I just had my 8 weekly infusion at the hospital for my arthritis so will be resting a lot today and tomorrow so probably wont post much but by thursday I will be back to normal speed and all fired up and ready to go. Keep up the good work everyone.

[OldBear]

I just done myself out of 50 quid because of Phorm; all because I choose to spread the word.

Just got a call from a 'survey group' working on behalf of BT asking about BT Vision. It seems they are looking for people who have both BT Vision and Sky, and a child over 10 years old in the household.

They want to interview families who have this combination at their homes for an hour, (for which they are willing to pay £50); this is then followed up by attending a 'focus group' in a west end hotel for a couple of hours to discuss BT Vision.

I told the lady (who was vey nice btw) that I was planning to leave BT when my current contract was up at the end of July, so would not have BT Vision after that date. She, of course, asked, "Why?" I told her all about Phorm/ BT Webwise, about their evil plans to intercept our browing to feed us useless ads, and all about the illegal trials BT had carried out. She was appalled, and said she understood my stance.

Before ending the call she asked me to spell out Phorm for her so she could write it down and tell her office colleagues and friends about it.

Having a BT 'survey group' visit for an hour: £50
Getting a slap up meal and a nice night out at a top west end hotel: more dosh.

Spreading the word about BT/Phorm/Webwise: Priceless!

Why? Because it's worth it!

OB

[pip08456]

Naah! You should've gone for the £50.00 and told them face to face.

[Rchivist]

Someone over on BT Beta forums reminded me that Yahoo! are "content" partners of BT in their ISP role, and might have a commercial interest both in the advertising revenue that Phorm is attempting to wrest away from search engines and in the issue of robots.txt abuse by Phorm. I've sent in this to Yahoo! via their Site Explorer feedback (their equivalent of Google's Webmaster Tools)

Quote
As a Webmaster I am concerned about what my UK based ISP (BTYahoo!/BT
Broadband) have told me about their plans to implement Webwise, a
technology patented by former spyware company 121Media, now known as
Phorm.Inc.
121 Media were formerly responsible for PeopleonPage, and for placing
difficult to remove rootkits on people's computers.

This technology uses Layer 7 interception of a users complete http
traffic to profile/mirror their browsing behaviour, and then use the
information to serve up targeted ads, based on an anonymised, cookie-
based UID placed on the users computer. It also involves the forging
of a cookie, purporting to come from the website visited, even if that
website has a privacy policy that says it does not set cookies.

It is similar but not identical to the US company NebuAd technology.

There has been relatively little debate about the isses this
technology raises for webmasters.

It also raises issues for the major search engines, and I wonder if you have any comment on a commercial partner of yours - BT plc, being involved commercially with a technology which is designed (and promoted by its CEO Kent Ertugrul) to take business and revenue AWAY from search engines, and which is in effect a direct competitor to Yahoo! Search..

When I allow a search engine to spider my site, I am aware that the search engine allows me to use specific user agent declarations to limit where it can go, and it respects those declarations. The end result of my site being spidered by Yahoo! Slurp is that traffic/visitors are driven to my site and I benefit.

When Phorm/Webwise visits my site, it intercepts and profiles the browsing habits of my visitor, profiles the unique data exchange they have with my site, without my informed consent, then develops targeted ads to that visitor which will result in them being driven AWAY from my site. If this model proves successful it is likely to reduce Yahoo!'s income from adverts and paid links.

BT have stated that Webwise/Phorm will assume implied consent of
webmasters, to profile copyrighted web content, copy it, and exploit
it for commercial gain IF THE WEBMASTER CONSENTS TO A GOOGLE SPIDER
visiting their site.

Now it may be that they have got this wrong, and they may in actual fact be relying on generic spidering prohibition (or its absence) in robots.txt to decide whether they can infer consent to visit from the webmaster.In which case it becomes of interest not only to Google, but to ALL operators of commercial search engines. I wonder how you feel about Phorm using the permission given to search engines to decide whether Phorm/Webwise may snoop on a visit to a site?

We are still in the process of trying to ascertain this from your commercial partner BT plc

How do you feel about webmasters feeling that they need to begin blocking search engines in order to protect themselves from Webwise?

Of course the major search engines allow and even assist webmasters to
exclude their robot from spidering sites by the use of specific user
agent strings. Webwise will neither set a user agent string, nor
permit itself to be specifically excluded via robots.txt.

I am happy to provide any further information you may require on Phorm/Webwise and their tie-up with your commercial partner BT plc.
Quote ends

Anyone else want to join in?

The more we can get the BT phones ringing the less time they have to roll out those trials.

Hello Yahoo! here, can I have a word about Webwise please....?
Hello Google here, can I have a word about Webwise please....?
Hello ICO here, can I have a word about Webwise please.....?
Hello ISPA here, can I have a word about deep packet inspection please.....?
Hello Lord Northesk here, can I have a word .... etc etc.
You get the idea!

Hello Kent Ertugrul here, What the ?@~XX"$%&***!!~~@: OIX is going on?

---------- Post added at 17:12 ---------- Previous post was at 17:11 ----------

Originally Posted by pippincp

Naah! You should've gone for the £50.00 and told them face to face.

Could tell the whole focus group (after the meal).

[OldBear]

Originally Posted by pippincp

Naah! You should've gone for the £50.00 and told them face to face.

Yeah, now that I think about it... ah well.

Actually, I couldn't have done it anyway, due to work commitments.

[Dephormation]

Originally Posted by OldBear

I just done myself out of 50 quid because of Phorm; all because I choose to spread the word.

Just got a call from a 'survey group' working on behalf of BT asking about BT Vision. It seems they are looking for people who have both BT Vision and Sky, and a child over 10 years old in the household.

They want to interview families who have this combination at their homes for an hour, (for which they are willing to pay £50);

So using BT's own metrics then

1 hour betraying my privacy = £50.

Where as Phorm want to study my habits for the rest of my natural life. At those rates, I reckon they should cough up

30 years (fingers crossed, E&OE) x £50 = £13,140,000

If you think of all those hours of 'privacy value' you retain, I think you'd have to agree you make the right choice if you avoid Phorm

Pete.

[Rchivist]

Originally Posted by Dephormation

So using BT's own metrics then

1 hour betraying my privacy = £50.

Where as Phorm want to study my habits for the rest of my natural life. At those rates, I reckon they should cough up

30 years (fingers crossed, E&OE) x £50 = £13,140,000

If you think of all those hours of 'privacy value' you retain by opting out of Phorm, I think you'd have to agree you make the right choice if you avoid Phorm.

Pete.

You're still trying to work out how to get to the Bahamas aren't you!?

[jelv]

I now have absolute confirmation that it is googlebot and googlebot only that Phorm looks for in robots.txt:

Email from me to Emma Sanderson of BT:

Emma,

Sorry to be a pain, but just to be absolutely 100% clear on this, if I had the following robots.txt file:

User-agent: msnbot
Disallow:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

visitors would not be profiled because googlebot is not allowed.

Regards

John

Reply from Emma Sanderson:

Mr Elvin

In this scenario, the page wouldn't be profiled during its transmission to the user who requested it, because with exception of msn no other bots are allowed.

Regards
Emma

[Rchivist]

Originally Posted by jelv

I now have absolute confirmation that it is googlebot and googlebot only that Phorm looks for in robots.txt:

Email from me to Emma Sanderson of BT:


Reply from Emma Sanderson:

There is still wriggle room. She's said "because with the exception of msn no OTHER bots are allowed". She hasn't said - "the only thing we look at is whether googlebot is allowed".

It's like trying to wrestle with a mud covered eel.