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

[Dephormation]

Received from BT

The webcast will be solely of the Chairman's and Chief Executive's presentations, not the formal business of the meeting which follows those presentations. It would not be appropriate to attempt to listen in on a private meeting by means of technology aimed at helping the hard of hearing. And in any case, the range of the loop does not extend outside the hall.

---------- Post added at 23:16 ---------- Previous post was at 23:13 ----------

The advertisers on iii, Dianomioffers, have published their whois data;

Dianomioffers who is

Same address as the Embassy Of The Republic Of Georgia?!

[Wildie]

Originally Posted by bluecar1

thats the revenue for premium targeted adverts, not the prabably lower income from the default adverts

even 10% of that 8.5million more than covers hosting / power costs just

it then depends on cost of maintenance by phorm as to whether it is economically viable

well is it with opt IN ?

http://www.dephormation.org.uk/

The Dephormation Add On ensures that your decision to permanently opt out of Phorm profiling cannot be undone in Firefox.

I have this running and I keep getting OIX warnings on this site..............

[Graham M]

Have merged your post into the monster thread Irvy, I'm sure the information is in here somewhere and we're trying to keep everything on track and together. Cheers.

[madslug]

Originally Posted by tarka

Even if they say they have people signed up to OIX, without delivering adverts there is zero revenue.

I have always read the OIX as being a tracking script, whether you are with a phormed ISP or not. Just the ISP customers will be tracked a whole lot more.

As tracking scripts have access to the browser DOM they can pick up little bits of info like which site you were on before you visited the current page - url content can give away some info about your interests too, i.e. one advert can track you for the current page content plus keywords in url of previous page viewed.

With so many dynamic scripts now putting the title into the url, that can give a fair bit of information.

Originally Posted by Graham M

Have merged your post into the monster thread Irvy, I'm sure the information is in here somewhere and we're trying to keep everything on track and together. Cheers.

NP thanks, just trying to help as im sure everyone else is

---------- Post added at 00:17 ---------- Previous post was at 00:13 ----------

Originally Posted by madslug

I have always read the OIX as being a tracking script, whether you are with a phormed ISP or not. Just the ISP customers will be tracked a whole lot more.

As tracking scripts have access to the browser DOM they can pick up little bits of info like which site you were on before you visited the current page - url content can give away some info about your interests too, i.e. one advert can track you for the current page content plus keywords in url of previous page viewed.

With so many dynamic scripts now putting the title into the url, that can give a fair bit of information.

I seemed to have that very problem on this site earlier, I made a post about something (with the dephormation add-on disabled) and the URL I typed was altered in some way (i had been on ebay earlier and the URL I posted took ppl there)

Very weird, I will be extra careful in the future...

[Tezcatlipoca]

AFAIK that was due to the auctionads mod... it saw your link for thepiratebay contained "ebay" & tried to turn it into an auctionads referral link... never happened before AFAIK, so may be a quirk of vB 3.7.x. Something for Paul M to check/fix.

@ Moderators - appreciation society checking back in on the monster thread. Thank you for returning this thread.
It is a valuable resource for the purpose of anti-phorm technology, not only for the content contributed by all so far, but also for the gathered readership and supporters. Yes there are more dedicated sites we all advertise in our own way but this site I think is the biggest focal point for 'the massive'.
I personally have introduced hundreds via my chosen profession and family/friends around the globe, some of which at the oposite end of the earth, and indirectly via those probably many more. To lose this as a point of contact (even though it is becoming fairly unmanageable) would be a great shame and would scatter much of the support.
I think most of us realise you as moderators have a bit of a nightmare keeping track of this which has become more serious than your average daily gripes on broadband speed, and a hell of a lot more political with potential threats and deceipts. But please, if you are going to get heavy, wipe the individual, not the thread.
Thank you again.
And apologies if this detracts from whatever has been said whilst typing this post, I have only just caught up again

[Privacy_Matters]

Hi Guys

Due to the Finance involved, I cannot attend the Demo (4x everything - its proven far too much)

If anyone who is attending would like to PM me, who is willing to contact me at a regular basis, I hope to create a Blog as things happen.

I will copy all the details into ALL the relevant Threads covering the Phorm Debate.

Sammy

[bluecar1]

good to see those of us who want MAC codes are not the only ones getting the "our systems are down and we can't process your request" message from BT look at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07..._wont_connect/ seems thay need to get some reliable computers, or get some decent switches (preferably not layer 7 from phorm) to give them a reliable network, i also see a standard response
*******
"expect normal system service to resume shortly".

This looks like pushing the definition of "shortly" pretty hard. We called again today and BT had no better timescale to offer.
**********

does this use of "shortly" sound familar, the trials will start "shortly"

peter

[Dephormation]

I've uploaded the Home Office FoI responses received so far to Dephormation

See here for details.

The incomplete FoI response is subject to a formal internal review, which may not complete until September.

Originally Posted by Matt D

AFAIK that was due to the auctionads mod... it saw your link for thepiratebay contained "ebay" & tried to turn it into an auctionads referral link... never happened before AFAIK, so may be a quirk of vB 3.7.x. Something for Paul M to check/fix.

Nothing to do with vb 3.7, but it does look like a small quirk of the auction ads mod.

[MovedGoalPosts]

Discussion of the ebay adchoice system should continue http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/25...ng-system.html

Recent posts on this matter have been moved to that thread.

[Florence]

I will be unable to attend hospital appointment it has only taken 2 years to reach this far and would hate to ask them to change it.
I will then be away for a few days so lets keep this on topic..

I will be working on the transcript again today sop all being well and no more uninvited guests when done will upload and post a link to it.
Alex if you could quickly check it all incase we missed the odd word just to be sure sin ce you were there and mioght notice if we picked up a word wrong.

Wish he would use some smaller words gof where did he get some of his words...

[madslug]

Thanks to a post at nodpi for this link. An interesting read about the campaigners at
http://www.samknows.com/broadband/ne...ition-400.html

KE "We actually protect privacy better than anyone out there but because we raised the debate there has been a vocal minority which has attracted media attention that don't understand what we do and misrepresent us."

"We then see what sites they look at so we can understand what they are interested in. We store the things they are interested in, not the actual sites...."

Also, "We'd love Phorm to join us and they've introduced themselves to us but they're not a member and they're not an applicant," reveals IASH chairman, James Aitken. - Internet Advertising Sale Houses (IASH)

And, is the BT protest being written off before it has even started?
"Against this background Phorm and BT executives will no doubt be interested to see if a planned demonstration against BT's intended roll out of the technology "in the next few weeks" goes ahead tomorrow at its AGM."

It never ceases to amaze me. KE seems to have completely forgotten what the equipment installed by the ISP is doing and is capable of doing. How does he keep getting the wrong end of the whole argument?

If someone had talked the ISPs into popping up a survey page asking visitors to the ISP's site their general interests and getting them to tick a box to agree to accept a cookie and have ads related to their interests popping up around the internet in exchange for a commission percentage to the ISP, then that person would be being hailed as a hero of privacy and opt-in choice. Lots of other sites would also be clambering to host the profitable little pop-up on their sites too. So close, yet so far.

[And, if anybody does set up this business model: you read it here first and I want my share of the profits for providing the idea.]
Oops, I am forgetting. The internet used to be full of annoying little pop-ups that resulted in advertising scripts following us around the internet and popping up even more little pop-ups full of adverts that we did not dare go anywhere near in case they downloaded a rootkit onto our computers.

It takes humans a long time to evolve.
First we bought newspapers because we wanted news. Then newspapers started to subsidise the cost by carrying ads in the blank spaces. People were happy because no one wanted to buy a paper full of white space and the ads were a way for businesses to share their news and keep down the cost of the newspaper.
Then the internet came along and we discovered that websites carried news/information about products that we were interested in and if we were really responsive to that information we may even have gone so far as to look at their advertisement showing us what price they sold the product at. Yes, we actively went looking for these ads and search engines evolved to help us find them.
Then some fool decided to fill our faces with ads that we were not looking for and we have been blocking them ever since.