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

[Dephormation]

Hello all,

I'd appreciate your feedback on a new version of Dephormation (v1.8)

This prerelease version adds experimental Nebuad suppression (based on Mel's analysis of the faireagle a/b cookies on ISP review).

I've also added in this version a detailed browser state logging feature that reveals redirects used by these systems to create cross domain cookies, without needing a proxy server. (Click on tools/error console, and click the 'i messages' button to see a full log of browser state changes).

Features removed, I've taken out code which created a webwise_status cookie. I think this has been redundant for some time, it was created by early versions of the Webwise site when you opted out (but until Phorm publish their specification...).

Please give the code a whirl and let me know where I've mucked up. If I don't hear about show stoppers I'll release it in a few days. I'd be particularly interested in feedback from USA with respect to Nebuad.

Please send me a PM to say you've downloaded and installed, so I know its being tested.

http://www.dephormation.org.uk/prere...phormation.xpi

IMPORTANT: THE ONLY WAY TO PROTECT YOUR CONNECTION FROM DPI IS SWITCHING ISP. DEPHORMATION WILL NOT PROTECT YOU.

Pete

[Phormic Acid]

Originally Posted by davethejag

I do not know if this has been posted already, if it has I apologise.

http://webworkerdaily.com/2008/05/17...s-think-again/

I haven’t seen it mentioned before. That APML’s another specification that’s too complicated and will be completely ignored by any business that doesn’t like the idea. In those respects, it looks like another P3P, which will make it as useful as a chocolate teapot. It also replaces boolean values with numerical ones. This is a concern I have about Phorm’s future; that profiles will be come increasingly like fingerprints.

Martin Smith is a member of the advertising community looking for something like APML. He has expressed serious concerns over the type of behavioural targeting being offered by Phorm:

Smart Targeting Respects Consumers’ Privacy

Just because you have the capability to do something technically doesn’t mean you should.

[AlexanderHanff]

Originally Posted by Toto

Indeed, its a staggerng amount of data, but I noticed this comment.



Now, IP allocation is not Internet activity as such. I always leave my router on, but turn off my PC's, so no browsing activity is going on. Does the above mean that this new law will require ISP's to also collect what URL's were visited in the last 12 months, and what email communications were made?

I hope not, but if it is true, Phorm will be a minor inconvenience compared to this little nugget.

I have looked at the actual directive itself, you can get a PDF of it from here and it isn't that clear if I am honest. At the very least it would seem to indicate, as was mentioned in The Register article, that most ISP's are already doing this, the article therefore just appears to give a maximum time frame for the retention of such data. Whether it requires the storage of sites visited is not clear, that's one for the legal boffins here to decide.

Again this is not new. This directive became public knowledge way back in 2004/2005 era and yes, as I stated in my first response they are required to log all web sites you visit and the headers of all emails. But, and I reiterate this despite what some people seems to believe to the contrary, the public authorities must obtain a warrant to access this information and it doesn't contain any contents.

Quite how you think this is worse than Phorm who don't obtain a warrant and who read all the content as well as just the headers, is beyond my comprehension.

Alexander Hanff

---------- Post added at 22:14 ---------- Previous post was at 22:08 ----------

Originally Posted by Chroma

I regularly email people in the Middle east, China, Korea, the US and Russia.

How long do i have before my door kets kicked in and im detained as a terrorist?
Or do i need to become a Muslim before this will take place?

I mean if there are logs of this im certain it would look like i was part of a terror cell rather than just an average citizen.

If you were a risk you would have already been picked up by Echelon. The new data retention laws (although bad) are not an open book, warrants are required and they can only used in the prevention/detection of real suspected crimes not just some random search "in case" there might be a crime in there somewhere.

Now don't get me wrong I have been speaking out against the EU Data Retention Directive since its inception several years ago but the public are the ones responsible for this legislation being passed. If people had been more concerned for privacy back then as they are now, then the correct procedures could have been followed to try and block it in the first place.

But to compare this to Phorm is ludicrous, Phorm is far far more sinister.

Also this logging is easy to avoid. First you just need to run your own email (or use a 3rd party email outside of the EU as opposed to your ISP email). That deals with the email logging issue. Secondly web logging can be avoided by using a VPN. Not ideal solutions, but at least options.

Alexander Hanff

[Chroma]

I dont feel that it is worse than phorm by a long chalk but it is pretty bad, i've personaly got nothing to hide and have no real fear percieved or otherwise regarding the email issue, but i know people just as ligitimate as i am who could quite easily (due to their ethnicity and background) become targeted as deviants, this is what concerns me.

However i would wholeheartedly agree that while theres interesting debate to be had over this new piece of information (atleast new to myself) it would serve no real use doing so in this thread and would serve only to deviate from the primary objective of making sure Phorm equipment gets eaten by those wierd texas "raspberry" ants.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle3941545.ece

[AlexanderHanff]

Originally Posted by Chroma

I dont feel that it is worse than phorm by a long chalk but it is pretty bad, i've personaly got nothing to hide and have no real fear percieved or otherwise regarding the email issue, but i know people just as ligitimate as i am who could quite easily (due to their ethnicity and background) become targeted as deviants, this is what concerns me.

However i would wholeheartedly agree that while theres interesting debate to be had over this new piece of information (atleast new to myself) it would serve no real use doing so in this thread and would serve only to deviate from the primary objective of making sure Phorm equipment gets eaten by those wierd texas "raspberry" ants.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle3941545.ece

Exactly, the point remains that there is nothing we can do about the EU Directive, it was passed years ago and has been creeping into British Law for same amount of time. To turn that around (if even possible) would take probably decades.

Phorm is a different story, we can still stop Phorm and in my opinion -must- still stop Phorm, otherwise we allow corporations to go even further without any accountability than the public authorities are currently able to.

Alexander Hanff

[popper]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05...maden_privacy/
Privacy? Forget it. Sell your brain and desires to the highest bidder

Web $9.95

Page: 1 2 3 Next >
By Ashlee Vance in Santa Clara → More by this author
Rate this story
Published Sunday 18th May 2008 21:14 GMT

---------- Post added at 22:55 ---------- Previous post was at 22:50 ----------

http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2...ges-all-alike/
"
Twisty little passages, all alike

May 18th, 2008 at 19:29 UTC by Richard Clayton
Last month, on the 4th April, I published a document describing how the Phorm system worked and blogged about what I thought of the scheme.

The document had been run past Phorm’s technical people to ensure it was correct, but — it turns out — there were still a handful of errors in it.

A number of helpful people pointed out that I’d misdescribed third-party cookies (which didn’t matter much because Phorm specifically uses first-party cookies), and I’d managed to reference RFC2695 rather than RFC2965 !
....
The Phorm system does some of its tracking magic by redirecting browser requests using HTTP 307 responses.

When this was first explained to me at the meeting with Phorm there were two redirections (a scan of my notes is here), but having thought about this for a while, I asked for it to be explained to me again later on, and it turned out that I had previously been misled, and that there were in fact three redirections (here’s my notes of this part of the meeting).

It now turns out, following my further emails with Phorm, that there are in fact FOUR redirections occurring! This is not because my notes are rubbish — but because Phorm have managed to recall more of the detail of their own system!
...
"
"

[Chroma]

Originally Posted by popper

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05...maden_privacy/
Privacy? Forget it. Sell your brain and desires to the highest bidder

Web $9.95

Page: 1 2 3 Next >
By Ashlee Vance in Santa Clara → More by this author
Rate this story
Published Sunday 18th May 2008 21:14 GMT

RED DWARF NONSENSE, the toaster must die.

Originally Posted by Chroma

RED DWARF NONSENSE, the toaster must die.

Wouldn't disabling a UPnP Service completely bugger a "smart toaster"?

[Phormic Acid]

Originally Posted by popper

Twisty little passages, all alike

Thanks very much for that. I think it’s more likely that this is Phorm modifying their system in the light of criticism. If they had thought that people blocking webwise.net cookies would be an exception, they may have been happy for those people to incur a significant performance penalty. That’s a normal strategy for optimising computer systems; shift the cost to the exceptional circumstances. They may have realised that either many more people will be blocking webwise.net cookies or that they will get too much criticism for ruining the browsing of those people who do, and have therefore shifted some of the cost back on to everyone else.

[Wildie]

Or they have`nt a clue what it does how it does it and what happens after, hell the system belongs in china and any other country thats censors the internet.

---------- Post added at 09:11 ---------- Previous post was at 09:00 ----------

Just wondering, what would the thing do with Valve`s Steam front end? after all its a browser and I cannot see them be pleased to see their front end changed with adverts from a unpaid 3rd party.

[Dephormation]

Originally Posted by Wildie

Just wondering, what would the thing do with Valve`s Steam front end? after all its a browser and I cannot see them be pleased to see their front end changed with adverts from a unpaid 3rd party.

... or happy about the content presented through Steam being copied and used to sell computer games by other manufacturers.

Its an interesting point. I'll check tonight what user-agent Steam uses. If its anything like OpenOffice, Microsoft Office etc it will be identical to Internet Explorer, and Phorm will not be able to help themselves but scam the content (which would include lists of your online friends for example).

The other thought I have about apps like Steam, how do you think you are going to express your wish to opt in/out? How is that going to be stored by Steam? (does it retain cookies for third parties?)

Pete.

[davethejag]

Good Morning All, Just seen this, I don't think there is anything new in it but here it is. -

http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3629536

Regards to all. davethejag

[Wildie]

Originally Posted by davethejag

Good Morning All, Just seen this, I don't think there is anything new in it but here it is. -

http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3629536

Regards to all. davethejag

Nowt new but makes you laugh though, they went and warned their customers where the others had not and the thing really hitting the fan, also see how they avoid to answer the questions asked, makes you wonder if they all have no idea how it works, or they do and refusing to tell as it`s too nastie and only fit for censorship, the ad side is a by product of it`s true means.


oh there is other game apps that run their own ad`s as well, EA for one.

what about the playstion3 and xbox360 the former can surf the web.

[bluecar1]

an intersting reply from BT today

************

I am sorry that you feel this way and can confirm that you will not be affected by webwise/phorm.

This is only available as an option to customers like yourself. If you do not change to this option then you will not be affected by webwise/Phorm therefore no changes to your contractual agreement.

The people that do opt for this option will have a modified contract that they will be made aware of before they take up this option.

If you should have any further queries please do not hesitate to contact us again via e-mail.

************

i am pressing for more details on the process and if cookies are still on the opt-out process

but BT seem to be backing off a bit from phorm,

i am also waiting final details of buying out my contract from them, whether one off payment or still monthly on my phone bill until the end of the contract

[Robertus]

Any news on whether VM will ditch it?

I haven't read the thread properly, sorrry