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Virgin Media Phorm Webwise Adverts [Updated: See Post No. 1, 77, 102 & 797]
View Poll Results: Will you be opting out of the Virgin Ad Deal?
Yes, Definitely. 958 95.51%
No, I am quite happy to share my surfing habits with anyone. 45 4.49%
Voters: 1003. You may not vote on this poll

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Old 25-07-2008, 00:59   #12691
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Re: Virgin Media Phorm Webwise Adverts [Updated: See Post No. 1, 77, 102 & 797]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter N View Post
Has anyone just asked VM if they've conducted any trials or installed any equipment?
Oh yes. Yes indeedy. And they deny everything.

Then they revealed that they had done a 'lab' trial. But they won't reveal what content was used to test that lab trial.

And the transparent proxies they were using up until 2007, or at least, the ones Alex Brown denied explicitly in 2006 but VM now admit were present, were nothing to do with Phorm. Supposedly.
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Old 25-07-2008, 01:10   #12692
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Re: Virgin Media Phorm Webwise Adverts [Updated: See Post No. 1, 77, 102 & 797]

Funny that.

Perhaps they didn't inphorm their staff cos it was a low level trial that only involved a few hundred thousand people.
 
Old 25-07-2008, 01:18   #12693
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Re: Virgin Media Phorm Webwise Adverts [Updated: See Post No. 1, 77, 102 & 797]

If i dont hear back in the next 20ish days im going to enquire about legal procedings i gave them long enough imo.
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Old 25-07-2008, 01:36   #12694
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Re: Virgin Media Phorm Webwise Adverts [Updated: See Post No. 1, 77, 102 & 797]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rob M View Post
I'm gonna step in at this point (probably making myself even more unpopular in the process ) and say that I tend to agree. My suggestion would be that the whole technical discussion of tracerouting etc should be held in a different thread to avoid diluting this one and making it impossible to pick out the facts pertinent to the Phorm discussion.

If people then want to go away and spend the next 6 months tracerouting every connection that their systems make until they find something Phorm related then that's fine, and I'll look forward to hearing about it in this thread when there's something conclusive to hear
I certainly won't be doing that for the next 6 months Rob ;-)
I'm just a techno-semi-illiterate and it seemed a good chance to briefly pick up on something that arose.
As a BT customer who has been lied to and whose PII has been compromised by BT inadequacies I am deeply suspicious of anything they say, and wish to forearm myself. I think questions on this forum about how to understand, recognise and interpret BT network traceroutes are very relevant.
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Old 25-07-2008, 01:47   #12695
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Re: Virgin Media Phorm Webwise Adverts [Updated: See Post No. 1, 77, 102 & 797]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dephormation View Post
Oh yes. Yes indeedy. And they deny everything.

Then they revealed that they had done a 'lab' trial. But they won't reveal what content was used to test that lab trial.

And the transparent proxies they were using up until 2007, or at least, the ones Alex Brown denied explicitly in 2006 but VM now admit were present, were nothing to do with Phorm. Supposedly.
I relied heavily on Robin Walkers web pages for quite some time pre 2006/7. As far as I was aware we did have transparent proxies. For a very long period of time my default proxy would not ever let me go to www.ebuyer.com without blank pages and very slow browsing. Every other website in the world worked fine as far as I was concerned. I could get around it by hard wiring another NTL proxy into my browser rather than my default. I reported it to NTL many times and spent many an hour trying to explain that their cache of ebuyer.com was corrupt to their support to no avail. (Their scripted replies at the time became very tedious!). Eventually I actually reported the problem directly (although sarcastically) to Ebuyer themselves and it got fixed about a month later. Co-incidence I wondered at the time?

With Phorm/WebWise in place a rogue operator could actually have the power of putting rivals off-line if they so desired.

Hence the great need for accountability.
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Old 25-07-2008, 02:07   #12696
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Re: Virgin Media Phorm Webwise Adverts [Updated: See Post No. 1, 77, 102 & 797]

We are not currently using behavioral targeting tools, either through NebuAd or with any other vendor."

That statement didn't come from Virgin Media although it is rather similar.

It actually came from an American ISP called Embarq on 26th June 2008. This company has now been given until Monday to explain to Congress why it conducted secret trials on it's customers using DPI.

Funny that.
 
Old 25-07-2008, 08:04   #12697
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Re: Virgin Media Phorm Webwise Adverts [Updated: See Post No. 1, 77, 102 & 797]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dephormation View Post
Oh yes. Yes indeedy. And they deny everything.

Then they revealed that they had done a 'lab' trial. But they won't reveal what content was used to test that lab trial.

And the transparent proxies they were using up until 2007, or at least, the ones Alex Brown denied explicitly in 2006 but VM now admit were present, were nothing to do with Phorm. Supposedly.
A Poster on the VM.Feedback NG, a few months ago, suggested that the 'Lab' Trial had taken place in 'Lab 3', and also suggested that 'Lab 3' is an area in the North of England - not a Business Premises, but a Residential Area full of paying customers!!! This has not yet been confirmed - so any ex Telewest/NTL/VM Employees wish to confirm/deny this?

Also, I experienced a considerable amount of difficulties with browsing during the end of last year, and the beginning of this year. This including webpages being stripped of all content over and above Plain text and Hyperlinks - whereas there were no issues with either the connection (visibly), browser or PC - and the issues stopped as suddenly as they started!!! Additionally the issues included a great deal of 'hanging' requiring an 'F5' or 'Ctl-R' Refresh/page reload - with a substantial amount of these leading to 404s. Oh and one more thing - particularly on Facebook and MySpace, I found alot of Visible JScript on User Profiles; this was in January/February this year - and I did not take Screen Prints as I thought this (as it may well have been) was an issue with the two named sites.

Then, I had noticed that the routing has clearly changed whilst browsing, ie most of my traffic would be routed quickly to the net, however there are additional hops; and my traffic now mostly goes through English VM Exchanges opposed to the most direct route (I live in Scotland)!! Of course this may be due to consolidation within the Network, however the questions I asked of VM have not been, or attempted to be, answered.

Of course this all may be the result of innocent actions within the VM Network, but then I ask why the secrecy?

---------- Post added at 07:04 ---------- Previous post was at 06:44 ----------

Quote:
Originally Posted by lucevans View Post
Unfortunately, the freedom of information act only applies to public bodies. Private companies are under no obligation to disclose anything they don't want to unless ordered to do so by a court or their particular industry regulator. Somehow, I don't think Virgin Media is going to volunteer any information to the public domain on the subject of it's involvement with Phorm...
FOI maybe - but for Customers of VM who feel there may have been issues, and wish for the details, they have every right to access every piece of information pertaining to their account, via the DPA.
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Old 25-07-2008, 09:27   #12698
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Wink American data pimper exposes ad equation

From EL Reg

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07...s_nebuad_test/#

Quote:
As it turns out, Embarq tested the technology on about 26,000 broadband customers in Gardner, Kansas over the course of about two weeks. During that time, only 15 customers opt-ed out.

This was because they just made a change to the 5000 word T&C's so only 15
people spotted it.

This was the model phorm was based on , now its opt-in they will be stuffed.
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Old 25-07-2008, 11:21   #12699
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Re: Virgin Media Phorm Webwise Adverts [Updated: See Post No. 1, 77, 102 & 797]

I have this posted on another forums and decided to share it with you guys I might even try sharing it with BT beta forums not sure how it will be taken since the recording of their indian tech support lasted 20 mins ..


Quote:
Originally Posted by me;
So would the six that have signed up be using Phorm/webwise?



Copyright comes in many forms if you copy any of it music, pictures, movies, books websites then this same rule should apply hope British Telecom and Virgin Media are reading this!

Webwise/phorm will copy copyrighted material from peoples websites this should also be covered by the agreement youi signed so how can it be legal pleases explain in a language all can read.
Let us look at things PRINTED in the public domains...

Books in Libraries they are copyrighted you can borrow them but you canot copy them without first contacting the author and requesting permission.
So why can British Telecom, Virgin Media copy websites without permission when they have put up that your method of harvesting key words from the site is not acceptable?
Why do they have to contact British Telecom to prove the domain name is theirs and have it blacklisted?
If British Telecom wish to phorm customers and some opt in them British Telecom needs to contact thousends of websites asking permission or obey the rule set out just for phorm/webwise not any other places bots since they might have been given permission many years ago when you had to request adding to their bot crawls.......
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Old 25-07-2008, 11:43   #12700
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Re: Virgin Media Phorm Webwise Adverts [Updated: See Post No. 1, 77, 102 & 797]

Just noticed on LSE £600,000 of Phorm stock changed hands late last night.
The new owner has since lost £60,000 on paper in less than 24 hrs.
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Old 25-07-2008, 11:59   #12701
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Re: Virgin Media Phorm Webwise Adverts [Updated: See Post No. 1, 77, 102 & 797]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Florence View Post
I have this posted on another forums and decided to share it with you guys I might even try sharing it with BT beta forums not sure how it will be taken since the recording of their indian tech support lasted 20 mins ..

the thing is the music industry have a big voice and big bucks behind them, the poor little backyard webmaster do a lot of it for a hobby and have no voice and little money so big business think they can treat us like dirt (thats the polite expression)

wonder if a few emails for FACT etc could enlighten them as they are the "Federation Against Copyright Theft"

and BT WebWise IS copyright theft using Phorm supplied Equipment and software, which if it goes ahead will also be used by Virgin Media and Talk Talk (AKA Carphone warehouse )

peter

---------- Post added at 10:59 ---------- Previous post was at 10:48 ----------

something else to throw into the mix,

look at http://www.out-law.com/page-9293

*****

"In the most recent of these three … the [USPTO] takes the position that process inventions generally are unpatentable unless they 'result in a physical transformation of an article' or are 'tied to a particular machine'," he wrote.

It has been assumed that software patents will survive this ruling because they are tied to a machine, since they cannot be useful without a computer on which to run.

But Duffy claims that more recent USPTO rulings say that a general purpose computer is not a machine in that sense, and that software is not patentable if it has to rely on a computer being the machine in that definition.

****

then later in the article

*****

The rules require first that an invention create a 'physical transformation of an article'. Duffy said that cannot be said to be true of Google's system

"The total output from the Google patent is just a mass of intangible data, and worse still it is intangible data about intangible documents. Simply put, there’s no 'physical,' no 'transformation,' and no 'article.'," wrote Duffy. "It seems impossible to imagine that a process would qualify where it only scores virtual documents by virtual links to other virtual documents."
*****

dose that not seem to be similar to the phorms system, so if my reading is correct that is phorms patents blown out the water!! and phorms patents are useless

so therefor they can't even hope for a takeover or buy out as they do not hold enforcable patents on their technology

interesting situation

peter
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Old 25-07-2008, 12:03   #12702
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Re: Virgin Media Phorm Webwise Adverts [Updated: See Post No. 1, 77, 102 & 797]

Quote:
Originally Posted by gnilddif View Post
I think questions on this forum about how to understand, recognise and interpret BT network traceroutes are very relevant.
gnilddif
I certainly think they're relevant if they can be shown to be directly linked to the discussion at hand.

However (comma) if you want to discuss the intricacies of learning how to use and interpret traceroute, or if you want some help understanding how and why it works, then we have a wonderful (and quite friendly, if sometimes a little mad) 'Networking' section of Cable Forum which is just perfect for that sort of discussion.

You might even find that some of the techies who hang out there haven't been following this thread, but are able to give you some great advice on the subject of traceroutes
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Old 25-07-2008, 12:46   #12703
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Re: Virgin Media Phorm Webwise Adverts [Updated: See Post No. 1, 77, 102 & 797]

After the music industry and 6 ISP's announced the plan to send letters to people who they 'suspect' of downloading music.

I sent my own letter to Emma, as I suspect that BT during the 2006/2007 tests of Phorm infringed my copyright of my website.

I have informed her that If Phorm is switched on, and my website is profiled, I will be billing BT for infringement, using the same level of proof the Music industry is using.

OH and I did seek legal advice through my Union membership which gives me free 30 minutes with a solicitor. I was told much the same as has been stated before by other members of this forum.

I have informed Emma that I have taken legal advice, and will be acting on that advice once Phorm is tested by the 10,000 in the first wave.

It will be interesting to see her reply. Her leegal advice VS my legal advice.
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Old 25-07-2008, 13:02   #12704
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Re: Virgin Media Phorm Webwise Adverts [Updated: See Post No. 1, 77, 102 & 797]

Quote:
Originally Posted by notophorm View Post
After the music industry and 6 ISP's announced the plan to send letters to people who they 'suspect' of downloading music.

I sent my own letter to Emma, as I suspect that BT during the 2006/2007 tests of Phorm infringed my copyright of my website.

I have informed her that If Phorm is switched on, and my website is profiled, I will be billing BT for infringement, using the same level of proof the Music industry is using.

OH and I did seek legal advice through my Union membership which gives me free 30 minutes with a solicitor. I was told much the same as has been stated before by other members of this forum.

I have informed Emma that I have taken legal advice, and will be acting on that advice once Phorm is tested by the 10,000 in the first wave.

It will be interesting to see her reply. Her leegal advice VS my legal advice.
She will ask you to send the name and proof the domian name is yours then they will add it to a black list to not be profiled, which is wrong it is upto BT to make sure they follow robot.txt or any legal on website the says Phorm is forbidden to harvest, phorm the website.
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Old 25-07-2008, 13:03   #12705
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Re: Virgin Media Phorm Webwise Adverts [Updated: See Post No. 1, 77, 102 & 797]

Quote:
Originally Posted by notophorm View Post
After the music industry and 6 ISP's announced the plan to send letters to people who they 'suspect' of downloading music.

I sent my own letter to Emma, as I suspect that BT during the 2006/2007 tests of Phorm infringed my copyright of my website.

I have informed her that If Phorm is switched on, and my website is profiled, I will be billing BT for infringement, using the same level of proof the Music industry is using.

OH and I did seek legal advice through my Union membership which gives me free 30 minutes with a solicitor. I was told much the same as has been stated before by other members of this forum.

I have informed Emma that I have taken legal advice, and will be acting on that advice once Phorm is tested by the 10,000 in the first wave.

It will be interesting to see her reply. Her leegal advice VS my legal advice.
ACtually the phrase you should use is "sought, er.. obtained er legal advi - er opinion" - you are being far too UNambiguous. If you continue to make such precise statements there is a danger that people will know what you mean!!



Good on you. But I will be surprised if you get a reply. You can also try the BT Retail legal boys - they don't reply either.

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