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

[Rchivist]

Originally Posted by alt3rn1ty

Well done Rob, didnt see most of what transpired there distracted reading the above link.... but I can imagine. @ Moderators, zen time, say to the world in general 'speak to the hand, the delete buttons not listening'

Anyhooo, back on topic, why are these companies (Phorm/NebuAd) so keen to preserve no Opt-in, I believe its because through there own background/research/experience they know the buisiness model would not hold water if they had to rely on the customer trusting them, in which case they are just shooting themselves in the foot because the public wont accept being essentially forced into an option. Or are there other reasons the more internet savvy amongst us can highlight?
EDIT: And I know the underlying technology still ideally needs removed and preventing, but I am just curious about this bit

The business model and projected revenues are based on opt-out. Of course the best business model is 100% covert - but they got caught doing that several times already

[madslug]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHanff

You all missed the really meaty result of the AGM protest which was the debate about the covert trials in HoL today!!!

http://www.publications.parliament.u...ldtoday/02.htm

To quote Lord West of Spithead "Providers are finding it difficult to make the profit margins they want and wish to charge advertisers more."

Who is he talking about? ISPs are not content providers. Most websites are the advert for their own business and have no interest in advertising any other business on their site. Who are these content providers that exist to provide adverts? - I thought they were called search engines and directories.

Last time I looked, search engines and directories were already charging more than advertisers want to pay. Just because a few other sites want to get into the same market and are finding the competition a bit tough, suddenly the ISPs must come to their rescue by sharing data with ad networks?

What about the real world? The other 99%. What are the ISPs doing to ensure that they can earn some extra money out of all this wonderful new system of making everything open to everyone?

Where is the revenue increase for the 99% of the sites that don't live off advertising? Down the p(h)an, that's where.

It really reads as though Lord West of Spithead does not even know about the impact this will have on the no advertising commercial sites who are having their customer data provided to the competition without any thought of compensation.

Wake up !!

[Rchivist]

Originally Posted by D_Advocate

So there is no certainty that the trials will actually take place, and
statements pertaining to such are purely speculative ?

There may be some grounds for that speculation, considering that
BT have announced an intention to carry out the trials, but that
is by no means definitive considering the current climate.

D_A

Two questions here - quite separate.

1 - have BT repeatedly stated their intention to do these trials? Yes. Repeatedly inaccurately, obstinately, pigheadedly - Yes. And now some very SENIOR people have said it at the AGM instead of just wheeling out Adam Liversage (Press Officer) or Emma Sanderson (Director, Value Added Services and TV star). So failure to do the trials is hugely embarrassing for them. In fact it is ALREADY hugely embarrassing because the trials are already nearly five months overdue.

2 - will the trials actually happen? Who can say? BT don't have a good record for public accountability, keeping their promises or telling the transparent honest accurate truth.

[warescouse]

Originally Posted by R Jones

Two questions here - quite separate.

1 - have BT repeatedly stated their intention to do these trials? Yes. Repeatedly inaccurately, obstinately, pigheadedly - Yes. And now some very SENIOR people have said it at the AGM instead of just wheeling out Adam Liversage (Press Officer) or Emma Sanderson (Director, Value Added Services and TV star). So failure to do the trials is hugely embarrassing for them. In fact it is ALREADY hugely embarrassing because the trials are already nearly five months overdue.

2 - will the trials actually happen? Who can say? BT don't have a good record for public accountability, keeping their promises or telling the transparent honest accurate truth.

Is it possible that a trial in the legal court involving BT be the sooner of the two?

[Rchivist]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHanff

Let us not forget there have been 4 polls now regarding this technology and all of them have been overwhelmingly anti-Webwise.

The poll here resulted in 95.5% rejection rate
The ISP Review Poll resulted in 56% of participants stating they would leave their ISP
The NoDPI Poll shows 89% of participants feel BT should be prosecuted for the covert trials.

Finally the poll which appeared yesterday (I forget the URL) showed 65% of people would leave their ISP.

BT -claim- their own poll goes against these figures, but since they refuse to make it available, we only have their word on that.

Emma Sanderson has said in emails to me - no we won't publish the research (but that doesn't mean we couldn't decide to do so in the future)

Gavin Patterson (I think it was him) said at the AGM yesterday, they have so far not published the research - but we might consider doing so.

Please DO publish it BT. We'd love to see it - questions, answers, and the numbers and methodology. No selective quoting. It's called "Premium Browsing: Research Findings" in case you've lost the file or the computers are down again.
(I think Premium Browsing is browsing with Phorm spying on you and exploiting the web sites you visit and making shedloads of money out of your private data exchanges - sounds like rubbish browsing to me, but I'm not in advertising)

---------- Post added at 23:12 ---------- Previous post was at 23:09 ----------

Originally Posted by D_Advocate

Polls without published numbers of those polled are hardly relevant.
95.5% of 20 people (for example) can hardly be considered 'overwhelming'.

D_A

If you just scroll up about three or four inches, depending on monitor resolution, then you can see the absolute figures for that poll - it's the one Cableforum did themselves - 958 to 45, poll now closed.

[Bob W]

Originally Posted by R Jones

(I think Premium Browsing is browsing with Phorm spying on you and exploiting the web sites you visit and making shedloads of money out of your private data exchanges - sounds like rubbish browsing to me, but I'm not in advertising)

The title seems apposite, we browse, BT get the Premium, another example of phormspeak.

[Rchivist]

Originally Posted by Dephormation

BT corporate values;

"Trustworthy - we do what we say we will"

So you can, errr, trust them to do it.

Though they didn't say what they were doing in 2006/7. So yes, in a "can't trust them as far as you can throw em" kind of way.

Oh yes they DID say what they were doing They clearly said they weren't trialling anything to do with dns.sysip.net and they weren't linked to 121Media/Phorm. Unfortunately they were not telling the truth at that time nd later on they said - oh yes - we WERE actually responsible for that dns.sysip.net thing, and yes - we are in a commercial relationship with Phorm/121Media.

[bluecar1]

Originally Posted by R Jones

First point - I'm not a techie so consider me ignorant on the details.

BT have said they are "working on" a cookie free solution and have not chosen to enlighten us any further.
I don't understand the technical issues but it seems like a major retrofit to the system, and rather makes a cookie based trial fairly pointless.

opted in users will still need a cookie or they will not be able to identify the user on a pc to target the adverts efficiently,

There has also been comment that this can only be done in certain ways, ONE of which MIGHT involve separating out customers (by IP address) into opted-IN and NOT opted-IN groups (I refuse to use terms like opted out) and routing them differently around or through the corrosive Phorm spykit depending on which group they were in.

there is a problem with this as BT do not own or run the kit dishing out IP addresses, BT Wholesale do and they are not allowed to co-operate with each other

In which case (and again I am in deep technical water over my pedantic head) - they would need
a) to get domestic customers on static IP addresses - at the moment only BT Business customers are on static IP addresses - and they aren't part of Webwise (so BT say - although Stephen Mainwaring might take issue with that!!).

nope, they cant give BTR customers static addresses as if the opt-in and then later choose NOT to opt-in they would need to change IP to bypass the profiler / DPI kit, so BT would need to operate 2 seperate DHCP pools, but there is another issue, all ISP's are running out of addresses so there will not be enough IP addresses to allow for two pools each capable of holding all customers in case all users either opt in or not

b) if they want to play IP address hockey they (BT Retail) need access to bits of the infrastructure (some grey boxes I don't understand) that are legally and commercially under the control of BT Wholesale for competition regulatory reasons. This is not allowed.

see above

c) IP addresses become part of the significant PII being processed?

any method of an identifier uniquely assigned to a person is defined under EU regs as PII, be it number, IP or name.
phorm say they do not collect IP's. this is partly to try and avoid the issue of PII and also they are of no use as BT use dynamic (changing) IP's , if they were to deploy this on BT business link that would be different as they all have static IP's

Again - ignore me as unqualified on any of the technical assumptions, but believe me on what BT have "said". I'm clear on that.

yep

peter

[Rchivist]

Originally Posted by Bonglet

I still dont get how the charles stanley securites document says that all 3 isp's have undertaken extensive trials of phorm and financial times today also re-iterates this that all 3 isp's did extensive trials yet the ico dont know anything about ANY trials on any isp, got to be really laughable at best.

FT have corrected the statement about all 3 ISP's having done trials in their online version.

"Carphone Warehouse's Talk Talk and Virgin Media have also run trials."
now reads online
"Carphone Warehouse's Talk Talk and Virgin Media have also agreed to evaluate the service but are yet to run trials."

[Tarquin L-Smythe]

Lord West of Spithead:
The Home Office, BERR and the Information Commissioner were not aware of the two tests conducted by BT, which was not good.

Lord West of Spithead:
Internet service providers have access to such details, but they have to put safety measures in place; and that is what the ICO is meant to ensure happens

Two remarks taken from the HOL today ,loaded and aimed just one more step....

[Rchivist]

Originally Posted by phormwatch

Thanks. Not sure whether to have two seperate entities for BT Group and BT Retail...

I would keep BT Group and BT Retail separate. BT Retail run the ISP and they are separate - because of competition rules and the "break up" of BT by the regulator.

It becomes significant when you start working out who controls which grey boxes and which wires - BT wholesale run the network infrastructure and BT Retail aren't supposed to have access to that any more than any other ISP.

[AlexanderHanff]

Does anyone know of a Skype addon which can send and receive faxes from/to one of your Skype numbers?

I have found PLUSFax but they charge which seems a bit odd, one would assume that fax calls (so long as they are a standard number as in not mobile or premium rate) would fall under normal Skype coverage. For example, if I wished to send a fax to 020 8123 4567 that would be a number within the Skype free call range (I get unlimited national and international calls to landlines with Skype - 33 different countries apparantly), so I am not sure about the charge they are applying.

I have 3 Skype numbers as part of the International package I have subscribed to with Skype, it would be very useful to use one of them for sending and receiving faxes.

If a free tool does not exist, perhaps one of our talented programmers here would be prepared to develop one?

Alexander Hanff

[Rchivist]

Time for my bed, but a final reminder - anyone lurking here for the first time welcome and there's more to read here,
http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/34...post11849.html
which may point you in the right direction if you are looking for some more information to protect your privacy.

[serial]

Originally Posted by Tarquin L-Smythe

With due respect .Did any of those attending the BT AGM yesterday have any sort of discussion on see any evidence of the Pro Phorm support group ,indeed were they there.

I had a discussion with someone very pro-phorm. He denied working for BT or Phorm so I guess a shareholder or maybe even PR. He reads this thread regularly so hello

If you aren't already, get involved in the debate, start posting.

[Bonglet]

Originally Posted by R Jones

FT have corrected the statement about all 3 ISP's having done trials in their online version.

"Carphone Warehouse's Talk Talk and Virgin Media have also run trials."
now reads online
"Carphone Warehouse's Talk Talk and Virgin Media have also agreed to evaluate the service but are yet to run trials."

No they havent R jones look

The group is one of three UK internet service providers which have conducted trials of technology developed by Phorm, an Aim-listed company, which tracks the web-surfing habits of its internet users to enable it to target advertising more tightly.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/34c59420-5...077b07658.html

stock exchange knows more about developments than this government, says a whole lot ;s.