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

[Shin Gouki]

Originally Posted by Matt D

May well have already been mentioned, but has anyone else had a look at webwise.com, & found some bits as laughable as I do?




See how they lead with "in response to consumers’ growing concerns and frustrations with the Internet" and then "Webwise can help protect you from fraudulent “phishing” websites that may put your financial and personal data at risk", before finally mentioning, in a kind of "oh, by the way..." that "It also helps reduce the number of irrelevant, untargeted ads you see.".

When surely the primary purpose of it is MONEY for Phorm & the ISPs, with this whole phishing thing just some sugar-coating, to make it look like there's a real benefit for the customers.

LMAO

They say Webwise can help protect you against Fraud and then they also say this too - "Because of inherent limitations in controls, error or fraud may occur and not be detected."

God if our goverment allow this crap to go down there is no hope for this bleeding country.

Like i said earlier though, money talks.

[lucevans]

According to the TalkTalk members forum administrator Matt, TalkTalk are now claiming that;

1) They have not yet installed any Phorm equipment in their network
2) They intend to make it an opt-in system
3) If their customers do not opt-in to the "service" they will "not ever come into contact with any Phorm equipment hosted within Talktalk". This implies that opted-out customers data will not go through the profiler.

You can read the full post at http://www.talktalkmembers.com/forum...?t=740&page=12

I think this is very interesting if true, as it demonstrates that it is technically possible for VM to respect the wishes of those of it's customers who want nothing at all to do with phorm.

Meanwhile, back on the TalkTalk forum, when someone pointed out that;

"This new statement does not seem to agree with previous statements and articles published elsewhere about cookies being used on customers' computers to determine whether urls are to be inspected or not."

the same administrator replied:

"We had a meeting yesterday and based on customer opinion we decided to use a different method, yet to be decided, to split the traffic so it doesn't hit a WebWise server at all for those that opt out."

...and, according to m0rph3us over on that forum (maybe the same m0rph3us that posts here?) "...it's quite easy to implement with ACL's if your routing kit is cisco based"

So come on Virgin Media - sit up, take note and start planning to offer your customers a real choice of whether to participate in this system or not.

[none]

Originally Posted by Rob

For the record that letter was in fact first posted on Cable Forum. After a couple of tweaks it was then posted to Badphorm. I'm more than happy that it has been widely re-used others.

I've actually had a reply, and when I get to a scanner, I will post it.

My apologies Rob, don’t know how I too missed that post. But full kudos to you on writing such a well crafted letter, I look forward to seeing that reply you got.

[Ravenheart]

Another good piece on the Register this morning HERE

And Phorm's shares are down 20% this morning too
http://www.iii.co.uk/investment/deta...PHRM.L&it%3Dle

Keep up the great work folks

[lucevans]

Originally Posted by Ravenheart

Another good piece on the Register this morning HERE

And Phorm's shares are down 20% this morning too
http://www.iii.co.uk/investment/deta...PHRM.L&it%3Dle

Keep up the great work folks

Thanks for the link Ravenheart - an excellent piece that addresses all the issues in a non-technical way. If only the major news outlets in this country would syndicate it so that Joe Public was made aware of what's about to happen...

[popper]

off to read it now...
heres another one
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...vertisers.html

[bigbadcol]

The post below is from the register. Many thaks to the other steve for posting.

Proof if Proof be needed that the People at Phorm have been lying all along.

Excellent technical info here
By The Other Steve
Posted Monday 10th March 2008 13:36 GMT
http://www.politicalpenguin.org.uk/blog/p,295/

Including information from Etregul's patent, which at least one of us ought to have thought of, oh well.

Juiciest bits from the patent, because I know you'll all love this, but go have a look, it's a truly excellent piece. See if any of this sounds familiar...

"Furthermore, though the present disclosure discusses HTTP traffic in many examples, it will be appreciated that other types of protocols and traffic may be employed in connection with the targeted advertising system and method described herein."

Woops.

"Context reader 40 is not limited to acquiring keyword or other contextual information pertaining to a given web page. Indeed, the browsing information may be collected so as to also include historical data pertaining to the browsing performed "

Ouch.

"Based on analysis occurring at the proxy server, the proxy server may modify client-requested data it receives so that a targeted advertisement appears on a web page requested by a client"

Oh dear.

"As explained above, the context reader may be configured to more than just keyword and other contextual data pertaining to a given web page. The context reader may also include behavioral data (e.g, browsing behavior), other historical data collected over time, demographic data associated with the user, IP address, URL data, etc."

Oh Phorm, have you been telling us some MASSIVE porkies or what ?

The patent (linked at the above blog) is pretty dense, as you would expect, and contains plenty more of this kind of stuff. No doubt Phorm's hapless spinmeisters will be around to tell us that this isn't the technology they are going to implement NOW, and who knows, they might even be telling the truth*. But Phorm have lodged a patent application for technology that does indeed do all the things they have just assured us that they definitely won't do, ever, honest, we promise, cross our hearts.

Phail !

Props to Political Penguin for digging this up, looks like a smoking gun to me. Why patent a technology that you aren't going to use ?

* Really, they might. After all they did have Simon Davies look at it.

[TheBruce1]

Originally Posted by popper

off to read it now...
heres another one
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...vertisers.html

Originally Posted by bigbadcol

Excellent technical info here
By The Other Steve
Posted Monday 10th March 2008 13:36 GMT
http://www.politicalpenguin.org.uk/blog/p,295/

Thanks for these, the more we find out the more we realise this has nothing to do with protecting users, its nothing more than greed.

[mogodon]

Definitely an opt-out service from VM. Received the following from VM in response to my enquiry:
(I have removed personal details of both myself and the respondee)

-----Original Message-----
From: >Web Team [mailto:webteam@telewest.co.uk]
Sent: 10 March 2008 11:01
To: ******
Subject: Re: Virgin Media Helpsite Webform - Customer Feedback TGEN (KMM7385980I28237L0KM)

REFERENCE : *****

Dear *****

Thank you for your e-mail dated 5 March 2008 regarding our partnership
with Phorm. I'm sorry its taken longer than expected to get back to you.

I can ensure you that all our customers will have the option to opt of
this program should they wish too. As soon as Phorm comes into play all
our customers will be made aware of how to opt out of the service. I
hope this information is what you were hoping for.

If you have further queries regarding this matter or any other issue,
please use the link provided below:

www.virginmedia.com/contact

Please note if you reply directly to this e-mail your response will not
be received.

Kind regards


*****
E-Contact Team
Virgin Media

[Shaun]

Also from Politicalpenguin:

Update] There’s a section in the full patent that is now covered by ‘#’s. The reason for this is that it was executing the Javascript and scarily enough automatically connecting to a remote site ‘ps.pagesense.com’ which was then embedding Javascript coding into my site. Oh well, if we know nothing else then at least we can see how the system works.

Equally of interest is the register for pagesense.com. Take a peek:

Registrant:

8 duncannon street
London, Yukon Territory WC2N
Zimbabwe

Domain Name: PAGESENSE.COM
Created on: 15-Nov-02
Expires on: 15-Nov-11
Last Updated on: 29-Jan-08

Administrative Contact:
Aroslov, Anton
8 duncannon street
London, Yukon Territory WC2N
Zimbabwe

Technical Contact:
Aroslov, Anton
8 duncannon street
London, Yukon Territory WC2N
Zimbabwe

Domain servers in listed order:
NS21.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
NS22.DOMAINCONTROL.COM

Now please remind me the last time London was in the Yukon Territory in Zimbabwe? Sorry, this Phorm company is not filling me with confidence right now.

[Traduk]

I read that patent application in its entirety several days ago and was left in no doubt that the capabilities can for far beyond anything that the company (Phorm) has proposed.

The auditing bodies have shown a need to add caveats which leads me to think that they are OK'ish with current proposed applications but cannot or will not project those assurances into the future.

I strongly suspect that we may have a case of "give an inch and mile may be taken (later on)".

[popper]

its werth keeping an eye on the VM T&C page to look for any changes btw.

currently they have removed the 'official notice' by electronic messaging,email etc options so you cant now send an 'official notice' by any other means than post or in person.

that appears to be a good thing from our POV, as that means they cant now officially notify us or get our concent to process our personal data through a popup webpage it seems.

the minute that T&C changes,as it must to allow the pop-up page they are talking about to get consent from you, you can OC then start sending your Official notices removing their rights to 'handling, collecting, processing or storing personal data' to the profiler that electronic email way again.....

you may be subject to a waiting time while they action your instructions though, i forget ...,something like 14 days, perhaps someone skilled in the art can clarify these points?

i wonder what the other ISPs T&C say and it might well apply to those as well.

[lucevans]

Originally Posted by Ravenheart

Another good piece on the Register this morning HERE

And Phorm's shares are down 20% this morning too
http://www.iii.co.uk/investment/deta...PHRM.L&it%3Dle

Keep up the great work folks

...and now down 24% (15:33hrs)

Hey, this is fun...

[popper]

Zimbabwe, interesting....

the ISPs and Phorm had better be 100% sure they dont have one single peace of personal data leak out of the UK then.... no right to export and all that.

[none]

Originally Posted by lucevans

...and now down 24% (15:33hrs)

Hey, this is fun...

make that 31% - linky

PHORM REG S | Currency GBX
All data delayed by at least 15 minutes

As at 10-Mar-2008 15:58:38
1,952.500 down -897.50 -31.49%