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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 23-02-2008, 17:20   #196
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Re: Virgin Media Ad Deal [Updated: See Post No. 77 & 102]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Traduk View Post
RizzyKing,

I agree with your sentiment inasmuch as I pay £37 a month for a service which is mostly not worth the cost. I strongly object to being profiled for another chunk of profits for VM when they cannot even supply the base product properly.

You need not worry about spyware as according to "paidcontent:UK" it is a back end scanner located within ISP's. It will extract data from the data stream, allocate it to an anonymous number and profile that individual. All of the surfing habits from your IP will be captured and as that information is potentially of interest to many more people than advertisers we will all have to hope that there is no cloned modem on our IP and that we are not one of tens of thousands who have visitors on unsecured wireless routers.

I am normally not given to paranoia but when yesterday it was announced that for air travel within the UK that the government will require mobile phone numbers and credit card details for profiling purposes I am starting to seriously wonder what happened to trust and privacy. I really do think that this supposed ad tool has real potential to scan for "persons of interest" and that will not have escaped the attention of the paranoid ones in power.

How ironic that a few years ago communications interceptions were only granted by judges with belief of due cause and to organisations bound by the official secrets act. Now ISP's can intercept communications to pass on information for 30 pieces of silver.

The thing Is, what can WE, the paying customers do about all this anti-privacy nonesence?

I would've thought that the best way to save money in ANY business would be to somehow get the top dogs (that sit on their fat asses smoking all day) to take a pay reduction, how is such a high salary justified, what, just cos of the title (MD, snr manager etc) just like with the govenment, they get paid obscene amounts to screw up this country, IF they was forced to take a 10% pay decrease, just think how much more money woulod be availible for ESSENTIALS, such as schools, hospitals etc, but that is gettin slightly off-topic!

IF & WHEN this becomes policy, I will give VM 2 choices, STOP monitoring my internet usage OR lose my custom & incur a visit to the small claims court!
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Old 24-02-2008, 11:26   #197
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Re: Virgin Media Ad Deal [Updated: See Post No. 77 & 102]

Quote:
Originally Posted by dav View Post
Are there likely to be any representations made to VM by the Cable Forum team?
Good question? The OP was an admin and 5 other admins have joined in the debate. Seems an ideal opportunity for the forum to represent users/customers.
 
Old 24-02-2008, 13:08   #198
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Re: Virgin Media Ad Deal [Updated: See Post No. 77 & 102]

There have been representations made, which has resulted in the specific update posts #77 and #102. If we hear of further developments these too will get reported although at present everything to do with this is based on very little solid information with neither Virgin or Phorm providing any real idea of when they intend this to start, or how it would work. Rest assured however that thread's like this, here and indeed on other forum's do, as a whole come to the attention of people at VM, where the strength of feeling being expressed can have an effect.
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Old 24-02-2008, 14:19   #199
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Re: Virgin Media Ad Deal [Updated: See Post No. 77 & 102]

I hadn't realised Mick had contacted VM with his Cable Forum hat on, I had assumed it was as a disgruntled downtrodden VM customer.

Fair do's to the team. Keep up the good work
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Old 24-02-2008, 16:19   #200
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Re: Virgin Media Ad Deal [Updated: See Post No. 77 & 102]

What is most shocking is that there are now 11 users who have voted they dont mind there data being sold to Phorm.
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Old 24-02-2008, 16:38   #201
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Re: Virgin Media Ad Deal [Updated: See Post No. 77 & 102]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Sirius View Post
What is most shocking is that there are now 11 users who have voted they dont mind there data being sold to Phorm.
Technically is 10, I retracted my vote after more information was supplied about how Phorm appears to work.
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Old 24-02-2008, 16:46   #202
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Re: Virgin Media Ad Deal [Updated: See Post No. 77 & 102]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Toto View Post
Technically is 10, I retracted my vote after more information was supplied about how Phorm appears to work.
Good for you


The less that agree to this the better
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Old 24-02-2008, 20:24   #203
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Re: Virgin Media Ad Deal [Updated: See Post No. 77 & 102]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Sirius View Post
What is most shocking is that there are now 11 users who have voted they dont mind there data being sold to Phorm.
12 (-1 from Toto) that are happy to share their data - needless to say even with their odd choice, there are 95% who have voted don't want to share their data.

But as I said earlier the 11 voters would probably kick up a big fuss if we all camped out on their door step and or started watching their every move, in the house by looking through their windows, or watching them in the street.
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Old 24-02-2008, 20:54   #204
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Re: Virgin Media Ad Deal [Updated: See Post No. 77 & 102]

Here's a thought.
5 comp's in my house all online, connecting through the router.
Husband on one comp.
17yr old daughter and myself using mine.
15yr old daughter on her comp.
12yr old daughter on her comp.
10yr old daughter on her comp.

Now, if my husband regularly surfs for porn, not saying he does,
I don't know and I don't care, he lives on WOW, but say he does.
If I'm into meeting guys to have wild sex or I surf the net looking
for vibrators, sex toys, edible lingerie. For the record, I'm not and I
don't.
If I haven't opted out and bear in mind we all connect through
the router,
Will my children be subjected to ads for vibrators and
big breasted Bertha putting on a show??????

How will they determine what ads go where?
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Old 24-02-2008, 22:19   #205
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Re: Virgin Media Ad Deal [Updated: See Post No. 77 & 102]

Not even sure I understand it now...

Are they proposing to interfere with ads served by other sites, just how far reaching is this - after all, an ad-network can run with cookies, with no involvement of an ISP.

As for anti-phising, the "good" feature that this is using as a trojan horse to cajole support of their ad/spware activities, there are many other ways to implement that - IE7 has one built in. It seems like this means intercepting all traffic, a return to unreliable proxies?
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Old 24-02-2008, 23:06   #206
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Re: Virgin Media Ad Deal [Updated: See Post No. 77 & 102]

Quote:
Originally Posted by moaningmags View Post
Here's a thought.
5 comp's in my house all online, connecting through the router.
Husband on one comp.
17yr old daughter and myself using mine.
15yr old daughter on her comp.
12yr old daughter on her comp.
10yr old daughter on her comp.

Now, if my husband regularly surfs for porn, not saying he does,
I don't know and I don't care, he lives on WOW, but say he does.
If I'm into meeting guys to have wild sex or I surf the net looking
for vibrators, sex toys, edible lingerie. For the record, I'm not and I
don't.
If I haven't opted out and bear in mind we all connect through
the router,
Will my children be subjected to ads for vibrators and
big breasted Bertha putting on a show??????

How will they determine what ads go where?
Some very good points there. They will have no idea of the age of the person they are going to subject to these adverts. The company that Virgin will be selling its customers info to has not got the best reputation in the industry. In fact it would not surprise me one little bit that Phorm would not care who they sent adult adverts to as long as they make there money from it.

I can remember spending hours removing all the porn popups from one persons computer that was being served up night in night out by 121 media Aka Phorm.
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Old 24-02-2008, 23:09   #207
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Re: Virgin Media Ad Deal [Updated: See Post No. 77 & 102]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Sirius View Post
Some very good points there. They will have no idea of the age of the person they are going to subject to these adverts. The company that Virgin will be selling its customers info to has not got the best reputation in the industry. In fact it would not surprise me one little bit that Phorm would not care who they sent adult adverts to as long as they make there money from it.

I can remember spending hours removing all the porn popups from one persons computer that was being served up night in night out by 121 media Aka Phorm.
It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it.........
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Old 24-02-2008, 23:10   #208
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Re: Virgin Media Ad Deal [Updated: See Post No. 77 & 102]

Quote:
Originally Posted by moaningmags View Post
Here's a thought.
5 comp's in my house all online, connecting through the router.
Husband on one comp.
17yr old daughter and myself using mine.
15yr old daughter on her comp.
12yr old daughter on her comp.
10yr old daughter on her comp.

Now, if my husband regularly surfs for porn, not saying he does,
I don't know and I don't care, he lives on WOW, but say he does.
If I'm into meeting guys to have wild sex or I surf the net looking
for vibrators, sex toys, edible lingerie. For the record, I'm not and I
don't.
If I haven't opted out and bear in mind we all connect through
the router,
Will my children be subjected to ads for vibrators and
big breasted Bertha putting on a show??????

How will they determine what ads go where?
If you use multiple PCs, unless they have a method of determining what goes on behind a router (which, with some problems, is technically feasable), they won't. If you use one PC (wether with one user or seperate users for each family member), they won't be able to at all.

I would, of course, be happy to see technical details from Virgin or Phorm about how their system gets past this little problem (although I don't think it does), but I doubt I will.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Matth View Post
Not even sure I understand it now...

Are they proposing to interfere with ads served by other sites, just how far reaching is this - after all, an ad-network can run with cookies, with no involvement of an ISP.

As for anti-phising, the "good" feature that this is using as a trojan horse to cajole support of their ad/spware activities, there are many other ways to implement that - IE7 has one built in. It seems like this means intercepting all traffic, a return to unreliable proxies?
It's also built into Google. If your google search turns up an undesirable site, I believe you get a query from Google as to whether you want to go to that site.

Back to browsers, Opera also has an anti-phising feature, and even if Firefox doesn't, I am sure someone has written an extension to enable it.

Not to mention anyone of a number of all in one "Internet Security" suites that offer this feature.
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Old 24-02-2008, 23:27   #209
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Re: Virgin Media Ad Deal [Updated: See Post No. 77 & 102]

I imagine (in response to multiple computers through NAT) it will become more and more the onus upon the account holder to defend themselves.

There will be a link to phorm to opt out completely and they will ask you to visit it on all devices that can access the internet so one users data doesn't cross over. There will be another link to contact a customer service operative for larger organisations on a case by case basis where they will block an IP from all adverts that are remote third party risky, but push through those from respected advertisers without using keywords, so a safe advert policy. Along with a requirement to renew this every 6 months say on a rolling basis.

To avoid every customer using this they can implement very strict filters on the sites you can visit through the phishing mechanism for your IP, so anything "rated 18" will be blocked and logged, then queried as to why you need an exception on this basis for your internet facing IP and a recommendation you switch back to the cookie method of opting out for individual devices.
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Old 24-02-2008, 23:40   #210
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Re: Virgin Media Ad Deal [Updated: See Post No. 77 & 102]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rob View Post
There have been representations made, which has resulted in the specific update posts #77 and #102. If we hear of further developments these too will get reported although at present everything to do with this is based on very little solid information with neither Virgin or Phorm providing any real idea of when they intend this to start, or how it would work. Rest assured however that thread's like this, here and indeed on other forum's do, as a whole come to the attention of people at VM, where the strength of feeling being expressed can have an effect.
Thank you Rob (and the Cable Forum Team)
 
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