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

[tarka]

Just a thought, but the share price might be people who were short on the phorm stock covering their positions. There are usually retracements in a share price against the trend.

This doesn't look like a typical retracement though, although interestingly it happened to close back above a 50 day moving average the day before. There are other indicators showing that the stock is/was oversold and buy signals may have been triggered (certainley with a stochastics crossover). People who trade stocks using technical analysis of price action look for these types of conditions and if there is enough "technical evidence" that a trend is going to reverse they won't always worry about the fundementals of the companys they are trading shares in.

(chart attached for reference)

Regards...

T

Edit: Also notice that the volume is still fairly low.

Originally Posted by BenMcr

The particular clause we are talking about was added to ntl's terms in May 2005

http://web.archive.org/web/200511302...e/termschanges

Not Phorm, but ISP intercepts for advertising was being considered well before 2005.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/02...ps_to_control/

[BenMcr]

That link is describing a completely different technology to Phorm.

[mark777]

Originally Posted by tarka

Just a thought, but the share price might be people who were short on the phorm stock covering their positions. There are usually retracements in a share price against the trend.

This doesn't look like a typical retracement though, although interestingly it happened to close back above a 50 day moving average the day before. There are other indicators showing that the stock is/was oversold and buy signals may have been triggered (certainley with a stochastics crossover). People who trade stocks using technical analysis of price action look for these types of conditions and if there is enough "technical evidence" that a trend is going to reverse they won't always worry about the fundementals of the companys they are trading shares in.

(chart attached for reference)

Regards...

T

Edit: Also notice that the volume is still fairly low.

Does that mean it's still a heap of junk?

Perhaps if you don't mind tarka, someone with an account could post this over on iii for brettypoos comment?

[icsys]

Originally Posted by BenMcr

Can I just point out on this that ISPreview is wrong about Virgin changing its T&Cs to allow Phorm

The part they have quoted (G2) is in the original T&Cs issued in Feb 2007.

Web archive link http://web.archive.org/web/200702141...ble/terms.html (archived on 14/02/2007)

Another Virgin CS rep has decided to put his size ten in his mouth and state the following...

Originally Posted by mclovin over on Digital Spy

Just a sidenote, I'm currently having a chat with the phorm press office in terms of the capabilities of phorm, does anyone have any specific questions they'd like to have asked when I do talk to them? In addition to this, I've just been having a chat with customer support, and despite the recent change in terms and conditions to facilitate the use of phorm, they insist they've been using webwise snce the days of blueyonder telewest as it's a previous build of phorm that's less advanced.

BenMcr says this T&C clause change was done back in 2005? So is the above just more spin from reps trying to be clever (or stupid?) or do these leaks have some substance?

[OF1975]

"Despite Phorm's self-styled aggressive stance on user privacy, UK customers remain adamantly distrustful of the service, reports ISPreview."

More Here :

http://www.marketingvox.com/phorm-st...-to-do-038533/

[Florence]

See carol and son seem to think the poll was rigged by tech heads againast phorm..

The poll cannot be rigged unless the person has a different PC and ISP ip number the vote is cast accepts one vote then every time you revisit you only see the results.

[jelv]

I now know the user agent that Phorm is looking for in robots.txt and its time to get Google's opinion methinks. I have received confirmation from BT that Phorm is explicitly looking for the Googlebot's permission in robots.txt - not any search engine:

I posed the following question in an email to Emma Sanderson:

2. Could you provide clear guidance on how robots.txt is used. We keep having Google cited as an example. Does this mean that Phorm pretends to be Google and obeys the Google rules or does to obey the normal rules and only profile visitors to a site if User-agent: * is allowed. For example if a robots.txt was in place which specifically allowed Google only and barred all other agents, i.e.

User-agent: Google
Disallow:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /


would visitors be profiled by Phorm?

If it does not obey the normal rules and pretends to be Google I'm sure that company will have something to say about it!

(Note I whoopsied and got the name of the Google agent wrong)

This evening I have received a reply which included the following:

With regard to the second point you raise in your email dated 8 May 08, I have cut and paste your example/question and added comments (in blue)


User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /


would visitors be profiled by Phorm?

Yes because Googlebot is allowed.

If it does not obey the normal rules and pretends to be Google I'm sure that company will have something to say about it!

The Phorm check does not 'pretend' to be Googlebot, it uses the same permissions are were set for Googlebot.

Regards
Emma

The fact that they have corrected it to Googlebot confirms that it is specifically looking for the Googlebot permission.

[tarka]

Originally Posted by mark777

Does that mean it's still a heap of junk?

Perhaps if you don't mind tarka, someone with an account could post this over on iii for brettypoos comment?

hehe, it may well still be a piece of junk but I'm sure we are all biased.

If you want to post it on iii you can. I'm no expert investor though, I've done a bit of research on technical analysis over the past year but not really jumped in with both feet yet.

I do have to wonder though, when I saw the price was approaching the 50 day moving average, I thought it was going to move in the extreme one way or the other (sounds daft I know). It was either going to hit a wall of resistance and drop sharply, or the price was going to be forced through the resistance, turning the 50 day moving average into an indicator of support.

Todays action looks like there is now a bit of indecision (chart attached), what is interesting is that the volume traded was greater than the previous day yet the price failed rise and closed lower (with a much narrower trading range). If it drops it will be interesting to see if the 50 day average becomes a level of support.

I'll shut up now and let us get back to the main subject, I just wanted to give a slightly different view on the share price.

Regards...

T

[BadPhormula]

Originally Posted by pangpang

I actually think that you can trust Relakks. I'm from Sweden and the man how started up Relakks is wellknown here in Sweden for his view to people secracy.
For everyone that wonders what Relakks is, or just want to know more... :

I saw a great interview with the swedish owner and founder of Relakks, Jonas Birgersson. He is interviewed by Thomas Crampton and many interesting questions are answered.

Here is a link to the short interview: http://light.vpod.tv/?s=0.0.201364

Interesting video. Jonas Birgersson seems like a genuine privacy advocate.

[JackSon]

With refrence to Jelv's correspondence from BT...

What if it cant find a robots.txt file? If via an htaccess file all Phorm ISP IP ranges were denied access to robots.txt so that the profiler kit cannot determine google's permissions (google et al can still read it from not residing on the ISP network) would this be read as no implied consent? Or is my suspicion that Phorm would carry on regardless prove to be more accurate?

[Florence]

Originally Posted by jelv

I now know the user agent that Phorm is looking for in robots.txt and its time to get Google's opinion methinks. I have received confirmation from BT that Phorm is explicitly looking for the Googlebot's permission in robots.txt - not any search engine:

I posed the following question in an email to Emma Sanderson:



(Note I whoopsied and got the name of the Google agent wrong)

This evening I have received a reply which included the following:



The fact that they have corrected it to Googlebot confirms that it is specifically looking for the Googlebot permission.

Perhaps aconcerted effort to Google about this might get them on our side and in the fight.

If I remember correctly when I first built a website I had to apply for google bot to visit which would give them consent then. So google have conscent from me due to me applying.

[labougie]

I know damned well that this will sound defeatist, and I do not intend to diminish the obvious effort being put in but (thank you Margaret and Ronnie) the Corporations have won, money is everything, the individual stands for nothing unless he’s rich, democracy has been sold and laws exist for the repression of the powerless and the protection of the powerful. And it’s NOT going to get any better. A rearguard action over privacy will – even if not over this particular issue – inevitably have to be fought. To that end, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater – I agree that VM, BT and whichever ISPs are arrogant enough to think that data generated my ME is THEIRS as of right should be resisted, but the long-term trend is on their side. Alternatives (TOR, Relakks, DIY) shouldn’t be discounted. In reply to the question “Can you trust them” the answer can only be “more than the alternative”. Spyware technology will run and run. It’s too profitable not to. It’s the way of the future – I don’t like it either, but that’s how it is. Once all of us who had a half-way decent education (and are in some measure able to think for ourselves) have died off, it’ll all be left to the remaining Murdoch-informed population to enjoy – good luck to them! If you think I should change my username to “tin-foil hat” then you haven’t lived as long as I have.

[rryles]

Was just taking a look at the robots.txt files of some major websites and came across this for ebay.co.uk:

### BEGIN FILE ###
#
# allow-all
#
#
# The use of robots or other automated means to access the eBay site
# without the express permission of eBay is strictly prohibited.
# Notwithstanding the foregoing, eBay may permit automated access to
# access certain eBay pages but soley for the limited purpose of
# including content in publicly available search engines. Any other
# use of robots or failure to obey the robots exclusion standards set
# forth at <http://www.robotstxt.org/ wc/ exclusion.html> is strictly
# prohibited.
# v3
#

User-agent: *
Disallow: /help/confidence/
Disallow: /help/policies/
Disallow: /disney/

### END FILE ###

The paragraph at the top explicitly says no to phorm but the machine readable part mostly says come on in.

Also on the subject of robots.txt - Googlebot's full user agent string is something like:

Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)

The interesting part is the url pointing to information about google bot and what it does. If phorm fake that then they are certainly committing some offense IMO.

[ceedee]

Originally Posted by tarka

I'll shut up now and let us get back to the main subject, I just wanted to give a slightly different view on the share price.

Your insight puts a different perspective on the share price movements that I find very interesting.

Thank you for your time and for giving us the benefit of your knowledge.
Please post again if you see anything interesting happening.