phorm/webwise

DatabaseError · 20 February 2008 at 4:53PM

link
"Last week, BT, Carphone Warehouse and Virgin Media announced a deal with a company called Phorm, whose technology tracks Web users and serves them ads related to their interests." (opt out available)

they're going to talk people into keeping it by..
"Phorm's technology gives participating ISP customers protection against online fraud by warning them in real time if they browse to suspected fraudulent sites. This security feature is part of Phorm and the ISPs commitment to making internet fraud a thing of the past."

a feature already freely available in many browsers, such as firefox.

BexTech · 23 February 2008 at 1:37PM

Three of the UK's largest ISP's (Virgin Media, BT and TalkTalk) have decided to sell your private browsing history to an advertising broker.

Phorm doesn't just see the URL of every page you visit, they see the entire content of every single web page (with the exception of encrypted pages). That means they can read your mail if you use most types of webmail, view all the posts you make or read on web forums, obtain the content of most webforms you complete, in fact just about anything you do on the web that is not encrypted can be hoovered up by Phorm. Phorm claim they do not store this information for more than 14 days.

See: http://www.badphorm.co.uk for more details.

Saeed · 23 February 2008 at 7:18PM

we'll all be safe when they find out we visit this iste for tight !!!!!! and don't like to spend any money

BexTech · 23 February 2008 at 8:45PM

http://opendns.org/ offers phishing protection too. Also more reliable DNS than that of many ISPs especially VM's.

Alfie_E · 25 February 2008 at 9:55PM

There’s now an article on The Register – ISP data deal with former ‘spyware’ boss triggers privacy fears. Below are some suggested counter measures, short of moving ISP and hoping you ﬁnd one that isn’t and won’t shortly be signed up to this crazy project.

Tor, aka ‘The Onion Router’

This is a project that came out of the US Naval Research Laboratory. It was designed to allow military and security personnel, when abroad, to access US servers without anyone, including the foreign government, being aware of their presence. It offers a very high degree of anonymity. But, because anyone can set up a so-called exit node, you should not transmit sensitive or personal information, unless you have a secure end-to-end connection (HTTPS, etc.). It also suffers from rather lumpy performance. It can go from moderately fast, to dog slow. It is, however, free to use.

JonDonym, aka Java Anon Proxy, JAP and AN.ON

This came out of the academic research project AN.ON by Dresden University of Technology, the University of Regensburg and Privacy Commissioner of Schleswig-Holstein. This offers a similar level of privacy to Tor. However, the servers that provide the anonymity are owned by speciﬁc companies and institutions. Although Germany’s privacy laws are hugely better than most other countries’, JonDos GmbH are looking to put hardware in other countries to reduce the future threat from court orders.

Relakks

A pay-for VPN (Virtual Private Network) that’s open to anyone. Your Internet trafﬁc is encrypted and redirected to the Relakks Virtual ISP, owned by the ISP Labs2, in Sweden. This doesn’t offer the same level of anonymity as the above two. But, Sweden currently has reasonable privacy laws and a fairly ‘relaxed’ view on the requirements of ISPs and hosting companies to monitor their customers. You may know this from the fact that copyright holders have found it impossible so far to shut down The Pirate Bay. Nevertheless, it still means your UK ISP doesn’t get to see what you’re doing.

Use secure websites whenever possible

If you access a website whose address starts ‘https:’, your connection is encrypted. While your ISP will be able to tell that your communicating with a speciﬁc server, only you and the server will know what’s being transmitted. You tend to think of secure websites only for banks and shops, but some everyday websites also offer a secure alternative. Try replacing ‘http:’ with ‘https:’.

If people start doing the above in signiﬁcant numbers, just to avoid some giant data collection by marketing people, that’s really going to annoy the British police and security services.

Alfie_E · 27 February 2008 at 12:59PM

Consider asking your current ISP if you can move to a business tariff

It’s generally believed that the ISPs planning to use Phorm will only use it on residential customers. Many businesses would run a mile if they thought their ISP could aggregate what, individually, are insigniﬁcant pieces of information in to something that, as a whole, is commercially sensitive. Also, businesses are more likely to be able to employ expensive lawyers and want to put in much bigger legal claims for damages, if or when the system goes wrong. For Virgin Media, the business division is ntl:Telewest Business.

tiddler · 28 February 2008 at 7:51PM

Be careful which ISP you choose to use.

Some of them (e.g. BT, Virgin & TalkTalk) sell your surfing history to a 3rd party.
That's every page you have visited.

More info here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/25/phorm_isp_advertising/

Also:
http://www.badphorm.co.uk

DatabaseError · 28 February 2008 at 7:59PM

i posted a link to this a few days ago. i was shocked at the lack of response, either people don't understand what it means, or don't care. not something likely to affect me (my isp has confirmed they have no interest in phorm), but its a step in the wrong direction concerning privacy, maybe 4 million uk users browsing habits (EVERY site they visit!) sold to an american company. mass migrations would be on the cards if we weren't such an apathetic bunch!

si1965 · 28 February 2008 at 8:57PM

Just seen that my provider has posted on thinkbroadband that they have, and will have nothing to do with this.

DatabaseError · 28 February 2008 at 9:10PM

that'll be entanet then?!

si1965 · 28 February 2008 at 9:22PM

tonyhague wrote: »

that'll be entanet then?!

No, Newnet.

However I can see Entanet being a good provider if I need to increase my bandwidth usage.

phorm/webwise

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