BT Internet-Phorm trial starting tomorrow

wantmemoney

AGMSIX wrote:

:

Originally Posted by wantmemoney
for the less technology minded like me, it's easier to understand if you equate it to the Royal Mail.

The postal service intercepts all your mail. They open and read your private correspondence. They profile you from the information and send you 'junk advertising' depending on your profile.

all very dodgy

You've almost got it right but you've used the anti-webwise analogy. The system would replace random junk mail with more relevant junk mail.

The reason BT give to justify intercepting and reading peoples mail is completely irrelevant.
The issue is one of privacy.

Hazzanet

tonyhague wrote: »

hazzanet, you are really missing the point.
the cookie is the visible symptom, phorm will intercept ALL of your traffic regardless of opt in or out, or cookie blocking. the only way to avoid phorm is to migrate to a decent, honourable, ISP, if enough people did this, then BT would have to rethink, though, as most net subscribers, especially bt internet ones (sorry) are idiots (naive?), this is unlikely to happen

I'm not missing the point, indeed no. Internet providers have always been able to see where you're surfing and what you're doing, just in this case they are actively recording your web usage in order to target advertising. I'm not happy about it but then, at the same time, I use Gmail which looks at my e-mail and targets advertising based on the messages I send and receive. I feel that in the case of Gmail, the benefits outweigh the cost to a certain degree.

With regards to BT customer being naive, I would agree to a certain point, just like Brirish Gas customers who haven't looked at the market and changed tariffs following privatisation and the opening of the market to competition are. That said, there are (limited) benefits from the BT package, namely Vision and BroadBand Talk.

If I was seriously concerned, I would look to set up a VPN SSL tunnel so BT cannot monitor my usage, other than data transferred.

Hazza

AGMSIX

wantmemoney wrote: »

The reason BT give to justify intercepting and reading peoples mail is completely irrelevant.
The issue is one of privacy.

Move ISP, simple.:rolleyes:

It's misleading statements like "send you 'junk advertising' depending on your profile" that are all too prevalent from the anti-BT mob.
Doesn't matter if it's immaterial or not, you were being economical with the truth to suit your own point of view.

wantmemoney

AGMSIX wrote:

It's misleading statements like "send you 'junk advertising' depending on your profile" that are all too prevalent from the anti-BT mob.
Doesn't matter if it's immaterial or not, you were being economical with the truth to suit your own point of view.

And you are being economical with basic common sense.
Data privacy is the issue.

DatabaseError

Hazzanet wrote: »

If I was seriously concerned, I would look to set up a VPN SSL tunnel so BT cannot monitor my usage, other than data transferred.

that would be quite a length to go to in order to stop an ISP intercepting data which I believe should be private. Think I'll just stick with my ISP who have already stated they will have nothing to do with phorm.

as to the g-mail analogy, google provide the service at no physical cost to the end user, the service is essentially paid for by the advertisers, so far as I am aware BT/phorm are offering nothing of any value for the infringement on privacy

HotchPotch_2

AGMSIX wrote: »

What Mr Liversage actually says is "opted-out traffic will pass through the system" whereas the anti-phorm mob prefer the word "intercept" which has different connotations,no?
And you conveniently miss out "opted-out traffic will not be mirrored or profiled" and also "BT is still working on a network-level opt-out".
Anyway, you've identified a gap in the market for net users who are not idiots, wonder how you would sell that to people.

Bearing in mind to protect both your security and privacy, browsers don't allow the site you are visiting to see other sites' cookies. Can you answer how BT and webwise can know that you have a webwise.net Opt-out cookie or have blocked cookies for webwise.net - a site which you wouldn't normally visit?

The answer is when you navigate to a webpage, their system intercepts your browser's request for that page, examines it for one of its forged tracking cookies and if it doesn't find one, redirects it to webwise.net so that it can read your browser's webwise.net cookies before redirecting your browser back to the original site. It then intercepts that request, forges an opted-out tracking cookie for that site, and finally redirects the browser to the page you wanted to go to in the first place!

Dr Richard Clayton wrote a detailed technical report on how Webwise works, based on information provided to him by Phorm. You can find a link to the report in the Webwise article on Wikipedia - http://wikipedia.org/wiki/webwise

Alfie_E

AGMSIX wrote: »

What Mr Liversage actually says is "opted-out traffic will pass through the system" whereas the anti-phorm mob prefer the word "intercept" which has different connotations,no?
And you conveniently miss out "opted-out traffic will not be mirrored or profiled" and also "BT is still working on a network-level opt-out".

‘Intercept’ is the best word. It has a precise legal meaning and has been used when considering the legality of how Webwise works. The Home Office produced a document called Targeted Online Advertising: interception of communications or not? If it is, is it lawful interception? The Home Office concluded that it is interception and that it’s possible for it to be legal. The Foundation for Information Policy Research reached a different conclusion in The Phorm “Webwise” System - a Legal Analysis: that it is interception, but that it can never be legal within current legislation. While Fipr may have a certain bias, so does the government. Last week, Ofcom announced that selling everyone’s privacy through systems like Webwise would be a good way to help fund new super-fast broadband.

Here’s another analogy. You want to telephone a relative. You dial their number. Your call is not connected to your relative’s phone. Your local telephone exchange diverts your call to a recorded message within the exchange. The message announces that it has been set up by your relative. You are told that the number you have dialled is out-of-date and you are given a new number to dial. However, your relative didn’t ask for calls to them to be diverted. They didn’t even know it was happening. Would you feel that your call had been intercepted? This is very close to the way Webwise works, whether you opt in or opt out. Instead of people, it’s computers. Instead of telephone numbers, it’s web page addresses.

Here are another 4 good reasons not to take part in the BT Webwise trial.

Hanco

BT Webwise trial has now ended (http://www2.bt.com/static/i/btretail/webwise/bt-webwise-trial.html)

Only thing is this:

a) They claim they do not know who anyone is and it is completely anonymous

b) They are going to study the findings of the trial (without presumably being able to ask customers what they thought of it since they don't know who took part!)

c) The "Anti-Phishing" security enhancing part of the system which customers were told comes with Phorm's Webwise presumably stops working now too - but did they make that clear to their customers? No. Can they let their customers know that it is off now? No, not really, because they don't know who the hoodwinked customers who took part are!

At least it's switched off now. Let's hope they see sense and leave it that way. Hardly a responsible system for a "professional" ISP to be trying to implement...

Hanco