New Govt petition / British Telecom spying

DatabaseError

no heath, you can never be too trusting! by the way, can i borrow a tenner, i promise to pay it back one day....
i think if a more reputable company was involved, and bt were more honest in their faq (ie stating that the protection offered by phorm is free in many browsers) then i may trust them more. i can honestly say, if my isp was involved, i'd be migrating as a matter of principle.

BillScarab

I'd love to be able to trust large corporations but have a read of this article at The Register.

Basically, last summer BT were testing this out, some customers thought they were suffering from some sort of malware infection and BT denied all knowledge of it or any involvement with Phorm.

deary65

Might be time for martin to start an MSE ISP service.

BritBrat

albertross wrote: »

Who wants ads anyway, targeted or otherwise, they just slow the surfing experience down, and use more electricity (video ads).

Pluss they cost you money in bandwidth use.

Are the ISP's going to give you extra bandwidth or pay you for recieving the adds?

Not a chance.

So you though you had a 20 Gig limit but soon some of that will be taken from you by the ISP's adds.

The point I am trying to make I think is that if BT say something which says your information is not going to be tracked then that should be the outcome so there isn't anything to worry about. Maybe I am too trusting.

They lied about not using it last June/July can you really trust them now?

deary65

If like me you find these adverts distracting, you can block them by editing the host file and adding this entry.
127.0.0.1 pagead2.googlesyndication.com
To open the host file to edit type in the run menu, C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC then double click host files and open with notepad.

codger

tonyhague wrote: »

i guess we'll have to agree to disagree, heath. your isp stores your ip (mine is static, so even easier). . . my isp does have a full record, but as i am under contract with them they have a duty to keep that data secure and respect my privacy, i honestly wouldn't trust a 3rd party, especially an american business, to keep the data harvesting to the level they suggest, i'm not a member of the 'tinfoil hat' brigade, but it would be a very (very) small step to collect a bit more data in the interests of national Security, and another civil liberty is eroded away under the guise of keeping me 'safe'.

Sincere thanks to Tony and to everyone else who has taken the time out to post on this thread. I don't want to monopolise or re-hash anything by posting again but just to clarify some points:

1) Tony's excerpted post (above) accurately summarises the situation. And its implications. Under the contract you have with your ISP, that ISP is legally obliged to safeguard your privacy. Phorm, a third party in a US tax haven and much of its operations in China, has no such obligation because it is not party to that contract. To put it another way: your Internet travel is a train journey from A to B. That's the ticket you've bought and the route you expect to travel. BT and others now propose that -- whether you like it or not -- your route will now take in a branch line operated by Phorm. You can lock the carriage door. You can curtain off the window. But none of that matters. Phorm is in your carriage and everything you now do is witnessed by it. It's an intruder. And because it's an intrusion, Phorm is having to pay for it. But though it's your space, your ticket, your privacy, the money isn't going to you but your deceitful ISP.

2) British Telecom has a deserved reputation nowadays for mendacity. Not transparency. (You only have to look at its latest large print "free calls" and then the tiny-print substantial increases in day time calls. It publicises the one. It hides the other.) British Telecom lied last year and is lying now about the "test run" it undertook with Phorm without the knowledge or consent of targeted BT subscribers. Obviously, it will carry on lying for as long as it thinks the deception can be maintained, but thanks to pressure from The Register, that's unlikely to be for much longer.

3) Assurances from British Telecom, Phorm, or any other ISP involved in this sleazy business are worthless. As albertross pointed out earlier, the AOL experience is graphic evidence of what can be discovered, and what can become known, even when a user is supposedly "anonymous".

4) BBC TV Watchdog. The programme has, to my knowledge, been contacted about this by many -- not merely a few -- people concerned about their civil rights. I myself have little faith in it at all; it's a candyfloss-weight programme lacking in any real authority and almost certainly without the intellectual calibre necessary to take on an issue such as this.

5) The purpose of the petition is to draw attention to the existence of the petition. I know that may seem a weird notion, but it's actually quite simple:

as the issue at root here can confuse, confound and generally be open to manipulation by people like BT and Phorm who would like nothing better than for the technologically unsavvy to be side-tracked, and also as the issue may be beyond the immediate ken of the average journalist, it seemed more adroit to raise a petition and get that talked about.

In other words: create the smoke that people can see; don't start talking about the nature of the fire first.

6) Newspapers like The Guardian and Observer have already picked up on what's happening. Others will follow. This has much to do with the fact that what nowadays passes for Fleet Street has suddenly awoken to the fact that "people petitions" are newsworthy: in the wake of the success of the protest over road pricing, what's happening on "the petition front" is now very much on the agenda of national newspaper newsdesks.

7) The more signatures the petition receives, the more newsworthy it becomes. The more newsworthy it becomes, the more the reason for the petition -- the fire that's causing the smoke -- to become newsworthy.

In a sense, those involved are using against BT, other ISPs, and Phorm, exactly the same kind of Public Relations finessing which those outfits would like to deploy from their £multi-million budgets.

Unfortunately for the latter, the UK consumer has got there first.

Again: sincere thanks to everyone who has posted here.

robt_2

deary65 wrote: »

If like me you find these adverts distracting, you can block them by editing the host file and adding this entry.
127.0.0.1 pagead2.googlesyndication.com
To open the host file to edit type in the run menu, C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC then double click host files and open with notepad.

That isn't the issue here though

tiddler

djheath wrote: »

To put it simply:

The service doesn't keep a log of anything. ...."

Yes it does.

From this forum posting, the owner of Phorm lets us know that pages can be kept for offline processing.
http://www.badphorm.co.uk/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?306
From the page:

narcosis: If the keyword analysis process is offline then in order to scan for keywords
would you not have to have a copy of webpage in order to analyze it offline ?
MBurgess: Yes, a mirrored copy is analyzed.

I’m delighted to hear that during peek-time web browsing vast amounts of unprocessed web browsing logs and page contents are going to be buffered up. This could be until into the early hours when the offline systems get a chance to clear the backlog. If the buffering system is unable to pass on the data to the categoriser, then, presumably, it will carry on storing data in ever greater amounts.

BillScarab

An excellent post there Codger. While I agree that Watchdog is not the greatest program if enough people contact them they may look at this and if it turns up on prime time TV I'm sure the ISP's won't be happy. Also it may alert more people to what is going on. So overall for the sake of a minute or two submitting it to them it's worth doing in my opinion.

DatabaseError

can you imagine nicky campbell even understanding the issues, let alone questioning the answers? though i agree its probably the only way to bring it to a wider audience than the techies, i'm not convinced phorm wouldn't come out of it smelling of roses.