phorm/webwise

BritBrat

Well try it as they have made a substantial change to the T&C.

utilitybroker

tiddler wrote: »

It's not always that easy.

If you've just signed up to Virgin, their minimum contracts are 12 months.
(You do get a chance to cancel in the first month though).

Their are also other ways of Fighting Back. See

http://www.badphorm.co.uk/page.php?5

tiddler

BritBrat wrote: »

Well try it as they have made a substantial change to the T&C.

I will do when they turn Phorm on.

It's a bit early just yet.

LardyCake

I am surprised this thread has not proved more interest.

If I was a customer of one of the three ISPs doing this I would not be happy that all my web traffic was being intercepted and sent to a 3rd part company (Phorm) and stored on servers based in China. Phorm say they will discard numbers over three digits but you only have their word for that and no way of verifying what they are actually doing with your private data.

DatabaseError

i don't know if its apathy, lack of understanding, or implicit trust in the isp, personally, i'd be off like a shot. i understand my isp can (and probably does) record my browsing habits, but selling to a 3rd party is s leap too far

digp

tiddler wrote: »

It's not always that easy.

If you've just signed up to Virgin, their minimum contracts are 12 months.
(You do get a chance to cancel in the first month though).

Depending on the contract this may well amount to a material breach of it.

If VM BT etc. refuse to allow a customer to rescind the contract, simply sue them. A few thousand law suits will soon send them scurrying for cover!

tiddler

A new article about it:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/04/phorm_ripa/

LardyCake

[without wishing to create a debate about the merits of signing Downing Street petitions - so please just ignore this post if you don't want to sign, thank you]

Someone (not me) has now created a petition to 10 Downing Street about this: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/ispphorm/

Alfie_E

LardyCake wrote: »

I am surprised this thread has not proved more interest.

I guess it’s just a question of time. People do like privacy. With the Internet, people have come to expect it as a norm. On any forum or on any comments section of a blog or news posting almost every poster uses an alias. I always found it amusing when the BBC’s Points of View programme came to their web forum section. We’d have El Tel having to cope with the likes of:

Poster slaptickler said the new series was “absolute tripe.” Another poster, wobblybottom, strongly disagreed, saying the series was a “refreshing change.”

On the MSE forum, there’ll be posts along the lines of:

I’m an MSE regular, but I’m posting using a different name because I’ve got a really embarrassing situation.

Charles Arthur of the Guardian has produced what I believe to be the first detailed mainstream article on Phorm – Phorm fires privacy row for ISPs.

LardyCake

You'll find a good write-up on Phorm and it's implications here :
http://www.politicalpenguin.org.uk/blog/p,294/

and an analysis of their patent in part two :
http://www.politicalpenguin.org.uk/blog/p,295/

A couple of quotes:

"How would you feel if your ISP did a deal with a company whose director has form for creating one of the most repugnant systems of Spyware ever to hit the net and has all their company URL’s from an anonymising provider so that they can’t be traced?"

"Of course because a system is capable of doing something, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it will. However this then falls to the individual customer of the ISP as to how much you trust the privacy statement of Phorm"