Important Notice
BT RAN A TRIAL OF PHORMS WEBWISE LATE LAST YEAR,
BT HAVE MADE A STATEMENT THAT THEY HAVE NO IMMEDIATE PLANS TO ROLL OUT
WEBWISE BUT WILL CONTINUE TO MONITOR THE MARKET,
IF BT CHANGE THEIR MIND AND DECIDE TO GO AHEAD AND ROLLOUT WEBWISE ACROSS ITS RETAIL BROADBAND NETWORK IT
WILL MONITOR ALL NON ENCRYPTED BROWSING OF ITS HOME CUSTOMERS
BT HAVE OVER THE LAST MONTH OR SO BEEN SANITISING THEIR WEBSITES OF LINKS
WITH PHORM BY BOTH REMOVING DATA / PAGES RELATING TO WEBWISE AND THE TRIAL
PHORM HAVE REMOVED MOST IF NOT ALL REFERENCES TO THE TRIALS WITH BT AND THE
BT LOGO FROM THE PARTNER PAGES (ALSO THE TT & KT REFERENCES AS WELL HAVE
GONE AWOL SO DO PHORM HAVE ANY ACTIVE TRIALS OR PARTNERS LEFT??)
I have removed all my copyright material to protect my intellectual
Property.
Virgin Media is still sitting on the fence and not committing to either
rolling out Phorm's WebWise or dropping it completely
TALK TALK (aka Car Phone Warehouse) have said they have dropped plans to
roll out Webwise
Orange and SKY Broadband are also apparently considering this system as
well, but at this moment in time seem to be distancing themselves from
WebWise / PHORM
BT Ran "potentially illegal" trails of this system in both
2006 and 2007 but DID NOT inform users of the system and when users
complained to BT they were told they had "SPYWARE or a VIRUS" on
their PC
Any ISP that does allow Phorm to monetorise they customer base will be
paid commission by PHORM (aka 121Media)
based on the number of adverts served to its customer, Phorm use the data harvested
by the Webwise system to targeted adverts based on the URL AND CONTENT OF
EVERY UNENCRYPTED PAGE you look at on the internet (minus a few categories
of data they say they do not process)
Please be aware this works by watching your entire unencrypted web
browsing to provide targeted adverts.
And when I say ALL I mean ALL, it even looks at any search terms you
type into Google, yahoo, Lycos etc
To put it in perspective if you can search for it in Google then PHORM /
Webwise have the ability to add it to your profile and lots more
The WebWise help pages only tell you half the story, do some research,
type PHORM into Google etc and see just what they are hiding from you
The WebWise DISCOVER widget uses the same ISP DPI Snooping
technology to gain the information to provide the relevance information for
the suggestions, Phorm do not seem to mention this fact on the flash based
demonstrations on there website, and also seems to have neglected to tell
the people it surveyed that their browsing would be monitored to provide the
functionality they were being asked to give an opinion of (i believe the EU
call that "informed consent" I.E. having ALL
the information provided in a clear easy to understand manner before making
a decision, not as in Phorm's market survey missing out the "MINOR" point of
the snooping)
a number of knowledgeable people have said the
WEBWISE system is illegal, under
R.I.P.A. (2000), data protection act , EU privacy law (PERC) and several
others
If you are a website owner /
operator then Phorm's Webwise will create a mirror copy of
your page, then create a derivative work of the page called a data digest (this contains the 10
most common words on page not in the noise word list, the URL, date/time stamp and the visitors UID ) then pass that to the channel / advert
server run by Phorm, using your copyright work for the commercial gain of
Phorm, the ISP partner and the channel operator.
if you want to know more information go to any of the links below and
read what is happening
www.badphorm.co.uk
https://nodpi.org
http://www.phonecallsuk.co.uk/bt-webwise.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/29/phorm_roundup
http://www.inphormationdesk.org
http://www.inphormationdesk.org/Phorm_Flyer.pdf
http://www.inphormationdesk.org/attributions.htm
Phorm have put "THEIR" side of the story at
www.stopphoulplay.com phorms privacy pirates read the site carefully and follow the links provided and see if you think they are misrepresenting the information by
using very selective quotes.
They have tried to publically link screen names used on forums etc. to the
real names of people, and
Phorm claim to protect privacy.
Phorm have changed the content and claims on their StopPhoulPlay website a number of times to
remove information, with no explanation. if it was all correct why would
they need to change the claims they made (look at
StopPhoulPlay changes on NoDPI.org)
Phorm say "decided to expose the smears and set out the true story" , read
the site and draw your own conclusions.
Be vigilant as there are also products by outfits called NEBUAD
(now seem to be rebranding as INSIGHR READY), KINDSIGHT (formally Project
Rialto) and FrontPorch which are very similar to PHORM WEBWISE who are also trying
to launch a targeted advertising system in the UK shortly, no UK ISP partners
have yet been announced by these but we are watching closely
Peter White
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