*poke* bit tech... no coverage yet? for shame! So i'm guessing you've all heard about phorm and ISPs plans to implement it. go google if not, it's an interesting trail of news. this is reprehensible, utterly and completely. what's most disconcerting about the company who is currently branded as phorm is that they were previously 121media and many other names; they used to make spyware that was uninstallable by a usual user; and are constantly rebranding to stay ahead of the wave of bad press. as far as i am concerned, selling my browsing habits to a third party is completely unacceptable to start with, let alone a third party (hosted in russia!) with such a bad record. i urge you all to investigate this fully, and if you feel as strongly as i do; take action. call your ISP, voice your concern, write to their head office, write to the information commissioner. The backlash is large and we should be able to nip this in the bud now. kill phorm: kill it dead.
I only read about it on the bbc ws yesterday, i'm surprised its been kept quiet for so long. This is so very annoying from a cable customer point of view since VM have the monopoly its not possible to switch to another cable provider, I don't know what adsl is like in my area but i don't want to change.
Please do not take what you read from the BBC entirely seriously. Take a look over at The Register's Phorm coverage. Fod is correct. we ALL need to kill this thing stone dead before it starts to get out of control. The worst thing that can happen is that it becomes acceptable and then every ISP-and-his-dog will be doing it. Its MY DATA damm-it!!
Out of interest whats wrong with the bbc coverage? It seemed to be fairly balanced el reg isn't exactly known for its impartiality.
Latest on this from Reg seems to be that both Tim Berners-Lee & Govt think-tank FIPR have declared against this. linky
want to get scared? read this blog about phorm... NSFW (no pr0n, but you might get urges to scream) link
I don't get this, they are working with ISP's so what control would they have on what ads I see on lets say bit-tech.net ? In the interview on el-reg they denied any form of injected ads, so I'm left confused at how they can affect anything other than by selling my surfing habits to 3rd parties yet they claim not to store any information.
^^ me neither. surely running ad block and the like any potential advertising benefits are null and void anyway, the only use I could see for anything like this is to pass on or monitor info, or am I missing something?
Yes Adblock will stop you from seeing the ads, but the phorm servers will still be profiling all the data from your connection not to mention the problems people have been having which later turned out to be because BT were conducting secret trials last summer on this system. At the end of the day the phorm are selling something they and the ISP have no legal right to, your data.
I actually don't care that much (and I'm a VM customer), if it makes the service better (needed) or cheaper then all the better, I block all ads apart from BT ones anyway, and if I so so concerned with web activity (which isn't difficult to get hold of anyway) I'd be using Tor.
Okay, to answer my own question of how they will deliver the ads. What would concern me more is adding another routing layer, with the potential to impact on my net performance. However it is looking more and more likely that the ISP's involved will make it an opt in scheme rather than opt out.
Before you know it, you'll have ad's as your desktop! And on your desktop icons, and in your milk! In all seriousness.... They can all burn in a hot place that isn't pleasant to your skin in the noon hour. "when I was young, your ad's where everywhere. Now you have to have semi-permanent tattos" I could go on... :\
it's not the ads that are the problem: its the fact that ALL your web traffic is routed through a third-party server, with a ridiculously simple 'anonymous' cookie tied to them. Your browsing, email, posts you make here, are all intercepted and processed. Opting out of the service will only stop phorm from processing the data, but as it stands now will not stop your ISP from routing your traffic to them and logging this data. the system as it stands is an opt-out system, and, depends upon the maintenance of a cookie for each and every browser you run. This is completely unworkable: what about mobile devices? how am i supposed to get my cookie on there? embedded browsers in set-top boxes? What if i have my browser set to clear cookies regularly? this is a security and privacy nightmare, don't let anybody fool you into thinking otherwise.
