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[Weaver]

@JBAR

JBAR, consider switching to a non-evil ISP. Decide for yourself after reading

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7634210.stm

http://www.inphormationdesk.org/

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/news/EEAEAEyZEViIOdySIX.html

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/bbphone/article.html?in_article_id=442103&in_page_id=182

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/09/bt_home_hub_hole_response/

There are a few decent ISPs around who are not dishonest, incompetent and solely motivated by greed. Ask around.

[kitz]

Ive split this off from the topic it was tagged on to since it wasnt relevant to the thread or in relation to the OPs problem.

There are several other topics on this forum about phorm in particular this one.

Please feel free to discuss phorm, but not in a thread where we are trying to help a user with an unrelated fault.

[BritBrat]

If everyone ditches BT because of phorm there will be no adds, and as an added bonus no BT internet.

Ditch and switch.

[kitz]

>> If everyone ditches BT because of phorm there will be no adds

Cant see it happening Im afraid :/  Too many people dont understand what it is, and when presented with the screen from BT its made out to look like a good thing that gives extra protection (webwise) rather than the ad side of things.

On top of that if BT give discounts to those users who do use it..  I can see many that would go for it.
Take my dad, if he saw it, he would believe the hype and think its a good thing, not understanding what goes on underneath..  I should imagine theres many many more who would be exactly the same.

[BritBrat]

I know you are right.

But when I meet anyone who uses BT I ask them about Phorm and if they do not know what it is I tell them to find out and do not use BT next time when out of contract.

[jeffbb]

Hi
    How long before Other ISPs jump on the bandwagon ?

[BritBrat]

That is the problem, who first introduced caps, yes you guessed it BT.

[mr_chris]

Not really the same thing - for a lot of ISPs its introducing caps, or eventually going cap in hand to the administrators.

[Weaver]

>> If everyone ditches BT because of phorm there will be no adds

> Cant see it happening Im afraid :/  Too many people dont understand what it is, and when presented with the screen from > BT its made out to look like a good thing that gives extra protection (webwise) rather than the ad side of things.

I think there are still opportunities to take action on this. The legal issues concerning the relationship between website owners and BT/Phorm, see for example article about copyright of website content at  https://dephormation.org.uk/index.php?page=5 , and several similar other articles at that same site suggest that web server owners can take legal action against Phorm operators. Of course web server operators can also choose to disallow the Phorm servers from accessing their site although this might proved fiddly to maintain. The eu investigation may still be in progress, I haven't heard the latest on this.

Write to you MP. Suggest a change in the law to prevent tampering with data in transit and covert monitoring.

Remember also the opt-in mechanism presumably will prove problematic. If it is the case that some user at some time does consent, what proof is there that it is the internet connection owner as opposed to some random user. And I would argue that each user ought to give consent individually. But of course this is not possible because there is no way to know which user is sitting at the particular web browser. So when it becomes clearer what the proposed optin/optout mechanism involves this will be another avenue to explore.

[BritBrat]

I have been thinking this for a long time and have not come across anyone else raising the same point.

Any of you do cashback sites?

I know Kitzs must get paid small amounts for clicks or possible signups through this site but if Phorm alters the URL will any of us get any cashback?

I can see Phorm and BT getting it all.

So if you use cashback sites, referal links do not risk it ditch BT.

[kitz]

>> I have been thinking this for a long time and have not come across anyone else raising the same point.

It was something I raised in one of the other phorm threads, and like you say it was a very major concern..  but I am now led to believe that phorm cant replace any ads that I specifically place but it could replace any 3rd party type ads if I signed up with OIX. 
In other words I'd have to be displaying OIX type ads for them to be able to target ads.
Kind of in a similar way with goodle ads, the site owner doesnt choose the ads, but thats all under googles control and bidding.

Therefore the website holder would have to agree for OIX ads to be displayed and insert the relevant code.
Whilst its not something I will be doing - I could well imagine there are some sites that would http://www.oix.com/publishers/index.html

[Weaver]

[begin predicatable rant :-) ]
Regulars might have noticed that this is something I feel extremely strongly about, not just because of the Phorm-BT dishonesty involved but because of the possible future effect on the public trust in the "believeability" of the internet.

The background to this is a trend where we find

- ISPs redirecting traffic (freeserve caught red handed redirecting SMTP some years ago and then admitting it in a reply to my MP),

- giving false dns results and putting up duplicate fake websites (OpenDNS)

- and now modifying traffic in transit as part of a dishonest covert trial (PHORM).

And so the question I recently asked myself "is what happens when some future scare disrupts the public's faith in whether or not they can even know whether the web they see is "real" or tampered with?". I can imagine the economic effects on internet commerce could be serious. The right thing is for governments to simply ban any such covert tampering, redirection and false DNS reporting to send a message for once before things go bad.

I noticed recently when I did an experiment with Facebook. I created an account with personal info details that were bogus, and watched its servers crawl a website associated with the fake user, only for it to then send ads promoting my fake user's rivals to the user's 'friends'. So that's a new example of how an abuser can "monetize" unwitting users, by offering trojan horse free services and getting ever more creative in how they profit from them, involving dishonesty or underhand practice. By "dishonesty" I mean engaging in practices that users would not like if they knew about them.

I have decided to implement a PHORM denial filter system when I have a bit of time to spare, which will either deny BT-PHORM servers access by IP address blacklist, or to require SSL for suspect users. If I were to catch a PHORM server accessing my websites then I would be delighted to be able to launch a legal action against BT Group for breach of copyright since I deny them permission to make copies of my content on their servers without obtaining permission. But as I am under no duty to keep them informed of what my websites domain names or IP addresses might be it would be pretty impossible for them to be sure of their ability to comply from then on after an action.

[orainsear]

- giving false dns results and putting up duplicate fake websites (OpenDNS)

What exactly happened with OpenDNS?

[Weaver]

OpenDNS returns false DNS results for queries to google's domain and uses this to hijack http directing vistors to a fake website that looks like google, complete with google logo and all. We call this phishing elsewhere.

See the wikipedia entry for google, to which I contributed an account of the security scandal. The account was later rather neutered so that it now doesn't entirely make sense.

If you are unlucky enough to be using OpenDNS, then check the DNS lookup results for say www.google.com and tracert it or compare with an honest dns server using one of the public web-based nslookup services.