Phormwatch

The Guardian reports BT drops Phorm!

2009-07-05T17:51:00.000-07:00

The Guardian has today reported that BT have decided to drop Phorm due
to customer opposition and public concerns over privacy.

Follow the link for the full story:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jul/06/btgroup-privacy-and-the-net

This is excellent news for the anti-Phorm campaign. With many other websites
opt-ing out from being scraped, it won't be long before Phorm model is completely
unsustainable.

Next up, Virgin Media (who are still sitting on the fence).

Websites which have opted-out of Phorm scraping

2009-04-30T04:30:00.000-07:00

The following websites have all said that they do not want their website scraped by Phorm and have sent a message to Phorm for their domains to be 'opted-out':

amazon.com -- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7999635.stm
wikipedia.org -- http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/04/wikimedia-opting-out-of-phorm/
livejournal.com -- https://secure.grepular.com/blog/index.php/2009/04/08/livejournal-opt-out-of-phorm/
drupal.org -- http://association.drupal.org/node/346
youthnet.org -- http://www.youthnet.org/mediaandcampaigns/pressreleases/phormoptout
thepickards.co.uk -- http://www.thepickards.co.uk/index.php/200904/opting-out-of-phorm-two-easy-steps/
jamesthevicar.com, rubberturnip.com, usr-local-bin.org -- http://jamesthevicar.com/blog/?post=20090417_phormoptout
ciaranmcnulty.com -- http://ciaranmcnulty.com/blog/2009/04/webmasters-opt-out-of-phorm-now
nermal.com -- http://www.nermal.org/blog/opting-out-of-phorm/

ORG reports LiveJournal has 'opted-out' of Phorn

2009-04-09T08:30:00.000-07:00

The ORG is carrying an article here which points to a blog called MickeyC’s Interweblog.

The blog explains how the author managed to convince the people at LiveJournal to block Phorm. It begins:

Today I convinced the good people at Livejournal to request that livejournal.com and all of it’s subdomains be added to the Phorm Webwise exclusion list. I contacted their privacy department, expecting a boiler plate non-informative response, but it went quite differently. I got a direct response from their Director of Engineering and Operations (Tupshin Harper), and permission to quote him. Here’s what was said:

Follow the links above to read the full story.

Letter to the UK Guardian Website regarding ORG Open Letter on Phorm

2009-03-23T17:27:00.000-07:00

I recently sent this letter to the UK Guardian management:

Dear Sir or Madam,

I would like to bring to your attention the following open letter,
sent to some major Internet websites by the Open Rights Group,
Richard Clayton of the FIPR, and privacy campaigner Alexander Hanff:

http://www.openrightsgroup.org/2009/03/22/open-letter-call-for-major-websites-to-opt-out-of-phorm/

The open letter calls for major websites to opt-out of the Phorm
profiling system.

What opting out means in practice is that Phorm will not use any
information gathered through deep packet inspection to build up
profiles of the visitors to the Guardian website and will not use
use this profile to serve targeted ads on another website.

One year ago, your advertising manager, Simon Kilby stated that the
Guardian would not be using Phorm's OIX advertising network:

"It is true that we have had conversations with them [Phorm] regarding
their services but we have concluded at this time that we do not want
to be part of the network. Our decision was in no small part down to
the conversations we had internally about how this product sits with
the values of our company."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/26/guardian_phorm_uturn/

Many of the visitors to the Guardian talk-board and in the Internet
community at large were very pleased with this decision. I hope The
Guardian is still willing to take an ethical stance against Phorm and
protect the privacy of its users.

"The most important currency of the Guardian is trust. This is as true
today as when CP Scott marked the centenary of the founding of the
paper with his famous essay on journalism in 1921."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/information/theguardian/story/0,,906788,00.html

Indeed, your privacy policy states quite clearly that:

"We are absolutely committed to protecting your privacy. Our policy
can be summarised in one sentence: we will not share your information
with others without your prior consent. We have also established the
following principles:

1. We will continue to invest in high-quality security and do our
utmost to protect user privacy through the appropriate use of the
latest security technology."

http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933905,00.html

It is for these reasons I am asking that The Guardian website to
opt-out of Phorm and abide by its own privacy policies and protect
its users privacy and preserve and promote their trust.

Yours sincerely,

phormwatch (real name used)

Watch this space for any news of a response from The Guardian.

Fundraising for House Of Lords Round Table Event

2009-01-03T04:24:00.000-08:00

From the nodpi website:

Myself and Portly_Giraffe (InPhormationDesk.org) are currently working with a member of the House of Lords to organise a ’round table’ event later this month, giving Peers and MPs direct access to some of the very best and brightest minds in the IT industry… both from the UK and abroad.

We currently expect the event will be hosted in the House of Lords, and intend to convince politicians of the need to stop systems like Phorm and Nebuad.

We need your help.

With some guests traveling in a personal capacity from across the Atlantic; we need to be able to support their travel and accommodation costs

Please; make a donation to the NoDPI fund using the yellow button on the right. Transatlantic air fares are around £2,000, and we may need to offer help with accommodation too.

Happy New Year!

If you are interested in attending, please contact the admin on the nodpi website, or email me at phormwatch -at- fastmail -dot- net, and I will put you in touch with the appropriate person.

Otherwise, please donate generously if you can. This is a unique opportunity for the anti-Phorm campaign.

CPS Letter Writing Campaign for the prosecution of BT for the covert trials

2008-11-27T11:28:00.000-08:00

Letter Writing Campaign

As many of you know, the CPS Complex Case Centre are now reviewing the
case file regarding the covert trials of Phorm Inc.’s technology carried
out by BT Group PLC in 2006/2007. Part of the review will be to
determine whether or not it is in the public interest to prosecute BT
Group for their actions.

To this end I think it would be very useful to start a new letter writing
campaign to the team that are heading up the investigation to show them
that the public feel it is very much in their interests for BT Group PLC
(and Phorm for being complicit) to be prosecuted for the illegal
interception of over 100 million internet communications during these
trials.

To this end I am requesting everyone write to the following address
expressing their concerns:

Mr Andrew Hadik

Crown Prosecution Service

Complex Casework Centre

50 Ludgate Hill

London

EC4M 7EX

I will be contacting FIPR, ORG, Baroness Miller, Earl of Northesk and
Commissioner Vivian Reding in the next week asking them to write to
Andrew Hadik as well. I would request that people also write to their MP
and request they send a letter of support for the case to Mr Hadik too.

We need to get as many letters of support sent as possible to send a
clear message to the CPS that the public are outraged at BT Group’s
actions in 2006/2007 and would like to see them prosecuted to send a
clear message to the industry that such activity will not be tolerated.

So for the sake of a little bit of time and the cost of a stamp/
stationary - please make an effort as this really is the last chance
outside of EU intervention to have something done about this despicable
situation.

If the CPS decide not to prosecute the only further options are very
expensive (such as Judicial Reviews). So the time to act is now - lets
finally put this to rest and see public justice served. Feel free to
post this appeal on any web site or social network you use.

Author: Alexander Hanff

https://nodpi.org/2008/11/27/letter-writing-campaign/

New Poll at Toluna regarding Phorm/Webwise deployment

2008-10-26T10:24:00.000-07:00

Participate in the poll at Toluna.com. The following question is asked:

"What is your opinion of the UK authorities response to BT's covert trials and the ongoing deployment of Phorm's Webwise technology?"

It is a multiple-choice poll, and you can tick more than one choice.

The poll is here:

http://tinyurl.com/webwise-poll

BT Community Forums locked due to data leakage

2008-10-20T15:34:00.001-07:00

In case anyone is a regular on BT's Community Forums, found here:

http://beta.bt.com/bta/forums/index.jspa

and was wondering why they have been unable to post, the answer can
be found here:

https://nodpi.org/forum/index.php/topic,304.0.html

I suggest reading the whole thread. Basically, BT's forum software was
found to be leaking personal profile information. After frantically trying
to disable each feature which leaked information, the mods (or someone higher
up) decided to make the whole forum read-only until they resolved the issue.

It you are a member, it is possible that your email address was leaked and is searchable on Google.

Sign the new 10 Downing Street Petition

2008-10-03T16:04:00.000-07:00

"We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to stop ISPs from using other peoples copywrited data to make money through targetted advertising."

Someone has started a new 10 Downing Street petition which is directly relevant to the way Phorm's spyware operates.

Please sign the new petition here:

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/target-ad-copy/

If you haven't already signed the 'old' petition, please do so here:

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/ispphorm/

Entity-Relationship diagram of BT and Phorm

2008-08-10T15:29:00.000-07:00

Here is a work in progress of BT and Phorm and the relationships they have between them and with other groups.

It is far from complete, and this link will be updated from time to time as the diagram is updated.

http://img295.imageshack.us/my.php?image=phormumlly3.jpg

BT's AGM Meeting in London July 16th

2008-07-20T11:52:00.001-07:00

Report from the Barbican Protest

Our man 'Dephormation' reports from the inside of the BT AGM in London:

http://www.dephormation.org.uk/?page=27

Report BT Webwise as a phishing scam

2008-05-26T06:44:00.000-07:00

In Firefox, you can report the BT Webwise page as a phishing scam:

First, go to the BT Webwise page:

http://www.webwise.bt.com/webwise/index.php

Then, in Firefox, go to the 'Help' menu, and select the 'Report Web Forgery' menu item.

Technological Solutions

2008-03-25T16:02:00.000-07:00

The following technologies may be helpful in preventing Phorm/OIX from building up a profile of your browsing habits:

Check out a very exciting prototype encryption technology called Obfuscated TCP!

Dephormation Firefox add-on: http://www.dephormation.org.uk/
TrackMeNot Firefox add-on: http://www.trackmenot.org/
SquiggleSR Firefox add-on: http://squigglesr.free.fr
ScrabblePhorm Java and Python programs available here:

http://phormwatch.pastebin.com/f1ba5bd43
http://phormwatch.pastebin.com/f143224db

Use Google Scraper: https://ssl.scroogle.org/ to make encrypted Google searches so Phorm cannot intercept your search terms.

Encrypt and anonymise your web surfing with JAP: http://anon.inf.tu-dresden.de/index_en.html or by using TOR: http://www.torproject.org/

The creators of Dephormation have created some PHP code which dynamically tests whether a user's connection is with a Phorm-participating ISP, OR whether a user has a Phorm spyware cookie on their computer. An green, yellow or red image is displayed accordingly.

Readme file is here: http://www.dephormation.org.uk/server/cookie_test/readme.txt
Zip file of the code is here: http://www.dephormation.org.uk/server/cookie_test/cookie_test.zip

Phorm-free UK ISPs

2008-03-16T18:31:00.000-07:00

I've decided to compile a list of UK ISPs who currently do not use Phorm technology and have given me assurances that they currently have no plans of doing so. I will email various ISPs and ask them what their position in.

I also intend to ask them if they will offer incentives for people to switch from BT / Virgin / TalkTalk.

Aquiss.net: http://aquiss.net/ - Aquiss is strongly against Phorm spyware technology: "Aquiss is not working with Phorm, never have and never will. This would be considered a breach of our own trust and privacy guidelines with customers."

SurfAnytime: http://www.surfanytime.com/html/phorm.asp - declare unequivocally that they "are not, have not and will not work with Phorm or any similar organisation who blatantly invade the privacy of unwitting customers."

Eclipse: http://www.eclipse.net.uk/ - have confirmed to me via email that they neither use Phorm nor have any current plans to do so. UPDATE: A poster recently sent me an email regarding an exchange they had with Eclipse. They told him or her: "We've had some preliminary discussions with Phorm but have not committed to anything at this stage."

Plusnet: http://www.plus.net/ - UPDATE: Neil Armstrong, Products Director of PlusNet sent me an email with an official company statement: "We have not trialled Phorm and have no plans to do so."

Zen Internet: http://www.zen.co.uk/ - have stated in an email that: "...we have no plans to perform customer URL stream monitoring, nor enter into contract with Phorm."

IDNet: http://www.idnet.net - I have received an email from a former Virgin customer who says that he contacted IDNet and they assured him they do not use Phorm. Confirmation from IDNet and their future plans to follow shortly.

Demon: http://www.demon.net - Customer services has assured me that they 'currently do not have any relationship with phorm'.

Namesco: http://www.names.co.uk/ - I received an email for a namesco customer with a copy of an email from Customer Services where they state unequivocally that 'Namesco do not use Phorm and have no intentions of doing so'.

AAISP: http://aaisp.net.uk/ - Have a look at their front page. ;)

Collecting participating organisations

2008-03-12T11:01:00.000-07:00

I've set up a list of four types of groups of participants: ISPs, PR agencies, websites or advertising companies, advertisers. If you know of any more entries which should appear in the lists, please email me at:

phormwatch at fastmail.net

There are currently no entries for advertisers because we do not have this information yet.