BT is selling your soul

[davidphorm]

BT, Virgin Media and TalkTalk are going to sell your browsing habits to an advertiser.

 

BT, Virgin Media and TalkTalk (CarphoneWarehouse) have signed an advertising deal with a company called PHORM. The company PHORM re-named itself from 121Media which was alledgedly associated with spyware last year.

 

These ISPs will run PHORM software inside their networks. This software will intercept and examine EVERY WEB PAGE you visit and will process it looking for keywords, and creating a profile of you. Based on that profile, participating websites will then be able to send you targetted advertising. BT are selling this to customers as an anti-phishing protection - WEBWISE (you will be warned if you are going onto a potential phishing site). Not that you need it - McAfee among others offer this for free.

 

BT will tell you that you can opt-out of this WEBWISE 'service'. You can opt-out of receiving the advertising. What they won't tell you is that you cannot opt-out from having all your web activity processed, because that is the only way this Deep Packet Inspection can work - opt out does not mean completely opt out.

 

There are supposed to be safety measures that protect you from having your secure transations (HTTPS) such as online banking from being processed and it also ignores email addresses and some other data. However, it will still capture post codes and other identifying information that you enter into web pages.

 

BT, Virgin and TalkTalk will share the advertising revenue with Phorm - said to be up to £85million.

 

Many people think this is an illegal wiretap under the RIPA and is also against the Data Protection Act.

 

As far as Im concerned this is a material change to my contract with BT, which means I can cancel it and move to another ISP who doesn't spy on me, with no penalty.

 

The technical community think this stinks. Read here (particularly the comments !) :

[EDIT] Link Removed (Advertising)

BadPhorm - When good ISPs go bad!: Welcome

Stop Phorm

There is a petition here : Petition to: Stop ISP's from breaching customers privacy via advertising technologies.

 

They have no right to snoop on my data stream and make money out of it.

[buzby]

Or you can use an anonymous proxy server and they'll get no information on who you are.....!

[davidphorm]

Buzby - you would need a VPN or SSL connection to the proxy. This Phorm thing sits inside BTs network.

[buzby]

It wouldn't matter - they could analyse the traffic but not identify who was recieving it. A bit like clearing cookies after every session (of sorts).

[davidphorm]

OK Please explain to me, be as technical as you like, how my clear HTTP Port 80 connection to an anonymous proxy will prevent them scanning my stuff. The 'anonymising' takes place at the proxy.

[buzby]

Ordinarily yes, however there are pseudo-VPN services that provide a secure tunnel that the sniffers at the ISP can make no sense of. Think of it as a 'phantom' VPN. I tried it late last year with an offering from a US firm, they chucked in the anonymiser for the outbound traffic at their end, and it was fun seeing the Traceroute results. The downside was it killed Skype (and probably any other VoIP) and the latency was a tad more than I would have liked.

[simonjohn]

I must say, this is all very concerning. I for one, do not want any third party viewing any of my browsing habits, albeit that I dont have anything to hide.

 

I dont begrudge the likes of law enforcement agencies having this type of power, but when it comes to the sale of browsing habits for profit, I think this is a step to far...

 

I would even suggest that this is an affront to the right to privacy under the human rights act.

[fbnts]

This does not surprise me at all with the likes of BT!

 

Although I don't have any issues with the concept of consumer profiling (like the Tesco ClubCard) I do have an issue with the forced, 'secret' profiling.

 

I can opt not to use the Tesco clubcard whereas I can't see BT allowing this.

 

For those concerned with Banking etc, they wouldn't be able to see any of the traffic once you are on an SSL (secure) site. To the ISP and every other hop along the internet from your PCs network card to that of the bank server the data would just be a scrambled mess. The only profiling they could make if this is list of SSL sites you have visited but not any keywords or data you supply.

 

Tom

[2Grumpy]

If I let nectar know my purchasing profile, I decide to do it, I can opt out in any purchase and I get something back in return

 

With phorm, I have no choice, I can't opt out of them collecting data, I get nothing out of it (I don't consider 'targetted ads' an advantage) - the ISP keeps it

 

Somethings not right there - thats before you look at any other aspects

 

Grumpy

[Cattolica]

Has the Information Commisioners Office an opinion on the plans to install this software?

[MATTYFEZ]

Anyone lookead at at the TOR tunneling add on for firefox?

 

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5833