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Phorm, the advertising technology company, today announces that its ISP partner, BT, will tomorrow commence its trial of Phorm's platform, branded "BT Webwise".
BT customers are being invited to take part in the trial, which will take place over a number of weeks. Following successful completion of this trial and an appropriate period of analysis and planning, it is currently expected that Phorm's platform will be rolled out across BT's network.
British Police Will Not Investigate Phorm/BT Ad Trial [webmasterworld.com]
and types mail to my UK company lawyer in UK ..where BT's action can be ruled upon by a judge in civil court ..
thanks for the heads up Engine
That I am sure is stealing?
cookies from the domain webwise.net
If the ads come from the same domain, they can all be blocked with a simple DNS hack on that name.
I am confused on how this system could be allowed, everyone is saying they will replace our ads (publisher) with Phorm ads.That I am sure is stealing?
I think it is a little like Adwords. If you want to show Ads on your website you have to include some code so the Ads will be shown. The difference to Adwords however is this:
Adwords analyzes the website and then displays ads according to the content of the website.
Phorm analyzes the surfing patterns of the user and displays ads on participating websites according to his surfing preferences.
That is a stupid approach in my opinion. Because If you want to buy a new LCD TV and search for information on a website for LCD TVs with Phorm you will get shown ads for the MP3 Player you looked for yesterday and have probably already ordered.
From the webmaster point of view only interesting for websites not dedicated to a specific topic, like for example news sites.
As I prefer my privacy I would not use an Internet Service Provider implementing Phorm. But since most people readily sell their privacy with all those bonus cards for a free 5 Euro toaster when they have spent 1,000 EUR I think they will queue to register when they get a 1 Euro monthly discount on their DSL bill.
I think I will block visitors from Phorm ISps on my websites if possible. Out of principle. Or at least display a warning message or something.
read carefully [lightbluetouchpaper.org ]..
some ISP's outside the UK may already be using phorm ..British Telecom already did without informing their customers ..they didn't know they were being spied on ,their search history being logged and ads custom served between them and the pages that they were visiting .( nor did the webmasters who pages they visited .this is not googles search history ..this is scumware implemented by ISP's ..
you have a page about widgets ..BT customer sees your page and your ads ..clicks to another page about widgets on your site again with your ads ..and this time phorm put someone elses ads for widgets over your page and someone else makes the sale ..and you dont even see it happen ..leaves no trace in your logs other than your page was visited by a surfer ..
the European Commission thinks it's illegal even if the surfer opts in ..because you as webmaster anywhere in the world dont get to opt in ..you just get your pages used as wallpaper to phorms ads ..
so what do you think ?
BTW phorm used ( under another name "121 media" ) to make rootkits ..
f-secure ..found one in use ..
Name : Apropos
Alias: Trojan.Win32.Crypt.t, PeopleOnPage, Adintelligence.AproposToolbar, ContextPlus
Type: Spyware
Category: Spyware
[edited by: Leosghost at 10:35 pm (utc) on Sep. 29, 2008]
Imagine, a guy follows you around all over town. Then, next day when you leave your house he hands you a pile of leaflets.
That's the real life equivalent of what they're doing.
Then they say that the customer chose it ..so no privacy issue ..as it's now "opt in" ..
They dont have an answer to the webmaster who doesnt get a choice ..copyright/ bandwidth question though ..
Imagine, a guy follows you around all over town. Then, next day when you leave your house he hands you a pile of leaflets.
that's got to be the best decription of phorm I ever read ...
and wherever your website is hosted ..USA or Mongolia...Holland or Australia ..wherever ..unless you block all British Telecom IP addresses then no webpage in the world is immune from this scumware ..
[edited by: Leosghost at 10:56 pm (utc) on Sep. 29, 2008]
you have a page about widgets ..BT customer sees your page and your ads ..clicks to another page about widgets on your site again with your ads ..and this time phorm put someone elses ads for widgets over your page and someone else makes the sale ..and you dont even see it happen ..leaves no trace in your logs other than your page was visited by a surfer ..
Have you confirmed this? I've yet to read anywhere they were injecting ads into sites unless the site was part of the program in which case they would be benfiting from it.
I think we need some clear and concise information on exactly what they are doing as there has been many threads on this already many of which were speculative and others with flat out garbage. Sorry but "confirmed from many sources.." doesn't cut it for me.
Are the injecting ads into the content? Are ads being rplaced? Are they overlaying ads? What are they doing?
BT Webwise also personalises the online advertising you see when browsing on participating websites by linking ads to your interests. For example, if you search for a weekend trip to Paris or visit pages related to Paris, BT Webwise would replace the standard ads that would normally appear with advertising relating to travel or hotels information. You won't see any more adverts than you normally do - they'll simply be more relevant.
The BT docs are now extremely heavy on the use of "participating websites". IIRC, there were also reports of ads replaced on non-participating sites during earlier trials. And of course, this is only a "trial".
plus I did think that readers would have followed my first link and from there
followed their noses..thats how the innerwebs are supposed to work ..
you may surf differently I guess ..but ...
There are many more but so much info on what phorm really is and how it really works
( even now ) is on blogs or fora ( which normal policy here does not allow linking to ..
Mr cutts appears to be the only exception with links to blogs ..
and I dont remember ever seeing links out to other fora here that stayed up )..
so that restricts that what one can link to directly ..
To be come inphormed on this subject It's better just to enter "phorm" into any search engine
and spend a half a day reading ..if you want to protect your web real estate that is ..
However here are some of just many links ..
read the rest of "dephormation" for tips on how to deal with phorm
Two links will do for now ..dont' want to try the lawmans patience ..and we all know how to find things out about
things called phorm with search engines dont we ..
I didnt link to phorms site because I dont link to scumware ..
BTW as regards "participating websites" as cited by BT ..they never show ..nor have they ever shown
( and I doubt they will before the end of the universe ..for the reason that I will explain below )
their list of "participating websites" ..and you as webmaster will note if research the subject that
there is nowhere on either [url=]http://www2.bt.com/static/i/btretail/webwise/index.htmlBT's[/url) nor phorms website where one can sign up to become one of the "participating websites"
no link ..no websmasters sign here ..no how do I join ..nor does BT's TOS for phorm/webwise [www2.bt.com]
niet , rien , nada ..zilch ..cos you cant sign up a website to "participate"..
phorm and BT consider that if the robots.txt on your website allows access to any page by any robot..
eg googlebot ..then they are allowed in ( they have said this officially ).!
they do not publish their bots user string ..so they cant be blocked..except by blocking all BT IP's ..
( actually there are various work arounds to protect your site from phorm ..this site "dephormation" explains some of them..not your average "mom and pop" webmaster stuff though ..which is what phorm and BT are counting on ..that and their " if you allow any bots then that means us too" )..
Second the sign up page here [www2.bt.com] on BT's site for their customers ( your potential visitors with phorm enabled ) ..and the screenshots they show ..also doesnt list the participating sites to you the surfer before you "sign up" ( authorise phorm to place a cookie that then spoofs 3rd party sites cookies )..well they could hardly list the entire internet could they ..the page scroll would be humongus !
..and the page load time would be measured in light years !..but they do tell you how they can protect you from phishing ..they dont say how nearly every browser on the web can do this now by default ..
They do say how you can ..as a surfer switch the "cookie acceptance " on and off ..but even when off phorms hardware ..at BT still routes your requests to pages ..via phorm...and the pages returned ..come back via phorm ....it just doesnt parse them ( like it does with the cookie enabled )..
It uses the cookie in order to "overlay" ( yes overlay is the best description ) the ads of advertisers..signed up to phorm ..( we dont have any way of knowing who they are ..except to see their ads ) ..
which are overlayed on the pages following the parsing ..these pages are not those of the sites signed up to the phorm network ..they are yours and mine ..
ie ..surfer x ( using phorm)
goes to page y owned by company A ( who can be anywhere and is not aware of phorm )
Phorm parses the returned page ..extracts the broad subject ..
Surfer x goes next to page z ( maybe still owned by the webmaster A of page y on the same site or maybe any other site )
Only this time phorm add in the browser of surfer X in real time ..ads for product of company B
Who may be company A's competitor ..
Got it ? ..thats what it is ..scumware ..page hijacking / interference via ISP BHO ...
Which is why the European Commission told the UK govenment to stop it happening ..and the UK government caved in to BT and told the police not to prosecute ..and to leave it to the civil courts
( inspite of the fact that it is a criminal matter ) ..
by the time the EU get around to ruling on it ..BT and phorm will have made millions ..set precedent and yoursite may have been phormed ..and you will be wondering why with all those page views.. your revenue from ads or even products or services that you sell from your site went through the floor ..
Now I have things to do in the real world off the web so research it ..read at least half a day ..it's important for your site..
edit reason ..formatting
[edited by: Leosghost at 1:31 pm (utc) on Sep. 30, 2008]
Regards...jmcc
In the ad serving phase, when your computer requests an ad from the OIX (because a website has included our tag in their page), the browser sends the random number and the categories are used to deliver the targeted ad, not the details of your browsing, or anything about you or your computer.
I would point out that when BT ran their last/previous ..( unannounced to anyone including their subscribers )"trial" of this ..the ads were also served over pages which had no "tags" ..and whose webmasters didnt know ...
would you trust people who make rootkits for a living ?
appears to me to be claiming that if you block any of Googlebot, Slurp or * in robots.txt the disallowed urls will not be profiled.
Although given previous statements that could be a misunderstanding of "if you allow any".
Still, as the major SEs enable (mostly) round trip DNS to positively identify their spiders it all looks like another argument for cloaking robots.txt . They'll get nothing but Disallow: * from my sites. Of course, whether they are even honouring that, as they claim, I'll probably never know!
Do you think you should have to ?
Yeah right. Like anybody would trust them on this.
(But it does require some server side code)
If a user-agent string *and* round trip DNS confirm that a bot is from one of the big 3 (and a few others) then they get a robots.txt that allows them access to my sites. Otherwise they get a robots.txt that says no bots are allowed. Even if Phorm decide to fake the user-agent they will not be requesting robots.txt from Googlebot's or Slurp's IP addresses and so will receive the "Disallowed: *" version.
Once upon a time scrapers and scammers and spyware and virus writers and rootkit coders ..used to hide ..now since G and it's "cache" have opened the doors ..they all ( if they can find the investment fund backers ) just incorporate and then PR , "lobby" ( usually just another way to spell bribe a legislator ) their way to illegaly monetizing other peoples content and creations ..
[edited by: Leosghost at 9:49 pm (utc) on Oct. 3, 2008]
