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Covert BT Phorm Trial Report Leaked
stavros-59 writes "An internal BT report on the BT secret trials of Phorm (aka 121Media) Deep Packet Inspection has been revealed on Wikileaks today. The leaked document shows that during the covert trial a possible 18 million page requests were intercepted and injected with JavaScript and about 128 thousand charity ads were substituted with the Phorm Ad Network advertisements purchased by advertisers specifically for the covert trial period. Several ISPs are known to be using, or planning to use, DPI as a means of serving advertising directly through Layer 7 interception at ISP level in the USA and Europe.
NebuAd claim they are using DPI to enable their advertising to reach 10% of USA internet users." CT: nodpi has updated their page with a note that says that the charity ads were "purchased and not hijacked"- read there to see what the latest is.
So let me see - if I am paying for bandwidth (which will soon be metered), and my ISP in injecting its ads into the webpages I am requesting, then the ISP is running down my bandwidth on purpose?
Isn't that sort of like someone from the electrical company who breaks into your house to turn the lights on while you're gone?
I won't even mention the privacy issues, cause those aren't "in" nowadays, nor are they likely to be a sufficient cause to nip this practice in the bud. Cheating people out of money, on the other hand, is always a great way to apply the US tort law to the cause.
Changing content and injecting different ads? I could see two possible violations here, one being copyright (altering content without the consent of the provider of the content), the other one dealing with fraudulent ad change (someone other than the one paying for the ads being displayed).
It's like a cable company changing the channel ads with their own. I doubt any channel would sit and bear it, especially since their customers (i.e. ad buyers) won't accept that.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The Digital Sorceress
I noticed that quote too. It is completely despicable that they would remove charity advertisements. Actually, I think the entire system boils down to theft and unlawful interception of traffic.
What if the phone company inserted commercial adds when you were talking to someone on the phone?
I could see Oxfam (and the other charities who had their ads substituted) getting their lawyers to shakedown BT for a substantial "donation" as an alternative to being sued.
Of course is won't. If a private person were to develop and test this out, he would likely be spending the next 20 years in prison (looking less and less "exaggerated" as time goes on.) The fact that this is for cooperate gains; it will be largely over looked. Yes, I might be lost in cynicism, but life seems to be supporting my case thus far.
"I only know 2 things: The love for me, and the fear of me."
Looking at the site it appears to be pretty easy for phorm here, all they'd need do is do a simple domain lookup. If it doesn't exist they filter it out.
If it doesn't exist then it's generated by this, since all it does is randomly create addresses. It'd be better if it just loaded random websites. Of course, that'd eat up a lot more of the users bandwidth though.
"realistically lead to legal action against BT"
Legal action strong enough to totally stop them is unlikely, as the power seekers who run a lot of countries unfortunately seem to be rushing towards building their own Big Brother, so as they make the rules, they choose whats considered legal. So they simply need to change the laws, which is what they keep doing. It seems nearly every week now we are getting ever more stories of new grabs for information and/or power over people. At this rate, 2008 should go down in history as the start of a Worldwide Big Brother.
Its ironic that our so called free countries appear to be building Big Brother as fast, if not faster than other countries. Maybe we just have better technology. Its also ironic that the war on terrorists is a war against people who wish to force others into their point of view. Yet now the people already in power are seeking to clamp down and hold control over everyone. Its like all of us who don't seek power are caught up in a power struggle between the different groups of power seekers who do seek to impose their views on everyone.
I guess the ones in power in some way fear some lost of power, as it can't be just about protecting us. Its got to be about seeking more power, which is what they do thoughout their political lives and all of us who don't seek power are not going to be heard by them. Especially as most people don't seem to even see how much harm can be done with so much power and no way to tell them they are behaving unfairly. They are becoming like a machine which is loosing its feedback mechanism and so running towards ever more extremes.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.
It never flew, because the people I was dealing with weren't complete cunts.
From the document: The advertisements were used to replaced [sic] a 'default' charity advertisement (one of Oxfam, Make Trade Fair or SOS Children's Villages) when a suitable contextual or behavioural match could be made by the PageSense system.
So not only are the bastards hijacking our traffic, they are overwriting paid-for charity ads as well.
I repeat, CUNTS!
One swallow does not a fellatrix make
Intermediate term fix: Tunnel everything over IPsec. If ISPs are going to act like Eve or Mallory, let's treat them as such.
By their own admission a leading UK telecoms company has deprived several charities of a legal revenue stream to line their own corporate pockets.
Given the outrage following the several Audiocall staff kept 100K of children in need cash for itself, I hope BT get the same treatment.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
ISPs complain that BitTorrent users are eating up all the bandwidth, and the MPAA and RIAA complain about "stealing" of IP through filesharing. Meanwhile, the RIAA and MPAA are breaking the law trying to turn a profit with their (pseudo) legal engine, and the ISPs are breaking the law with DoS/MITM attacks, and altering content on the fly! This is bullshit, complete and utter bullshit, and it needs to stop, NOW. Net Neutrality needs to be the LAW, and ISPs need to have the hammer dropped HARD on them over bullshit like this.
I thought SSL MITM isn't possible, could you please point me to a page explaining how that works ?
Atleast when certificates are properly checked it shouldn't be possible.
New things are always on the horizon
So if I had an ad-funded website (unlikely in the current climate, but stick with me) Phorm would be screwing me out of the money I'd make for those ads, but replacing them with there own.
Something tells me that if I did the same thing with a billboard - charging customers for me to go out and paste their adverts over the top of paid for adverts at night - Clear Channel would quite quickly be attempting to sue me.
You just explained how it's possible.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
> BT stands for "British Telecom,"
..." or something like that, but identifying them as "British Telecom" is simply incorrect.
No, it doesn't (anymore). The whole brand and company is "BT". They dropped the British bit (I forget when) when trying to become a global brand.
The full name of the company is "BT Group", but typically when naming companies you don't include the "group" or "plc / ltd. / llc" bits.
The website is also www.bt.com - check out the page, no mention of "British" whatsoever.
If you wanted to identify the company better, for folks that don't know it, you could say "BT - a major UK telco & ISP -
I think it is actually worse than copyright violation. It is fraud. When I have an ad on my website, it is an indicator that I either a) really like the product/service the advertised company is providing, b) will profit from viewing/clicking the ad, or c) really think that the charity being advertised is worthwhile. Phorm ads wouldn't fit any of those categories and yet are purposefully being injected into pages to make it look like A, B, or C are true. It is giving the impression of me approving/profiting from an ad that I am not approving and profiting from. In addition, it is taking money out of my pocket (or a charity's pocket) to make Phorm money. That's fraudulent activity in my book.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Yes, I might be lost in cynicism, ...
:), which as a consequence renders you useless as a prototypical consumer (if you escape being caught by Prozac&Co.)
This is only what they tell you to obfuscate that you are on the way to enlightenment
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
It's always worth reading the document first.
/and/ serving the charity adverts to those who viewed the web pages and were not in the trial.
121Media, who ran the trial, placed charity ads (at its own expense) on a number of websites, and then intercepted them and replaced them with commercial or other charity adverts on the fly. Thus they were replacing their own adverts
Thus there is no question of damage to charities, quite the contrary; nor to websites advertising revenues.
There is, though, the privacy issue.
It would be helpful if we could hang them for what they are guilty of, rather than making unsupported allegations.