Slashdot Mirror
Amazon To Block Phorm Scans
clickclickdrone writes "The BBC are reporting that Amazon has said it will not allow online advertising system Phorm to scan its web pages to produce targeted ads. For most people this is a welcome step, especially after the European Commission said it was starting legal action against the UK earlier this week over its data protection laws in relation to Phorm's technology. Anyone who values their privacy should applaud this move by Amazon."
It doesn't say anywhere how you opt your own website out of this.
I suggest everyone does this, no-matter how small or insignificant your site it.
Anyone who values their privacy should applaud this move by Amazon.
Thank you for telling me how to think. I believe we are approaching this from the wrong end (why start with websites?).
The article hints at two other points I would encourage Brits who care to be vocal about:
Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, said: We expect more sites to block Webwise in the near future and also ISPs to drop plans to snoop on web users.
Write your ISPs. Threaten to change ISPs even if you're not able to. Let them know how this makes you feel.
The European Commission has described the technology as an "interception" of user data and wants UK law to reflect more explicitly the need for consent from users in order for the service to be implemented.
As always, contact your parliamentary representative and also EU representative and let them know how you feel about this.
These would be much more effective options than asking each website that exists to request Phorm not scan their site.
My work here is dung.
... but they obviously didn't do it for privacy reasons. As a business, I can bet they weren't happy with the idea of something scanning their pages and then targeting adverts from possible competitors based on what users were looking at on Amazon.
'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
I suspect we'll see a fair bit more of this. Not because the world is full of fuzzy defenders of privacy(it isn't); but because the world is full of nonfuzzy violators of privacy and Phorm is trying to muscle in on their action.
One of Amazon's major selling points, beyond their good logistics, is their ability to use site analytics to make interest based recommendations to customers. Obviously, they have zero interest in letting Phorm piggyback on that, on their own site no less.
I suspect that many other major web presences will be in a similar place. Phorm is potentially lucrative for the ISPs, but it is a nontrivial threat to larger site and ad-network operators. The small guys are more or less resigned to outsourcing analytics and ad placement, so it won't be as much of a change for them; but the big independents will not be pleased.
It's actually been a while since I last heard about phorm. I believe that the general issue had more to do with phorm intercepting pages on the ISP's side and re-writing them to insert material before re-serving them to you. Google ads, on the other hand (since you brought them up) is a widget added by the site owner's permission.
Except with Google ads, the people who actually own the website choose whether or not to serve them. Phorm ads are injected at the ISP level, completely ignoring whether the server wants the ads or not. Yes, they're still interest based, but they're evil for other reasons in my opinion.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
Google doesn't do anything unless you use Google. Phorm gets the information from your ISP.
More sites should provide an option for https, like gmail does. Some still don't even provide it for authentication.
Once upon a time there were wimpy CPUs, and https was a more significant computational burden. Now, not so much. Especially when compared to the resource requirements of most dynamic page generation systems.
You opt into Google's ad service by visiting a site using it, and can opt out by simply stopping them from creating the tracking cookies. You automatically opt into Phorm when you use the internet and can only opt out by setting a special "don't track me bro" cookie on each profile of each browser used by each device in your home. I think that's quite a distinction. Phorm assumes that any of your web activity is theirs to track unless you specifically tell them otherwise.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
WTF?! Even ignoring all the privacy issues everyone else is talking about, isn't that still blatantly illegal? It's copyright infringement! By modifying the web page, Phorm is creating a derivative work, and that requires permission of the copyright holder.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Phorm are liars when it comes to robots.txt.
They say they respect robots.txt but their scraper will only respect it if it also blocks google and yahoo. If it allows Google and Yahoo, they say it's fair game for Phorm. That's not respecting it at all.
But what do you expect from the sort of people who would conduct illegal surveillance on people to test their spyware system and claim that letting opt opt out would have been impossible because it would have been too difficult for them to understand the complicated computery stuff they were doing.
Phraudsters.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
Please correct me if I'm wrong; but my understanding was that Phorm's plan was to pay the ISPs for the privilege of spying on their customers and then buy ad space on various websites in order to run ads targeted on the basis of the spying.
For a small site, then, having Phorm spy on your visitors via ISP, then having Phorm pay you to run ads, would not be considerably different than using a 3rd party analytics package, google analytics or similar, and then being paid to run ads from a third party ad network. Now, since, under Phorm, the ISP needs to be paid, the site operator would presumably see less money; but it would be a difference of degree rather than kind.
If my understanding of Phorm is wrong(if, for instance, Phorm were tempted to go with the super-sleazy tactic that one sees occasionally, of colluding with the ISP to strip ads from 3rd party websites and insert their own), then the above is of course irrelevant.
Phorm wants to inject ads into web pages at the ISP level. They want them to be targeted so not only do they want to alter web content without the owners or receivers consent, they also want to take a look at all web traffic first (deep packet inspection) and keep a history so they can better target the ads. It's opt-out because otherwise no-one would even touch it.
Now, I'm not going to even try to claim that I'm unbiased as living in the UK means that this monstrosity may well hit me but I think that's not an entirely inaccurate explanation. I really hope that the EC manages to step in and squash Phorm and maybe even slap BT with a giant fine.
My website content has been written to look how I want it to look. I block many ads as a policy as I don't want crap clogging up my screen or distracting me. Now they want to bypass both my content layout in my website *and* throw ads at me even though I have zero interest in them. Asshats.
Silly rabbit
Is that if you opt-out of Phorm, you are automatically entered, for free, in a program called Phorm2. But don't worry, you can opt out. For your convenience, in that case, you will automatically be entered in our new business web marketing program, Phorm++. If you're not interested in Phorm++, no worries, you can very easily opt-out. In fact, it's so easy, we'll do you a favour and give you free, automatic access to PhormDeluxe. PhormDeluxe is completely optional. Just send us a certified letter to opt out.
For real,
To: website-exclusion@webwise.com
Subject: Exclusion requested from your spyware system
I hereby request that you remove the following domains that I own or may own in the near future from your WebWise / Phorm system:
phorm-is-a-fraud.com
webwise-is-big-brother.com
bt-is-completely-retarded-for.allowing-this-phorm-nonsense-on-their-network.com
webmasters-shouldnt-have-to-opt-out.com
you-dont-respect-robots.txt-you-lying-scumbags.com
Fuck you very much!
And don't forget the method by which they do their thing -- deep packet inspection. It's not the behavioural targeted ads that are the real problem with Phorm -- the real problem is that their DPI kit "gifted" to the ISP intercepts communication between two parties (the web surfer and the web page) without informed consent of both parties. In short, they spy on your web browsing in order to profile you.
Thought thinks itself.
Q Why is it an opt-out system?
A Because they couldn't get away with providing no optionality control, so they went for the option which pushed as many users as possible to their system.
Q When did I or Slashdot give implied consent to anyone to inspect the packets for reasons other than routing?
A You didn't, but Phorm and the spineless UK government has decided you did.
Q What data do they collect and what do they do with it?
A Browsing habits to produce targeted advertising.
As explained on the Customer Choice Process page, when a user opts into the BT Webwise service, a Webwise UID cookie, containing a unique random number is placed on the userâ(TM)s computer. This master cookie is held is the Webwise.net domain. When the user then visits other websites, the Webwise system stores a copy of the Webwise UID cookie within the browser in each the website domains visited by the user. The cookies are clearly labelled as belonging to Webwise as noted above and as a result can be easily identified as different to those cookies which may be placed by the website itself.
Since it claims to need no client software, I must assume they do this by injecting extra cookie headers into all the HTTP responses sent to my browser....
Come as you are, do what you must, be who you will.
But in all fairness to Phorm, their corporate motto is:
Do only Evil.