Home › Groups › Drupal London

Last chance to sign petition to protect your browsing privacy

mysty's picture
Thu, 12/02/2009 - 19:34 — mysty

If you remain particularly unimpressed with the response to the illegal and secret Phorm tests - conducted by UK ISPs to profit from selling your privacy - then please consider signing the petition on number10.gov.uk to stop them.

Three of the UK's largest ISPs have decided to sell your private browsing history to an advertising broker.

Not only have you been SOLD OUT by Virgin Media, BT and TalkTalk to implement the equivalent of commercially motivated wiretaps on all your ISP web traffic, but Joe Public have also been totally sold out by:

But there is hope. On your side there is

Do you think the EU would threaten 'formal action' if any of this was legal?

Take action now - the continuous erosion of civil liberties need your help so put your name to the petition before the expiry date of March 04, 2009.

Audio & text versions of why Phorm is bad for the public on http://www.grc.com/securitynow episodes 164 and 173

Groups:

Comments

Thu, 09/07/2009 - 12:44 — mysty
mysty's picture

About time for some good Phorm news

If you have concerns with the cavalier attitude and abysmal record of the UK government protecting your private data, then you may enjoy an (albeit brief) smile at the following:

While Phorm are still - barely - around, a series of recent announcements may mean there is less immediate threat to your private browing records being illegally 'wiretapped for profit'

Pat yourself on the back if you signed the above petition, despite the pathetic Govt response pointing back to the ICO, who sold you all out in the first place (above).

While this may appear to be going away, I for one certainly worry about the way the UK government is so willing to sell us out for short-term capital gain, and so deaf.

mysty

 

Thu, 09/07/2009 - 12:53 — God bless Saints FC

I'm afraid the loss of 300

I'm afraid the loss of 300 more jobs (120 of them Open Source techies) is not something i'll be in a rush to celebrate. I genreally think if Phorm is allowed in the UK it could be a bit of a google moment like it is proving in South Korea..... And they use all Open Source technoloiges to create what is an impressive product. It's a shame.........genreally Phorm improves the standards of advertising and marketing so that instead of receving junk mail you receieve relevent mail.
Thu, 09/07/2009 - 14:07 — Robert Castelo
Robert Castelo's picture

Opt-In

Fine, just make it an opt-in option.

Privacy is a basic right, not something to be handed back by the marketeers if we're lucky.

Fri, 10/07/2009 - 18:45 — mysty
mysty's picture

Matt, you must not have understood how Phorm works

Matt,

If Phorm was such an epiphany, then why were the illegal trials done in secret? And why would there be a European Commission case against UK over Phorm?

Just because Phorm allegedly uses some open source technology, does that make it a good product, purely by association? I could make a weapon and kill people with bamboo, so by your reasoning that more acceptable than using an AK-47? No, it isn't.

Do you seriously think Phorm increases the quality of advertising, when instead it crashes browsers and has been used to hijack advertisements from legitimate charities?

You are welcome to your opinion of course. And you are also welcome to fill your own computer with adware or use services that do that for you, but no one is welcome to do that to the computer or network that I paid for. That would be illegal.

Lastly, Phorm would not do anything to cut down junk mail. Instead, it increases the amount of unsolicited email i.e. spam, because your private information has been sold for profit to third parties that have no right to it in the first place. Unless one explicitly opts in, as Robert points out.

Look forward to your response here or to carrying this conversation forward on the badphorm forum.

regards, mysty