I don't trust this to kill Phorm.

I'm happy to see Phorm knocked down, but its not dead until DPI is made totally illegal. We cannot give them an inch. A Narcissistic company like Phorm and others like them, have no empathy. They will do whatever it takes them to achieve their goal, no matter what anyone else says unless its made totally illegal. (Even then some cannot be trusted to spy illegally as spyware shows). DPI has got to be made totally illegal.

Spying on communications for the profit of the spies is a blatant violation of everyone. Morally they are totally violating privacy but its more than this. No business could allow other businesses to conduct such detailed automated industrial espionage and such espionage cannot be allowed against individuals as much as against businesses. They are trying to work out what everyone else is doing for their own profit. Its one thing to fill out one survey, its totally different to be spied on continuously.

"BT's announcement comes a day before MPs and peers of the All Party Parliamentary Communications Group are due to begin an investigation of internet privacy."

Thats very interesting timing. So BT are stepping back from Phorm while Phorm are in the spot light. Wait and see what happens to Phorm then decide what they want to do. I still don't trust BT so they will never get me using their ISP and I'll warn everyone I know away from the underhanded greedy control freaks at BT. They should never had worked with Phorm.

We still need encryption through all ISPs now they have proven they cannot be trusted. The way the ISPs are behaving is as if the Post Office was opening every letter, then writing down anything they find, and then selling what they find. If the Post Office done this, there would be a huge public outcry. But the general public doesn't understand technology as much, so its harder to generate such a huge angry public outcry at Phorm, but its only time before everyone realizes the depths some are planning to spy on everyone. If the UK MPs still refuse to totally kill DPI, then its getting time some more UK MPs were thrown out their jobs for failing to protect us from such blatant exploitation. If the current MPs can't protect us, then its time to find ones that can and I don't care which party they are thrown out of. None of them can be allowed to back DPI.

If we go after the MPs jobs, with the general public realizing the depth of spying being planned, then all DPI companies will be wiped out forever. I don't trust this to kill Phorm or DPI. We cannot give them an inch. DPI must be made totally illegal and totally killed off, no compromise. MPs need to be sent a very clear message. I.e.

MPs protect us or loose your jobs.

Hmmm,

Am I alone in thinking that we need a little extra PH with our still-new-and-shiny Fail icon?

And not in a Paris Hilton way either,

Although.....

Good riddance

I don't think I would object to Phorm if BT or whoever said - "use Phorm and we cut your ADSL bill in half". But to slide it into your service without giving anything in return, or even to threaten a substandard service through alternate routers if you don't use it is simply reprehrensible. At the end of the day it is a gross intrusion of privacy and BT thought people would just bend over for it. Screw them. Clearly the penny dropped in the end but it doesn't forgive them for the way they trying it on in the first place.

A battle is won

@Chronos

This seems very much like a tactical move - avoiding forcing the issue on legality by withdrawing, whilst keeping your options open. Phorm and it's like is not defeated until everyone accepts that *it is already* illegal. Procecutions must be brought unto anyone performing unwarranted DPI on traffic and processing the results for profit.

@Tim Greening-Jackson

Google already 'DPI' my traffic when I use their sites - they must process them in order to respond to my search/send my email and as such have implicit approval. If it were unavoidable for my packets to go through google servers whilst using the internet for day-to-day tasks (like it is with an ISP) then there would be cause for concern.

ISPs need to be reminded that they don't own the TCP/IP traffic - they mearly route it.

Network upgrades my A**e

Here is to public will and pressure where our limp wristed govenment failed.

Or was it the EU pressure?

...Now lets start on the ID cards and Database.

"...needs to concentrate resources on network upgrades..."

Welll-llll... if that's their story and they're sticking to it, fine.

Still, a rare occurrence: a simultaneous epic FAIL and epic WIN.

Another pint? Yeah, sure.

Slurrrrrp. (uuhhrrp!) Ahhh.

BT's reputation...

...will be forever tarnished by the fact they even *considered* implementing Phorm. They've made a good decision today but should never have let it get this far.

Just wait until the heat's off

Right now, public outcry is great. So Phorm and NebuAd are axed and fade into the night. And then, because of the short term memory the majority of people suffer with today these companies will rise from the dead. The ISP's, having learned their lesson, will be able to covertly roll out Phorm the second and NebuAd the second (which, if you recall from El Reg, has relocated to the UK under the name Insight Ready).

This will happen. This is not a victory, this is a delay. It may be one year, or two or three or more, but it will happen again. Money is more powerful than you can imagine. Scruples mean nothing when it comes to make a lot of money.

And now the FTSE news

"And now the Financial news;

Phorm stock is sliding dramatically and is currently 192p, that's a 40% drop.

hahahaha, die you turd die.

End of news"

@Tim Greening-Jackson

'And presumably Google will end up doing DPI or similar to serve you targetted ads for which you and the ISP will get f--k all.'

I'm no great expert on this type of tech Tim, but as I understand things it would be impossible for Google to implement the sort of system you suggest- It could only be done with the collusion of your ISP.

Google could (and do) monitor anything that goes through their servers, but that is entirely different - You choose to go to Google and enter information or to use their free webmail etc in the understanding that this is how they make their money and you 'opt in' to their ad service by doing so.

DPI employed by an ISP is entirely different and monitors everything passing through your internet connection. You have no way to avoid it and if your ISP is operating such a system it would not be in their interests to make it on an 'opt in' basis, as no-one in their right mind would do so.

Your argument about the ISPs needing to do something like this to support their (frankly dumb) business model is about as sensible as saying that your bank should be allowed to sell your credit card details to Russian gangsters as otherwise they will have to increase their charges.

In both cases I would rather be charged more and retain control of my own confidential information, thankyou very much.

I'm not dead yet.....!

Oh yes you are [WHACK] !!!

Yoda Says

Rest on your laurels you must not.

Watch key players you must do.

Defences you must still build.

Technology mutate it shall.

Look west you must.

Confused

Confused here, if its against the law to do DPI (according to the document

http://www.privacyappg.org.uk/Documents/appg_IMP_briefing.pdf)

<quote>

Any form of DPI is an interception under s1 RIPA and thus illegal

unless covered by the appropriate warrant.

</quote>

How come ISP's can do it, or are they an exception, if so what condition, identifying traffic types only?

Does RIPA actually contain an optin clause as intimated by the HO?

<quote>

In an e-mail dated August 2007, an unnamed Home Office official wrote to Phorm's legal representative and said: "My personal view accords with yours, that even if it is "interception", which I am doubtful of, it is lawfully authorised under section 3 by virtue of the user's consent obtained in signing up to the ISPs terms and conditions."

</quote>

Any learned person care to comment?

Will RIPA be changed to suit?

YES.....

Phorm.....please......die....... now!

Re: Pyrrhic victory?

Assuming "Tim Greening-Jackson" is the poster's real name then Belgium had better go on full Phorm Watch Alert.

@ Alpha Tony

Very succinctly put.

Well done El Reg

Great jounalism by the Reg contributed to this result. Keep up the good work.

Still work to do

Obviously today's news is incredibly positive and I have already expressed my gratitude to El Reg personally for their work on this over the past 18 months. Today is a day for celebration but tomorrow we get back to work and phase 2 of the APComms Inquiry on communications continues.

We can't sit back and just forget everything that has been achieved over the past 18 months, we need to keep the pressure up and make sure that this never happens again - also there is still the question of holding BT and Phorm to task for their illegal covert trials of DPI in 2006/2007.

Finally, I would like to extend my gratitude to everyone who has helped in this fight. To the overwhelming number of people who wrote to MPs and the EU Commission, to Baroness Sue Miller and her staff, to the Earl of Northesk, to Commissioner Vivian Redding and her staff at the EU Commission and last but certainly not least to all the NoDPI and BadPhorm campaigners who have worked and supported the work of others over the past 18 months.

It has been a truly overwhelming day and tomorrow it all starts again. Anyone who is at APComms tomorrow, I will see you there.

ODPhO

JakeyC is the only one of the early posters to get this right (OK, I didn't read all the comments), this could be a ploy to take EU heat off the phuckers, and even if phorm were to die, who is to say that there will not be a buy-out of bankrupt phorm by a management shell company so that they come back with a different name. Handy way of ditch all that debt.

@AC 13:36

"what's worrying #

By Anonymous Coward Posted Monday 6th July 2009 13:36 GMT

is that there are actually people who like Phorm who think it's the best invention ever for advertising :|

some peopel are just too misguided...

"

Those would be advertising people, who barely qualify as members of the Human Race.

I say Golgafrincham "B" Arks for the lot of 'em!

Mine's the one with a copy of the Guide, a towel & a sub-etha electronic thumb in the pockets.

@ TGJ

"Particularly when our spineless advertising regulations allow everyone to offer the same, meaningless "upto xx Mbps" to describe their access"

How else do we describe it? It's dependent on the quality of the copper on the local loop, quality of the internal wiring at the end user, amount of CPE the end user has connected. We as an ISP are not responsible for Openreach copper and no matter how much you pimp data you aint gonna have enough money install fibre to the door so since every single ISP except for NTL/Virgin uses Openreach copper please advise how we rate our equipment?

@Tim Greening-Jackson

"The only people Phorm is good for is Virgin Media, everyone else loses out no matter how you spin it."

"Err. Not quite. The business model proposed by Phorm offered a generous revenue share to the ISP. Which would make the difference between turning a profit and making a loss. So the result is you will continue to get crap ISP infrastructure or pay higher prices."

No. We have crap infrastructure for several reasons. Might I suggest the fact BT *refuse* to split their telephone service from the pure hardware infrastructure aspects of the home phone lines which deliver most domestic BB *might* have something to do with it?

Or that when given a toss up between re-investing in their infrastructure and identifying other ways to raise revenue *or* bunging the CEO and his cronies a nice fat "performance" bonus (where "performance" means policies which actually lost customers and revenue while raising fixed costs at the same time).

Hint. Customers don't want spam. They don't want viruses. They want this crap taken care of but the issue is the price and the trust. How many customers have *that* level of trust in their ISP? How many ISP's deserve it?

Figuring out ways to raise additional revenues in a commeditsed market while delivering rising performance is *hard*. Which is why managers who *can* do it should be amply rewarded. Behavioral advertising is some of the worst flabby, me-too, follow-the-heard management thinking I can think of. These guys deserve one of my size 9's wedged sideways for a bit while they contemplate the size of their FAIL.

Those who are desperate...

Will justify anything they think they can get away with if they think it will make them money. Phorm have yet to provide a legal opinion backing their technology. BT, Virgin Media and Talk Talk saw the pound notes, rubbed their hands with glee and thought they would get away with spying on their customers.

The backlash from informed customers and techies has shown them otherwise. The EU legal action is ongoing and I for one will be writing to Vivian Reding to seek her assurance that this announcement will not take any heat off BT. The law is the law and should be enforced equally to companies and corporations as much as people.

BT, Virgin Media and Talk Talk have worthless reputations in my eyes for associating with Phorm in the first place. BT haven't completely disassociated themselves from Phorm. Neil Berkett's backside (or that of whoever is sat on the fence at Virgin Media) must be very sore thanks to all that fence sitting. Charles Dunstone has said Phorm will be opt-in only (as EU law says these schemes should be) but that his company associates with Phorm shows a distaste for his customers.

Severn Trent Water doesn't watch my water usage and tell me not to throw water balloons at people, turn the hose on the cat or wash more often. My ISP shouldn't whore my internet usage stats out and tell me to stop reading cricket scorecards, commenting on how useless Ed Balls is or reading El Reg and buy a particular make of cricket kit, get an operation to improve my ball size and performance and how to avoid getting onto a blacklist register.

An ISP should be a conduit. Nothing more.

call me cynical but ...

1 - "no plans to deploy today" sometimes can mean "it is already deployed"

2 - phorm in BT's hands was wonderful as it probably didn't know what to do with it, gathered data like a magpie and hoarded it waiting for some "free" insight about what to do as there was no budget allocation to do anything with it anyway

Die Phorm DIE! :)

Heh - Its been a good day. You can just bet that Phorm are just _so_ happy that BT has dumped them, yeah sure, your whole business plan just when south and you just love it!

The Reg's coverage, the Blogs, the Petition, the Letter writing to your MP's and the EU Commissions enforcement all paid off.

Yes BT spouts the usual self-serving face-saving rot... but we know the truth.

We *Forced* BT to climbdown...

BT *Caved In*... sweet!

WHOOT!

Hopefully the UK government will be forced, kicking and screaming, to actually enforce the already existing privacy and interception laws without fear or favour.

We also need to take a long hard look at BT an its monopoly, I think they need spliting up as they have WAY to much power. Pride comes before a fall etc..

"no plans to deploy [...] today"

Can, as others have pointed out, merely mean that they either may deploy "it" tomorrow, or may have deployed it already.

Besides, is Phorm and BT spying on us any worse than the government doing so? We know DVLA already pimp our data, and how many times have CDs/DVDs/laptops etc disappeared from civil service possession?

Phorm share price update.

From a share price of 480 to 280 in the space of a day!

Har har de har har har de har de har.... ad infinitum

Phorm and the Government are playing an extremely dangerous game...

@Tim Greening-Jackson and everyone at Phorm

Rarely have I seen such a bunch of arrogant, self serving, self righteous people as yourselves. Your total lack of empathy towards everyone, in your rampant greedy rush to exploit the privacy of the entire UK is beyond contemptible. But like all good narcissistics, you totally fail to see your own actions can be wrong and so you wrongly assume everyone against you must therefore be wrong. The creation of Phorm shows just such a totally twisted self serving mindset.

Phorm is a truly shocking display of greed at the expense of everyone else, with utter contempt for personal freedom and privacy. There is no freedom in a world where a minority choose to spy 247 on everyone else, but then you all at Phorm know this only too well. Its why you set-up Phorm to exploit everyone for your own financial gain, plus you also get the government ignorance of technology and their greed for information on your side.

Its not misinformation we are listening to about Phorm. There are over 15 million programmers in the world. All programmers know spying technology when they see it. We are not technologically ignorant as you wish to make us out to be, in your attempts to belittle our opinions. Your opt out methodology is as cynically meaningless as your claims that you care about peoples privacy. Simply put we don't trust you and phorm people have shown countless times how driven they are by rampant self serving narcissism, so no one in their right mind would trust Phorm.

The continuous profiling capabilities of Phorm combined with seeking to gain the goal of using it over the entire UK population, is one of the biggest moves towards a Big Brother police state in the history of the human race, yet that police state is going to be managed by a bunch of self serving advertisers with a continuous display of so little empathy towards everyone. Well even political views need advertising and so its no wonder you have the home office control freaks on your side, as they can see many advantages in adopting new technology such as yours.

Phorm have the same story as some of the worst self righteous, self serving, MPs. The call that we must use new technology when it becomes available. Phorm and MPs need to learn that just because we now have ever more technology to abuse peoples privacy, that doesn't mean that's the right thing to keep on doing ever more. For example, just because we have the technology to knock down everyone's door, drag the people out of the house and strip search them in the road, that doesn't mean that's what everyone wants them to do. Same with Phorm, its going to far. Enough is enough and Phorm is going way to far.

If this government wishes to stir up a real storm of public anger against itself, then by allowing Phorm style technology the backlash is going to end up taking down any government that wishes to back Phorm. Remember the people in power are very much a small minority of the population and while the government think they run it all, if the general population decides to stand up and say no more, every government has to listen. Phorm is treading on extremely dangerous ground and the whole scam is likely to explode in your faces and in the government's face, as people get ever more angry at the ever greater controls and spying being force onto them. This self serving, self righteous greed at the expense of others needs to stop, because the more it continues and gets even worse, the more pressure it builds against such behaviour.

Two becomes one...

Looks like the Craphone Whorehouse, AKA TalkTalk, have lost interest too. I imagine the conversation went something like "Holy crap, we could get prosecuted without the 'BT do it as well' defence!"

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/technology/article6652692.ece

Of the major providers, this leaves Virgin Media standing on their own looking like a complete and total tunch of bossers.

@Tim Greening-Jackson

Tim,

You claim you are "informed" on ISP business models, yet also claim you wanted a full, network based, opt-in to Phorm. Surely you must understand that that the opt-in model was never viable. The Webwise business model relies on people not bothering to turn it off. Relying on them *wanting* to turn it on was always a non-starter (which is why Phorm squirmed every which way to keep their opt-out model intact).

You also claim you are "informed" on Phorm's "technology", yet in your earlier post, where you claim "Google will end up doing DPI", you demonstrate you have very little grasp of it at all. The only way Google can "do DPI" is to install equipment at ISPs in the same way as Phorm. If they do that the backlash will be exactly the same as that experienced by Phorm.

You complain about "tin foil hats" and "hysterical conjecture", but why didn't any of your "product development" colleagues predict the public reaction to Phorm? A major failing, IMHO, as it was *entirely* predictable.

Oh, nice nun outfit, BTW.

ADVERTS???yes please ON MY EYES

Who asked me if I wanted these adverts in the first place. I hate advertising. I know if I want something, i have the nous to find it on my own. I don't need Barry Scott telling me about Cilit Bang and how it'll clean some ghastly looking dysentery spattered toilet. I don't want any of it, any move to increase advertising annoys me.

I watch iplayer and DVD's, generally experiencing no adverts of any kind.

My firefox has adblock and all manner of ways to avoid the shouty bright colour signs informing me of any old pish they sell.

AND FUCK OFF FLASH ADS, you're the fucking worst. Expanding over the stuff I actually want to see, shoving hand and fist down my throat, clutching spam and marketing spiel about the latest absorbency of tampax, showing in painstaking graphic detail how it'll absorb all manner of blue liquids. Keeping me fresh and ready to tackle my already astonishingly difficult day in the office typing and looking pretty (Yes i hate the sexism employed in adverts - McCoys 'Man Crisps' makes me so angry you can actually sear beef on my enraged jowls and I'm their 'target demographic')

You give marketing execs any more power and I swear we'll all be talking in taglines(because we're too stupid to work out what it is - we need convenient lexical-diarrhea to encapsulate the subtle nuance of this bar of soap, or bottle of water, or film - g.i. joe has TWO!) and brand-names, trying to remember what an actual conversation used to be like.

aaargh, run out of steam and must return to work

Minority Report style eye-scans to tailor the talking/moving advertisements around the city = hell.

And Phorm is/was the first step.