* Posts by William Morton

48 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Mar 2008

Wikimadness XVII: The Return of Byrne

William Morton

If they maliciously used Wiki to discredit him I am interested

Suing for libel should be possible even where the publication is on the web, if he can prove he lost out he should be reinbursed. I don't know anything about the subject but I don't like the idea that Wiki was used maliciously

Secret of invisibility unravelled by US researchers

William Morton

@ Abbro56 or get someone else to do it

Douglas Adams, I loved his writings and his lifestyle

William Morton

The reasons why invisibility cloaks are useless

Any civilisation that can create an invisibility cloak can always find other ways to detect the stealthed object. If they block the visible spectrum then they will be seen with IR if the also block IR they will cook themselves in their own waste heat. Invisibility cloaking has always been a red herring, as soon as you can create one you can also create a way of by passing it much cheaper.

British drivers face jail for causing death by dangerous driving

William Morton

If I had a licence for a gun, would I get away with murder

1. There are too many people on the road

2. There is a wide range of driving ability and ideas about how to drive safely

3. When you get your license they don't test you again unless you get banned

4. Driving a car is not seen as being equivalent to shooting a gun, although it is just as dangerous in the wrong hands

5. Employers unnecessarily require people to be able to drive to work

6. The way they teach you to drive to pass your test is never used again after passing

7. The law accepts the argument "I didn't see them"

8. Pedestrians and cars are insufficiently separated

9. People do drive even when they know they shouldn't

All these are reasons why people get killed.

When you get behind the wheel do you think "If I am not really careful I could kill someone today", no, you don't think of the repercussions at all. Instead you think I am late, what shall I do tonight, cor look at the **** on that. If you had a gun in your hands would you aim and be thinking of anything other than shooting. I hope not, If you would then you should have a gun nor a car as you are a dangerous fool.

The law need to treat cars like guns or any other dangerous device, and the people in control of these weapons need to be continuously concentrating on not creating danger.

How many people always obey the speed limit?

How many people check their car for safety every time before they drive?

How many people believe that rushing whilst driving is a good idea

Very few I imagine and I bet there as loads who think this doesn't apply to me I am a good driver.

There is no such thing as a "good" driver only "lucky" ones.

There are some people who take driving seriously i.e. think of the consequences virtually every time. So when you see them do you follow suit? no you drive around them or take advantage and think yourself superior.

Good driving on the road is not measured by how quick you get somewhere it is measured on how you avoided hurting someone.

The law needs to treat road injuries just the same as any other weapon injury.

EU tells UK to deal with Phorm - or else

William Morton

The number at the share holder meeting had to be too low

All this talk of joining ranks and mass protests, what would have happened if everyone against PHORM turned up.

The state is backing BT and PHORM they would have just done their usual trick of mixing paid trouble makers into the crowd and made a riot out of it. Then they would have said that all the property damage was antiPHORM's fault and used the press against us.

The EU is the way to go, I know that there are issues with passing control to outsiders but look what our "own people" do to us.

William Morton

I wrote to the EU lady too-

-and no I never got a reply however I am happy that there is someone out there who respects the rights of the little man. BT should have to find destroy all the stolen data and pay compensation to all customers that they cant prove were not profiled. This "we dont know who we screwed" arguement doesnt stand up with the Child Support Agency so why should BT get to hide behind it

Police seek two for C&W network robbery

William Morton

I know who did it

Kent Ertegrul infamous data thief, though he looks older that thirty to me

Unpatched Windows PCs own3d in less than four minutes

William Morton

@ Ryan

And anyone using cable modems without firewalls, or even the masochists updating via dialup. MS are still making people pay for their "male chicken" up

William Morton

Its about time MS mailed all registered users a new secure version of installation media

Like I said, all those people who bought the retail version should should be allowed to have a new version of installation media with all the patches applied. This is MS's fault they can't write a secure OS so they should have to pay to put it right.

MS DNS patch snuffs net connection for ZoneAlarm users

William Morton

to all those "I have a mac im so cleaver"

The reason that the does not have as many virii as the PC is not because it is immune. The reason is simply that relative to the number of PC users the mac is not used by anyone so why write a virus for it. How many businesses run mac servers? how many home users have macs?

I will admit that Windoz is rubbish, pretty much anything written with MS compilers is but if everyone had macs then there wouldnt be less virii just less people with computers. PCs are dirt cheap and plentiful and thats the problem enough malcontents get access and you get malware.

So leave the mac is special out, its only special because relative to PCs not owns one

William Morton

same for me

I uninstalled zonealarm, turned windows firewall back on and ran seconfig to bolt down the security.

seconfig seems a useful tool and automates the lockdown I normally do manually get it from http://seconfig.sytes.net

AVG chokes fake traffic spew

William Morton

Why is the client responcible for Anti malware

A cheater solution for the customer and the AV firm would be for the websites to guarantee the data they publish to the net. If the anti virus client had a database of certified sites and only scanned content outsite of this list then it would be less intrusive and an incentive for the websites to take some responciblity for their data.

Personally I would have the AV scanner access all web data via a proxy provided by the AV firm. This would give the AV company control of the safety level of content and if they provided encrypted web traffic remove the likes of PHORM.

Where the AV company is republishing the data in encrypted form along with advisor notices and optional ad removal then snooping the stream would be an infringment on the AV company.

I owuld pay for a service like this and then the people we pay to protect us from malware could take PHORM to court for us or just remove all phorm sponsered ads untill they stop snooping.

Phorm opponents to picket BT shareholders

William Morton

Leaked documents on wikileak

discussion http://secure.wikileaks.org/wiki/Talk:British_Telecom_Phorm_PageSense_External_Validation_report

Documents http://secure.wikileaks.org/wiki/Image:BT_Report.pdf

Suprise the register didnt release these earlier

DVLA, Tiscali, Barclays rake in phoneline cash

William Morton

Goverment agencies are not allowed to charge more than the cost of a local call

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/saynoto0870/

There was a petition with a link to a goverment statement that no gov service was allowed to charge more than the cost of a local call. It did not say anything about bundled calls but next time you call an 0845 0870 number for a gov service point out to them they are breaking their own rules and insist on a call back, go higher up until you get one.

The best one I saw was the jobcentreplus 0845 for people on income support, i.e. the lowest amount that the gov say they are able to live on

Ofcom mulls BT Openreach price hike

William Morton

@ jeff

I do not live in a city and hence there is no option but to use BT openreach. You go on about how happy I should be that my comms are not broken as well as expensive. Allow me to remind you that the tax payer paid for BT's infrastructure before it was privised. Further when it comes to new housing do BT use new technology or go for the cheapest solution possible? thats right they go for the same cheap ass cabling they have been using for over a hundred years.

BT have not invested a millionth of the profits they have taken from us, and you say I should be happy even though they use the cheapest support people on the planet. They should be made to change their name, the B in BT is clearly false advertising as most of the people you will speak to on their "support lines" dont even speak understandable English.

If they had cable where I live I would change like a shot, instead I had to have my personal correspondance and banking traffic snooped by BT (google PHORM). This as they dont think they are getting enough money out of me, so don't go on to me about how lucky I am to be forced to use BT kit. When I was a BT retail customer I always had their most expensive BB package, this did not protect me as there is clearly no amount of money that will slake their thirst.

William Morton
Thumb Down

Let's have it back for the original selling price

BT have a monopoly on comms in this country, yes there other providers but they only exist in the cities. BT Openreach should either be broken up on a regional basis or bought back for the orginal selling price that the tory's sold it their mates for.

If Openreach can show they have lost any money from what they have invested they can have that back too ( the amount they have raped from us since "privatisation" should cover any investment a million fold)

As an after thought for those who did not know "Tory" is an Irish word meaning "bog trotter" or thief, they did what it said on the tin and are still proud of it. The current Goverment is just Tory policy with a red label over the top

William Morton
Thumb Down

As an afterthought may be BT stands for bog trotter too

see above

Boeing raygunship fires first blasts in ground testing

William Morton
Jobs Horns

Told ya, the way to go is water based mirror

Advantages HSC of water means high energy to convert to gas,gas further disipates beam, water is cheap and can just be left running over retroreflective contouring on target or just submerge target in lake. Lasers are really only any good in space warfare where no atmosphere and not differencial density interfaces are present. JWB just fancies himself as Han Solo

William Morton
Jobs Horns

Light Amplification through Stimulated Emission of Radiation I believe

On a side issue you dont have to use a solid retro refractive surface, might be easier just to coat target in copper with a water jack over the top, High Specific heat capaity and all that and copper to dissipate heat over larger surface area.

"Get the Americans round Abdul, someone drained the immersion heater again"

Dell rapped for £60 delivery charge on £200 laptop

William Morton
Unhappy

As a seperate but linked subject- telephone/broadband charges always quoted less VAT

When was the last time you saw an advert for broadband or telephone services where they posted the price with VAT, this even in the areas designated at home user rather than business?

Economist: girls actually better than boys at maths

William Morton

There is sexual bias in the way some subjects learned

If you look at the science / mathematical subjects with the exception of biology there is indeed a sexual bias and it is in the way the concepts are presented and linked.

I believe that this is the case as the vast majority of the underlying concepts were recorded by men from their way of thinking.

Woman do link information together differently and where this can be seen is in the subject of biology. For those people who have studied all the sciences I think they would agree that the mind set for biology is very different to that of the other sciences, this I believe is down to the fact that women have historically been more involved with this subject and hence their way of thinking has been adopted as the norm.

This would suggest a review of how science is presented to the student so as to better match the way the student's brain works, rather than bickering about whos best we should make the most of what we have. By our history of excluding the female view point we may have made life very difficult for ourselves where the "male" way doesnt work

William Morton

As an after thought wasn't it Florence Nightingale who first argued successfully with statistics?

http://www.florence-nightingale.co.uk/small.htm

ID fraudsters soak the rich

William Morton

Employment Agencies link missing

When was the last time you registered with an employment agency and didn't have to give all the information that an ID thief is looking for? These agencies also pass information about their clients to many uncertified groups without notifying anyone.

So as an ID thief all I need to do is make up some bogus job position being availible and I get all I need from these agencies directly. I wonder why no one has officially corralated career hunting to ID theft and why these employment agencies employees are not security cleared.

Windows XP SP3 sends PCs into endless reboot

William Morton

Mine is AMD based and updated to sp3 without problems or obvious effect

I have a Semprom 2400+ and XP pro (Select version) 1GB of SDRAM

Machine was already fully updated and had zonealarm and avast

William Morton

AMD related NO more likely Nvidia Motherboard chipset related

As I say I have a VIA based motherbord and AMD CPU and did not have problems with XP SP3. There was however an update for the nvidia force NV4 chipset as part of SP3 that might be causing the issue?

BT's 'illegal' 2007 Phorm trial profiled tens of thousands

William Morton
Thumb Down

The data help by PHORM was obtained without the owners consent

The data help by PHORM was obtained without the owners consent and hence should be destroyed. I do not believe that the data is anonymous I have seen the PHORM patent and I have seen how BT have acted it is clear to me that this was illegal data collection and under the data protection laws PHORM should have their right to hold peoples data removed and their servers/backups wiped.

Phone insurance firm reveals Sharia rules policy

William Morton
Coat

@Ian

Yes they are called nightclubs "Are there companies out there that exist to get pigs drunk?"

To late for Police Pub jokes sorry

Mine's the one without the "One God stickers"

William Morton

@ A J Stiles BSc

Like my name?

BT: 'We did not let anyone down over Phorm... it was not illegal'

William Morton
IT Angle

Why the BBC is not allowing Watchdog to investigate?

This is a very clear abuse of BT customers and yet the BBC unwilling to do any real reporting only free advertising for PHORM

Could this be related to the BBC wanting to get the ISP's to accept I-Player, you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours sort of deal?

Come on BBC do the job we are all paying you for, disseminate the real state of affairs to the technically ignorant. the rest of us already know all about PHORM and BT,

Joe Public rely upon the likes of the BBC to advise them of the dangers, you are failling in your duty

I presume the BBC have access to someone with a clue about technology, so far their "experts" have just mouthed PHORMS lies and have not investigated the truth for themselves.

Because it sums up the BBC "expert" reporting so far

BT and Phorm secretly tracked 18,000 customers in 2006

William Morton

@Simplepieman

The whole point is that if the software was as they cry "anonymous" then why do it behind our backs. BT have admitted that they allowed what they agreed at the time to be malware to profile, "diety of your choice" knows what and where the profiled data went afterwards.

Why are the goverment sitting on their thumbs on this? This is a clear case of an illegal wiretap and needs a criminal investigation.

William Morton
Stop

BT should email all the effected users

Can I suggest to BT that they email all the users who where effected by this trial in July of 2007 to avoid being flooded by Data Subject Access Requests.

With regard to the trial, I live in the Midlands and was one of the people who was spied upon, I understand that another exchange in the south was also pimping data, I would like to know which other exchanges were effected and which version of the PHORM was being used. No doubt PHORM have cleaned up their code since then and hence are more in line with the UK legal requirements, however this does not preclude the version of PHORM where they can "see all the internet".

Given that when BT trialed the service they were looking specifically for EGG and Recruitment sites customers it suggests they were after people with money to spend and wanted to obtain their carreer details.

That BT Privacy policy of that time forbaded access to third parties, I would like to know how BT sees PHORM and THELATHE as not being third parties, further given PHORM's malware history, BT could have shared this clearly sensative information.

BBC Micro creators meet to TRACE machine's legacy

William Morton

I thought it was that Tony Smith from AcornUser

Yes, I love my beeb, still got it and the torch z80/68000 2nd processor with CPM never had the UNIX running as tube card was 2nd hand. Also I seem to remember that mode0/2 used 20k of RAM not 16k &3000-&8000. God that is sad haven't had it switched on for over a decade and I can still remember the memory map and most of the OS addresses.

The best thing about 8bit programming was you had to really think how to do something efficently, now'er days you just bung your code in your PC, no style or beauty. Hence the current inability of programmers to produce bug free code

Ofcom to hold operators responsible for dodgy dealers

William Morton
Linux

@pctechxp

With regard to P2P I use torrents only for downloading linux distos, I am not a criminal and do not use my internet connection for porn/ cop[yright material.

The ISP wants to demonise the minority so as to justify their false advertising, I agree that a lot of heavy internet users are on P2P however they have paid for the piviliege. If the service is unlimited then that should mean you can download whatever your connection will support, the ISP is just being cheap and cattering to the majority who want to read a email or two and look at a couple of web sites.

The ISP's should be made to say if you are a minimal user then your broardband is virtually free, however if you are a heavy user then you have to pay for it.

Most web users in this country would be fine with dial up and have only bought into ADSL on the premise that is it quick and sexy. I personally don't mind paying more for an uncapped service however I would prefer my connection to be comparable to the ones enjoyed by the Japanease i.e. atleast 20x faster.

The ISP are raking the money in and b1tching about how it difficult it is to make money out of being a provider.

I don't believe it, if BT Wholesale we forced to charge a reasonable rate then everyone not in a city could have a reasonably price connection.

Phorm agrees to independent inspection of data pimping code

William Morton
Thumb Down

If they implement all of the PHORM patent you won't know anything

If they implement all of the PHORM patent then with the ISP's help, they can hide what they are doing with your web traffic completely, it will not matter what you use they have the power.

William Morton
Coat

@All those people who think PHORM dont know we don't want ads

PHORM know but just don't care, we are just sheep to them, to be sheared for profit. Well those people still using PHORM after it has fully implementing their patent will no doubt be happy to be free of their natural insulation from the world i.e. their anonymity.

Don't come complaining here when you have people with power over you making decisions based upon what you did on the web, you sold your liberty when PHORM+ ISP fleeced you

Mine is the cotton coat I don't wear wool anymore

William Morton
Thumb Down

They can look at the PHORM code but what about the ISP?

The security problems with PHORM are not limited to what they have currently implemented in their code but rather that PHORM+ISP working together have the power to monitor all network traffic and identify all the users. PHORM alone have no doubt not implement all that their patent allows but what about in the future. BT have shown that they are willing to lie about their internal dealings how can we trust either company not to change PHORM after the public spotlight has moved on. Neither PHORM or the ISP's involved have promised to keep their customers apprised of changes to this snooping system.

So just looking at the current PHORM code will show nothing it would need to be constantly monitored and all the information exchanges between the ISP and PHORM made public

Net think tank: Phorm is illegal

William Morton

@Fluffykins

I would have the payment at £50/byte of data instead, even with BT network speed your not going to get your £500 for quite a while

BT admits misleading customers over Phorm experiments

William Morton

What about www.thelathe.com

BT say they didnt realse to a third party but what abouts http://www.thelathe.com weren't they a third party? weren't the developing and testing for BT at this time?

William Morton

I was getting snooped last year too and I'm in the midlands

I think that BT should be made to send letters to all the users effected by this infingement of their privacy and an offer of compensation.

Bt keep saying it is legal, how do they know? They hope it is legal more like, all the technical so evaluations say it is not legal as implemented in this country. So I would say it has not been proven illegal it has just not been taken through the courts yet. With this admission from BT you can bet it will now, so BT save yourself some data subject access requests and 'fess up'. I think that two weeks should be sufficent notice before we start flloding you with the access requests so 'fess up now or we will make you the April fool

Top security firm: Phorm is adware

William Morton
Thumb Down

SpyBlocking software including that firefox extension will not stop your data being intercepted.

As the interception occurs within the ISP's network it does matter what you do to your PC if you allow unencrypted web request then they will be profiled. There are only two ways to stop this

1. Use a tunnelling protcol to step over the compromised network of your ISP

2. Move to an ISP that guarantees that they will not use PHORM or similar technlogies

If the ISP's continue with the OPT-OUT based service then if you block the PHORM cookie in any way you are opted in by default. If accept the opt out cookie then your data still goes to the profiling server within your ISP but they say it is ignored.

Also for those people thinking of waiting it out here is a snip from Professor Peter Sommer's report to the home office

20. Targeted online advertising services should be provided with the

explicit consent of ISPs' users or by the acceptance of the ISP terms and

conditions. The providers of targeted online advertising services, and ISPs

contracting those services and making them available to their users, should

then - to the extent interception is at issue - be able to argue that the

end user has consented to the interception (or that there are reasonable

grounds for so believing). Interception is not likely to be at issue where

the user's browser is processing the UID and material informing the

advertising criteria.

In other words if you accept the ISP TOC then you have agreed to the interception. Full document here http://cryptome.org/ho-phorm.htm

Vote with you feet and add your name to the petition to the PM here http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/ispphorm/

Qualcomm buys into Phorm-alike firm

William Morton
Go

The PHORM petition also covers other technologies like this

The petition to Gordon Brown on http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/ispphorm/ refers to techonlogies of this kind. Add your name and lets stamp these tw@s into the ground

Phorm launches data pimping fight back

William Morton
Coat

RE: re: PHORM reply to William Morton

Basic PHORM DB structure to deliver adverts regardless of clientside blocking tools

PHRASE table (ID, phrase, colour)

0, Peter, black

1, holiday, white

2, Greece, white

3, SW1, black/ white?

4, £12, black/white?

5, mystreet, black/white?

6, I-phone, white

7, gadgets, white

8, hate, black/white?

9, kill, black/white?

10, sex, black

11, felching, black/white?

12, Pakistan, black/white?

13, pistol, black/white?

14, kids, black/white?

15, earn, black/white?

16, swallow, black/white?

17, taste, white

18, love, black/white?

19, throat, black/white?

20, breast, black/white?

21 chicken, white

etc

USERS table (internal ID, external ID, isp)

0,-1, BT

1,-2, Virgin Media

etc

ADVERTISERS (ID, hit count, ^phrase, ^phrase, ^phrase, ^phrase, ^phrase, ^phrase, )

0, holidays R us, 3, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1

1, burger king, 9, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1

2, mc donalds, 9, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1

3, homophobes anonymous, 2, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1

4, gadget phreaks, 4, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1

5, toysRus 5, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1

If I was not interested in people privacy and just wanted to make money then the ad delivery it would go like this

User goes to OIX ad hosting site(WEBSITE1), his cookie is de-domained at LVL7 and cookie ID passed to OIX

OIX return link to AD content on WEBSITE1.

Now it doesnt matter what ad blocking tools the user has he gets my advert from WEBSITE1 direct. No more advertisers complaining of non-delivered advertising.

Now just the phrase list interpretation alone is going to be a nightmare as many english words have different meanings. How are you going to keep up with the changing informal/ obscure language used by specialist groups. How are you going to vet who is allowed to advertise and hence have access to captured data.

From the phrase list above I have left out the ^phrase see if you can work it out.

Even if PHORM allow you to block the ad as WEBSITE1 just redirects to OIX they still get to capture. Change the cookie ID they link it to the internal ID and still capture your data.

The answer is clear if you dont want them to capture your data move to an ISP who will not pimp your data. If enough users start tunneling though the ISP's compromised network then the ISP will just add encrypted streams to the banned protocols on the fair use list.

PHORM TECH TEAM would you be so good as to repost the phrase list with the correct colours.

I'll get my coat shall I, its the one with your data hanging out the pockets

William Morton

re: PHORM reply to William Morton

Can I confirm that PHORM does indeed retain pointers to the phrase databse for each cookie and this is how you say you are not capturing the data but rather linking to advertisers phrases. The fact that the original data (WEB PAGE) is not transferred does not mean the content of the web page is not being stored. Using pointers to a table of phrases is just a method of compressing the user's web pages. You say that the phrase database is constructed from white and black phrases with humans deciding each phrases catagory and yet your auditors admit that the system could be compromised by a disgruntled employee.

Can you confirm that the only data being passed to the advertisers is the pointers to the white list relevant to the cookie ID. And that any other cookie specific data will never to be used outside of PHORM especially the "black list". Further that no linked tables for any non-"white list" are retained, I ask as clearly, having a linkable black list means that you are also capturing data you know to be dodgy. If the black table was never linked to the cookie I could understand its use in keeping the white table white.

The system would work just as well for advertisers with only a white list and storing another linked phrase table of data "we are never going to use" smacks of a hidden agenda.

You say that this white list will quickly contain millions of entries and that you would find it difficult to provide this in it entirety, however you already store the cookie specific linked phrase table for the user and hence this data is readily availible and infact necessary to your system.

Can I suggest that a web page with just the user specific white list with a tick box per phrase be availible. Where the user removes the tick from a phrase this phrase is not allowed to be linked in any way. Further if sufficent users remove their consent to a phrase it is moved to the black list or just removed from the white table permanently.

Can I also point out that after cracking your cookie and obtaining a copy of you phrase database all advertising website will be able to use you system to target advertising, even the ones not paying you. It would be in your interests to reorder the database regularly otherwise you will loose revenue as the adverisers build their own phrase databse from what they know they are interested in.

William Morton
Alert

ISP's Privacy Policies are going to be scrapped just like BT's

There is little point in quoting these ISP's PP or TOC, when they go live with PHORM they will just change them to allow them to sell your data.

Any AD blocking software on your machine is not going to have any effect on PHORM. They get your data regardless and PHORM dont care if you see the ADs because they are still making money. Its the same as the "per click" revenues that were taken by BOTNET controllers. The AD company can write off the cost of the advertising to TAX so even if 1 person in 10 buy after foillowing an AD they make money.

From PHORMs previous post I have concluded that they have a database of phrases and simply mark the occurance of the phrase in each web page requested. The phrase database will be automatically updated via the 10 keywords not already in the DB. These 10 keywords are going to be personal to you and include any web aliases you have, passwords, home addresses etc. The way they say they are not capturing names would have to be to put all the possible names into the database so they can be marked as present but not used by advertisers. They dont need your IP address as this is associated with the cookie ID by the ISP and the web server holding the OIX place holder.

The phrase databse is what needs to be transparant and open for viewing by all users. I could decided that im am interested in capturing all user's login detail for facebook. all I need to do is link every combination of say 10 letters not already in the phrase database and the phrase facebook. Now when you come to one of my advertising sites I get that you are interested in facebook, a phrase for your password, a phrase for your username. I can now log into facebook as you, this will work for any site that doesnt use encryption from the start of login. Given China's history with regard to spying I am suprised that the western security services have allowed this to go ahead, it isnt just going to be just Joe Public's data being captured its going to be scientists, engineers and other company employees. If I work for a company that is in a competing field with a Chinease company and I mention im going to be working/bidding for a job whats to stop them using the data to get the winning bid.

For the above reason we need to see what phrases are being captured and for whom, we need to be able to remove phrases or advertisers if they are capturing phrases that are not specific to their products or are invasive in anyway.

I think that this enterprise is a very dangeous thing not just in terms of personal privacy but also in the implications to the western economy.

William Morton
Joke

Kent Ertegrul is after you

Kent Ertegrul =get net lurker

That surname has got to be made up

William Morton

FAO PHORM TECH TEAM --------PHORM as lexicon compressed format

If what you say about you phrase matching is true what about the 10 keywords, are these copied up to your database server to expand the lexicon?

I ask as blogger usernames are very quickly going to be associated with your cookie so loosing the blogger his anonymity. In fact 10 keywords that dont appear in your lexicon are going to be very personal to me.

If this system simply looked at the url of the pages I visited it wouldn't be so bad but clearly you want more than you could find in a proxy server cache or you wouldn't go to such lengths. Your method is clearly design to capture data from within my personal session and snoop on my form posts. If as you accert you are only interested in what I am viewing so you can tailor my advertising why not just use a proxy server and run your phrases off the URLs not the cached pages. No clearly you want in on my personal session, and what I post is so important that you are willing to develop this system to capture it.

William Morton

Ertegrul is the prince of darkness

Ertegrul = Get Ruler

Clark-Kent Ertegrul = lurking E-tracker tree

and if you add and take some letters give 'em a bit of a shuffle you get

"All your HTTP are belong to us"

William Morton

reply to phorm tech team

""Hi. Tech Team at Phorm here. There are some common themes here and some specific questions which I can answer over a series of posts.""

I understand what you are saying to be that rather than store the phrases directly from our web requests you have a list of phrases in a database and tick each one that is on the page I requested. This way the only thing being stored is a pointer to your database of phrases, very similar to a lexicon based compression system.

If you are being open about this then I would expect you to make your phrase database availible, this being so we can see that you dont have any phrases to capture postcodes, names, websites etc

I say this as a lexicon based compression system is just like a zip archive in that you can get all the data back, even if you only have all the words in the english language and their number of occurrences you can still read back a lot of information as most english words are padding.