An internal British Telecom document was released two days ago on the Wikileak website that provides the results of British Telecom’s validation of Phorm, also known as (aka 121Media), Deep Packet Inspection. According to that report 18000 users were chosen as test objects without their knowledge or consent. In that 2-week period more than 18 million page requests were intercepted and injected with JavaScript.
Only 15-20 users recognized the interference and reacted negatively to it. It goes on by suggesting changes so that the process will be 100% transparent to the user which simply means that they want a system where the user is not knowing that his connection is being hijacked and misused.
I have not had time to read the whole report but it seems like an illegal act to me to inject advertisement on web pages without the users and webmasters consent. In addition to spying on the users about 7000 cookies were dropped as well.
BT admits misleading customers over Phorm experiments
ISP data deal with former ‘spyware’ boss triggers privacy fears
I hope that there will be an unparalleled public outcry and coverage in Britain and world wide. Spread the word.
Enjoyed the article?: Then sign-up for our free newsletter or RSS feed to kick off your day with the latest technology news and tips, or share the article with your friends and contacts on Facebook or Twitter.Related Articles:
Firephorm – the anti-phorm Firefox extensionSearch British Newspapers From 1800-1900
AntiPhorm Software
CD-Wow to pay £41m to British record companies
Generate A System Health Report in Windows Vista
http://content.screencast.com/media/686618b3-bad2-40bc-a9e8-273508a0ddbe_e8b4f9d2-a42b-457d-a422-662f833196ed_static_0_0_2008-06-06_1519.png
^^ look above, although bad it’s not the worst case scenario since I’ve got ad block plus + dephormation