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Anti-Phorm Petition Gains 21360 Signatures

petition

Out of 56 Million people in UK - at a guess maybe 40 Million over 16 years old? and 21,360 people signed a petition? ( all of whom are probably IT geeks)

C'mon guys give it up - not enough people care enough... and now they, along with Google, AOl, Yahoo have joined a standards buruea you are fighting a lost cause. Stop being luddites, embrace then new world....
 
Out of 56 Million people in UK - at a guess maybe 40 Million over 16 years old? and 21,360 people signed a petition? ( all of whom are probably IT geeks)

C'mon guys give it up - not enough people care enough... and now they, along with Google, AOl, Yahoo have joined a standards buruea you are fighting a lost cause. Stop being luddites, embrace then new world....

Ahh yes so you use an ISP that has already said they wouldn't use this technology yet call those who wish to have their privacy geeks.

I actually doubt there are that many in the country but there are a large number who often request how to block adverts over the internet. I say never click on an advert you havent requested they will give up if nooner is buying from them.
 
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Anon,

Take a look at phorm's share price over the last 12 months - the market reaction seems to suggest investors think there's more than 21,360 "luddites" out there.
 
Probably worth considering context too (size of the site) because very few surveys on the Number10 site get that many signatures. The Phorm one has been in the top 5 or 10 for quite awhile.
 
You have to consider that a huge percentage of the UK internet population have probably never heard about the petition, and/or have no idea about targeted advertising is about. The way BT informed its customers about it was rather sneaky, telling people it was the best thing since sliced bread, and it would work wonders to stop phishing attempts and reduce random ads. With that sort of info, most people wouldn't realise that the company involved developed from a spamming/spyware merchant.

So, taking all that into consideration, I think 21,360 signatures was surprisingly good.
 
Apart from those widely publicised in the mainstream media, like the "Jeremy Clarkson for PM" petition, and things involving motorists, pensioners or the armed forces, there aren't all that many on the Downing Street site that get that level of support.

I'm pleasantly surprised by the amount of people who took the trouble to sign it - especially as, in order to sign the petition, you have to give your e-mail address, and many of those concerned about privacy might be a bit reluctant to tell the government that!
 
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How about the one "...asking the Prime Minister to Block amendments to the Highway code to stop people riding horses 2 abreast on the roads...", that got 19,875 signatures? Don't recall the street riots and mass hysteria over that.
That was from 2007, not 1907.
Puts this effort into some sort of perspective.
 
How about the one "...asking the Prime Minister to Block amendments to the Highway code to stop people riding horses 2 abreast on the roads...", that got 19,875 signatures? Don't recall the street riots and mass hysteria over that.
That was from 2007, not 1907.
Puts this effort into some sort of perspective.
I expect that was probably the total number of people in the UK who wanted to ride two abreast on public highways, and they all informed each other about the petition :laugh:
 
well there would be allot more signatures if the media was allowed to report on it... have you guys noticed that the only news we see that actually remotely states the truth about phorm is the register.. the BBC and all other companies seem to post pre-phorm-chewed news articles that remove most of the bad stuff making it seem somewhat palatable for those tech newbs out there who are only after security so they dont have to worry, the fact of the matter is Phorm is using those gullible tech newbs lack of knowledge about how to protect themselves as a way of making them look good..

phorm may talk big about anti phishing and protecting the users from other issues, however that it utter crap! there will always be new methods of gaining access to the wallets of the unsuspecting, l know quite a few ppl who have fallen for email scams and others who have been stupid enough not to look where they were going and enter their bank details/passwords into sites which were just there to harvest information or even ill protected payment systems which are not SSL protected, the average user may not know about these kind of things or not pay as much attention and thats the problem.

from a marketing perspective phorm has the right idea, give the users what they want and users want "security" and for allot of us not so technically inclined a few ads is a small price to pay, because lets face it these users do not have a clue how the system works and that they will be at the end of a pay per click scheme which will benefit their isp even more at their expense, the thing that needs to be done to change this mentality is to educate users about what phorm does and what it used to do and put security into perspective by informing users that its their job to be careful with their information because if they realize too late eventually every part of our usage will be regulated and spied upon.. like this central database the government is planning, in order to make users happy about it they will play it off as some improved anti-phishing system or some great firewall that will help security of users..

security is not someone elses job, its the user who in essence has to keep their details secure, we need to cure this stupid mentality that its someone elses job to keep you safe, l dont need anyone else but them lm more informed however tools and information should be provided with new computers and l dislike loosing my privacy over stupid ppl who would give up what they now take for granted without even knowing about it... because if you think about it, if l asked the general public what they thought about phorm most of them would be "???" or "well its protecting me against online fraud" and the moment you tell them that they have given up privacy youll either be hearing most of them tell you its BS and that you read too many sifi novels (lve already experienced this reply) or feel disgusted they were lied to but somehow live with it because they cant be bothered to deal with it thinking it was bound to happen any way so why bother.
 
well there would be allot more signatures if the media was allowed to report on it... have you guys noticed that the only news we see that actually remotely states the truth about phorm is the register.. the BBC and all other companies seem to post pre-phorm-chewed news articles that remove most of the bad stuff making it seem somewhat palatable for those tech newbs out there who are only after security so they dont have to worry...

The reporting of this IS terrible, apart from C4s brief spurt last year. What I did find surprising - and does make me wonder about the BBC fear of controversy - was the total lack of report of dicussion on "Digital Planet", the BBC world service 30 minute tech programme. A little while after phorm started to be a big discussion point, they ran an entire show on the topic of ever dwindling privacy on the web - and managed to do it without once mentioning phorm, Nebuad etc. Amazing. Their tame commentator, Bill Thomson, seems not to be interested either, on the show or his blog, which is odd because he's usually got something to say on current topics, especially the controversial ones.

It was too much of a hot topic last year to miss it entirely, so I can only imagine they are suffering a post-Gilligan institutional fear of lawyers lest they put a word out of place.
 
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indeed, on a side note l shall be contacting Mark...

lve concieved an idea with some friends which lve will be contacting Mark about in a moment.. ld like to gather some coders for some of the main forum systems out there to implament an idea which lve been mauling over for the last few days.

the basic idea being to educate users about the system, if the media wont do it then someone should. lm going to outline my idea in depth and see if he will allow me to make a thread which could be stickied on the subject.. so keep your eyes open on that.
 
Paranoid.. me??

Ane the men from Mars will beam messages directly into my brain, unless I wrap my house in aluminium foil... Grow up ...

ps to the stock market archivist - try not to use statistics which can come back to bite you - Phorm's share price 3 years ago, was not that much different from where they are now, yet the market is down 40% and small cap index is down even more- see how selective statistics can be!!!
 
Kent, is that you ? :nod:

Here are some stats for you, the Which? survey showed that nearly two thirds of people would opt out of "Webwise" and 42% would consider switching ISP (sample 2643 people). :hrmph:

2yy8bys.gif

P.S. Why not register "Guest" ? Since you are a Phorm supporter (something akin to a rocking horse dropping) you surely have nothing to hide ?
 
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Ane the men from Mars will beam messages directly into my brain, unless I wrap my house in aluminium foil... Grow up ...

ps to the stock market archivist - try not to use statistics which can come back to bite you - Phorm's share price 3 years ago, was not that much different from where they are now, yet the market is down 40% and small cap index is down even more- see how selective statistics can be!!!

See you use an ISP that has already said to customers they wouldnt use Phorms webwise so yes you are paraniod use the kit to harvest and rob people of their privacy while you keep yours.

Smell fat cat
graph.cgi
 
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hey fellas

If you can lift your head out of the latest copy of " consipracy theories for IT pro's" weekly- go and buy a copy of todays FT ( Financial Times) front page, Article about Google.....

Gosh.... they are all around us now. ....Maybe I should start burning my trash before puttingb it out for the refuse collection in case someones reads some of my trash mail? Or disconect my Sat aerial when i go to bed. And I could buy a white noise generator to mask anyone bugging my home. Or I ......
 
You argue more like a Phorm PR rep than a member of the public "Guest", one way or another there is something odd about you ... :shrug:
 
If you can lift your head out of the latest copy of " consipracy theories for IT pro's" weekly- go and buy a copy of todays FT ( Financial Times) front page, Article about Google.....

Gosh.... they are all around us now. ....Maybe I should start burning my trash before puttingb it out for the refuse collection in case someones reads some of my trash mail? Or disconect my Sat aerial when i go to bed. And I could buy a white noise generator to mask anyone bugging my home. Or I ......

Google is OPT-IN if I remove cookies and block scripts Google cannot track me.

Phorm-BT webwise regardless of what I do I am forced through the profiler regardless of OPT-IN or OPT-OUT just have a 3rd party company of dubious past history word they will not look.

Since I delete all cookies as soon as I close the browser I have nothing to worry about with Google but if on BT's network I would only feel happy by moving to a smaller ISP that is not going to use this method of DPI.
 
granted Google might be doing the same thing but its not a mediator between the WWW and the user, if a site doesnt use googles tools within their websites code then there wont be any data gathering, also there are some easy ways to stop google gathering data..

the fact of the matter is that Phorm will always be profiling, infinging copyrights, and just generally be calling in the lawyers at every bad bit of press thats published.. now l ask the general public here (not some one who is quite possibly in bed with Phorm) who are actually not affraid to join the forum rather post as a guest, "would you trust someone who made money off spyware originally who plans to do the exact same thing as he used to? and to make thing things worse calls out the lawyers every time someone badmouths his company?" well would you trust them?
 
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