Phorm alert!

Well, maybe Phorm, maybe not, but someone is spying on my online activities.
Currently, no UK ISPs are supposed to be running Phorm, except for BT, who are involved in a test-run. I’m not convinced, because someone is sure as hell spying on what I’m doing online

My ISP is Tiscali, and for the last few days – maybe longer, I don’t pay that much attention to Spam, except to consign it to oblivion – I’ve been inundated with Spam which is clearly based on my browsing activities, especially online shopping, of which I do a lot, as I’m substantially housebound. I find it very hard to believe that this is a coincidence.

It’s possible, I suppose, that Tiscali is monitoring its customers’ habits, and peddling the results. Trouble is, I’ve no way of finding out. Tiscali don’t reply to emails, or letters – the only way they will communicate with their customers is via their premium-rate phone line, and the risk of getting a complete gobshite on the other end is huge (see this post). Anyway, in a situation like this I’d want something in writing.

There are a couple of apps that purport to confuse Phorm – and presumably other spying media – all of varying levels of clunkiness, and requiring Microsoft NET Framework to be installed, which just isn’t going to happen. I went to considerable lengths to uninstall the bloody thing, having installed it for another app – which turned out to be crap – that needed it. No way I’m installing it again. All NET Framework did, as far as I could see, was slow down my computer prodigiously.

You can’t uninstall it, either – the only way to get rid of it is to use System Restore, and go back to a point before you installed it.

Anyway, the bottom line is that someone is spying on what I’m doing online, and generating advertising based on it, and I’d love to know who. Realistically, of course, there can be only one culprit – Tiscali – and if they’re doing it to me, they’re doing it to all their customers.

Anyone else noticed this problem?

They’ve got Phorm…

You may have heard of Phorm – they’re the scumbags that, with the complicity of your ISP, plan to hijack your personal data – i.e., everything you do via your browser, including bank and other sensitive information – and use it to foist unwanted but targeted advertising upon you.

A BT trial started today – they’ve run two already, bet they didn’t tell you, and it’ll likely gain wider distribution as time goes on. There’s a huge groundswell of opinion against Phorm, and am anti-Phorm petition at http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/ispphorm/ with, at the time of writing, over 18,000 signatures.

There’s software, called AntiPhorm, which as far as I can tell is far too clunky – I can’t make the bugger work, and every time I fix one problem, it throws up another. One way to fix Phorm is to block the website http://www.webwise.net in your browser, as that’s the website that delivers Phorm’s cookies. If it works, this seems like the simplest solution. For Firefox, the TrackMeNot add-on does an excellent job of misdirection – note that it doesn’t enable automatically on installation. Right-click the TMN icon, bottom right of the browser window, select Options and check Enable.

If Phorm is new to you, check this out http://chris-linfoot.net/d6plinks/CWLT-7CWN5X from where I filched the website fix, above.