TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

For those on TT do you know they may be following your visits to websites and collecting information without your knowledge? Those who know about Phorm may be interested, some links

Worth a read if you are in to this sort of thing (Im a member on here and you may have to register to read)

http://www.the-phoenix-broadband-adv...ic,1828.0.html

TT's forum link

http://www.talktalkmembers.com/forum...ad.php?t=46287

long reads but some may find it interesting, especially the response from the TT CEO on the phoenix forum

---------- Post added at 18:37 ---------- Previous post was at 18:13 ----------

I have permission to post these emails from the phoenix webmaster,its not just if you are on a TT line that you may be affected, it can be on other parts of the network if I've read it right this gives an idea what is going on................

So there is no misconceptions below is that complete email series, please do remember that they read bottom to top
I have remove certain information because it is confidential using ***

From: ***********roadbandadvice.org.uk
To: Charles Dunstone
Sent: Thursday, July 29, 2010 3:39 PM
Subject: Re: Invoice for Website Access


Mr Dunstone, if that is your name

I would suggest you do. You may find that my legal team knows more about contract law and the like that you do.

I am have been advised to strongly recommend that you ask you Company lawyers for advice on this matter.

Yours faithfully

**********

----- Original Message -----
From: Charles Dunstone
To: *********dadvice.org.uk
Sent: Thursday, July 29, 2010 3:31 PM
Subject: Re: Invoice for Website Access


This has also gone straight into the trash folder.

Your understanding of of English law is so laughably naïve, that I haven’t even bothered to forward it to our legal team.

Regards

Charles Dunstone



On 29/07/2010 15:25, "*******andadvice.org.uk"

wrote:


Dear Sir,

I would suggest that you keep a record of what are properly served invoices. The liability is Talktalk Group's for accessing my websites after you were warn you would be charged for any and all access/attempted access.

Mr Dunstone it seems that you and your company do not believe that English Law applies to you and Talktalk Group. Put simply you were told to stop accessing my websites, my right under English Law, Talktalk Group continued to access my sites. So as is my right again under English Law you were advised that any accesses/attempted accesses after 09:00 on the 26 July 2010 would be charge at the rate of ***** per access/attempted access and that any access/attempted access after that time would indicate Talktalk's agreement to the contract. Under English law the contract exists and is enforceable.

If the invoices are not paid that it will be a matter for a District Judge in the County Court.

Your faithfully

***********


----- Original Message -----

From: Charles Dunstone <*******@cpw.co.uk>

To: ********@broadbandadvice.org.uk

Sent: Thursday, July 29, 2010 2:36 PM

Subject: Re: Invoice for Website Access


Dear ******

As I have previously stated, we do not consider ourselves liable for any of these invoices you keep generating, they go straight into my trash folder.

Whether you keep sending them is your choice, but we are keeping no record of them.

Regards

Charles Dunstone



On 29/07/2010 09:28, "*******@broadbandadvice.org.uk"
wrote:


INVOICE - 003

29th July 2010


To accessing to our websites between 09:00 on 28th July 2010 to 08:59 on 29th July 2010

Cost ****** per access/attempted access, **** accesses/attempted accesses = ******

Total Invoice *******

Payment due within **** days of the date of invoice, after which interest will be added at the rate of ******* per week.

Payments to:
*********

To:

Charles Dunstone
TalkTalk Group Plc
1 Portal Way,
London,
W3 6RS

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

So TT has its own version of phorm, Just like VM will have with Detica

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

more about Stalk Stalk (sorry talk talk ) at https://nodpi.org/forum/index.php/topic,2991.0.html

seems to have been going on for several months, a number of FoI's in as well

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

STalkSTalk have been on my site too, no identifiable user agent. IP resolves to their Radius Servers. I haven't seen them tracking users on my site, but they have been spidering my site. I've sent TalkTalk terms, conditions and rates, for any future access. I'm not optimistic given the CPW/TalkTalk history of data protection failures http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documen...telecom_en.pdf STalkSTalk's rather limited official response may be seen here http://www.talktalkblog.co.uk/2010/0...s-safe-online/ Despite the very arrogant email responses from Charles Dunstone to the Phoenix admin, that his complaints and invoices weren't worth forwarding to the legal team, he clearly DID forward correspondence to the legal team, and the tracking and spidering stopped on the same day. Not been seen since. Yet they insist it's legal. So why stop? Maybe it's another case of a CEO/Chairman's tongue getting ahead of his brain. Who does THAT remind me of?

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

I don't know - who does that remind you of?

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

could it be any of the big ISP's that seem to consider they can do as they please, because joe public can't afford to challenge them in court??

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

I don't know - so I await R's answer with interest.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/34770626-post1.html but I'm not going there. :angel:

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

Thank you, R - much appreciated.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

Hi

Did you use the Conditions from the Phoenix topic?

Have they stopped accessing your site, if so when?

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

Yes - used the contract you posted with modifications to suit my site. No they haven't stopped - they seemed to stop on 26th July, but came back again today but using a TT retail address this time. very very aggressive scan including a series of non-existent files and directories listed but banned in robots.txt. concealed user agent. Could just be a zombied TT customer of course in a botnet. NOT crawling links, but using a URL list and visiting each file separately rather than crawling FROM one to another.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

Further public comment from TalkTalk - on ISPReview - http://www.ispreview.co.uk/story/201...g-service.html mostly centred around the "if its on the web its publicly available" argument about their right to crawl websites. Which does not sit well with the T&Cs for accessing the TalkTalk and Opal sites. And they deny using personalised urls from their customers browser strings. Which does not fit with the website log evidence that is publicly available. So still a very big gap between TalkTalk's replies and the evidence that webmasters have been collecting for the last two or three months. TT are going to have to close that gap if they want any credibility at all with webmasters and also with their customers.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

Next TalkTalk missive with more interesting claims. http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/...snooping-fears Look for the comments on PECR/DPA compliance (although ICO is on record as thinking about it all for another 30 days) and the reassuring words from TT "The process is not dissimilar to how we record voice traffic."

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

"The process is not dissimilar to how we record voice traffic."

so the next question is WHY are they recording voice traffic?

as that would be classed as private communications data and require a court order to monitor, let alone record:mad:

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

"Calls may be recorded for training and quality purposes" I believe is the usual line given......

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

Pretty much the norm when calling most call centres nowadays.;)

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

I didnt read it as recording your calls when ringing in to the call centre, maybe thats just me? I read it as them having a record of what calls you have made, as in comparing it to recording what sites you have visited

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

Dont forget TT own there own exchanges, They are run for them by opel telecoms

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

what - when you sign up to a phone service with TalkTalk? Is that the sort of "usual line given"? A line with a recorder stuck to it? I don't think I'll be ordering one of those any time soon. ;-) I've heard that one when I RING an organisation like TalkTalk- but I don't expect them to do it to all my calls via their retail telephone service. "traffic" I think was the word used. Not "calls to our support line". TalkTalk actually route a lot of their customer landline phone traffic via VOIP in a way that is transparent to the landline user - who is not actually aware they are using VOIP (at least that is what TalkTalk say on their website). Fine - but if it also involves "recording our phone traffic" then I think TalkTalk customers might be a bit upset as they quite reasonably don't expect anyone to be recording their phone calls - for the very good reason that no one warned them that would be happening. But then no one told them about the STalkSTalk service either. Or of course Mr Dorsman could just be being very careless with his language. In which case one wonders why he is fronting this PR initiative. He needs to be a lot more careful when he chooses his words.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

but in that case you are told up front that the call will be recorded and both sides consent to proceed

this is not the case with the stalk stalk system, no consent is requested from the website or the ISP customer as the process has no option to provide consent, it is just presumed incorrectly that both the customer and the websites they visit will wish to allow talk talk to use their data fot talk talk's commercial benefit and failure of a website to allow the system to scrape the website tags website as potentially hosting malware as it can't be verified

this is in effect finding the website guilty of hosting malware until proven innocent by allowing talk talk to scrape the site for their commercial advantage

if a website is pay per view, and the talk talk system accesses the same page to verify it with the same session id etc (as appeared to be the case shown by a website who posted some logs ) will the customer be double charged for the access or will it close their session due to the user apparently coming in from a second ip address ?

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

No they don't they say they are 'working on it'.

Zero credibility gap as no such claim was made just the usual 'we are aware and are working to resolve' waffle.

I'm waiting to see the actions of some major corporate websites over this to see how things pan out. No offence but neither your website nor broadband advice are high traffic material and sending bills to Talk Talk smacks of 'activist' more than anything else. If feeling is that strong simply block the server they are using, far less time consuming and far more effective.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

TalkTalk can call it "testing" if they like, but it was actually a live deployment without consent. Just because it was covert, doesn't make it a test. Tests are done in labs, in internal closed networks, not live on the web with consumer traffic.

TT did a covert deployment - no consent from anyone. Then they got caught. In the real world. And they will have to face the real world civil and criminal consequences like a big grown up company.

I wonder what would happen if pharmecutical companies started doing covert clinical trials? Without either the patients or the doctor's consent? Changing the content of a given pill, but not telling anyone - just doing some record keeping to see if the new contents of the pill killed or cured at a different rate?

Sorry TT - but what TT did was not a test.

And I don't take kindly to other people either covertly crawling my website contrary to law or convention, or telling me what conditions I may or may not impose on visitors to my sites, or telling me how to respond to illegal use of my content. Blocking access may be the only way to stop rogue hackers. It shouldn't be necessary for a major UK ISP. Are a small site's rights any less than those of a large site? That's an interesting POV.

Personally I would have thought a major UK ISP would have responded to a clear communication from a website telling them to stop their crawling. But it seems that is asking too much from TalkTalk?

Undentified robots.
No customer or website consent.
Misrepresentation of identity.
Breaking functionality of sites.
Ignoring robots.txt.
Refusing to stop when requested.
Breaking clearly communicated website Terms and Conditions.
Refusing to face the consequences.

I think anyone who objects to that lot is being entirely reasonable. YMMV.

One thing I do agree on - it will be interesting seeing what large sites say about this. Amazon for example?

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

I don't think small sites have rights that are any different from a larger site, but if a larger site (like the aforementioned Amazon) complains, Talk Talk are more likely to listen.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

They are learning to listen to small sites too. That's the way the law works.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

Oh, I wasn't discussing the legality of it. Merely stating that if a major site (like Amazon) expresses concerns about it, Talk Talk are more likely to listen the them than they would you or me regardless of whether their actions are legal or not.

If I go to Talk Talk and say "Your actions are illegal, and I will block your users", they are likely to say 'Yeah Yeah", go on about their business and forget about me. If Amazon say the same to them, they are going to sit up and take notice.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

Oh I wasn't discussing the legality of it either Stuart. I was using the words "listen to" in their real sense - listen to - pay attention - hear - take notice of - act differently in response to... As in actually changing the way they do things. They ARE taking notice. They don't have any choice. Not admitting it, naturally, but there is a lot of evidence that they ARE listening. That's what MY logs and Inbox tell me anyway.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

the thing is even if it is a small site that takes TT to court to enforce charges for accessing their website it sets the same precedent as a large site like amazon if they win

also what we seem to be seeing is there is shareware which is free for private (not for profit / non commercial use) but companies have to pay a licence as they are using it for a commercial purpose

all that is happening is some websites are now using this same model

if they are sucessful in applying charges to corporates like talk talk for access it would appear to potentailly scupper similar style schemes from all ISP's

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

It is somewhat amusing that website owners think they are entitled to charge ISPs to access their site, their property on the Internet, while jumping up and down to keep the net 'neutral' and prevent ISPs from running their networks, their property, in any way which may prejudice them.

This aside I've no doubt the usual people will be writing to Talk Talk, MPs, Europe, The UN,The Pope, Mahatma Gandhi, God and whoever else even though it doesn't affect them in any way to complain, because that's what they do, and Talk Talk will likely give the usual PR nonsense, then fire an incompetent junior legal advisor who gave this the thumbs up and drop it because it's simply too much hassle.

Different day, different company, same people protesting, probably same results due to carelessness of said company.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

my understanding is that the sites are charging talk talk for access, as talk talk are making direct access requests to the websites for commercial gain (to populate a database of webpages for a new anti malware service with no gain for the websites)

the same way some newspapers are now charging to access content

you make it sound like the web sites are charging the ISP's for their customers access the websites from the ISP network, which is not correct

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

That's *if* they win, which is not a given. Especially considering that a small website owner cannot afford. Amazon et al can afford more expensive lawyers.

I am not saying that big business always wins against the little guy. It doesn't. Ask McDonalds.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

As a TT customer, I have to obey TT’s terms and conditions of use of the broadband they sell me. Within those Ts&Cs, there is nothing that allows TT to monitor where I go on the web or to use the URLs I have used to accesses the sites I have accessed.

From the view point of a website owner & developer, I own sites that have a million hits a month, compared to the Amazons of this world the sites are small, compared to a lot of sites they are big. I just think of them as small sites doing a service to ordinary broadband users. The sites are copyright and have database rights. Why should I allow anyone to use the sites contents to enable them to market a commercial product from which neither the sites nor I get a return.

I do find it a insulting to be classified as "the usual people will be writing" and "same people protesting".

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

If you can find where the contents of your site is being used in order to market a commercial product I would welcome this information.

If we follow this to its' logical extreme (your content is, contrary to your apparent opinion, in no way being served by Talk Talk and used to generate revenue any more than web caching would be considered to do so) all ISPs should be paying all website owners for the privilege of being permitted to deliver their websites to their customers.

Still the controversy has done wonders for your traffic, and in turn ad revenue I'm sure.

---------- Post added at 23:35 ---------- Previous post was at 23:25 ----------

I'm not making it sound like that at all. I'm just noting with some amusement how content providers jump up and down to defend their 'rights' when ISPs comment on network neutrality and the potential to apply different classes of service to different websites based on their content but are all too happy to start handing out bills in this instance.

Again, presumably next will be charging ISPs for the pleasure of being able to deliver their content to their customers.

I thought this was all about privacy?

Given the costs of this exercise to content providers are virtually zero and the actual process isn't really much different to web caching from the content provider point of view, caching sites and serving them up locally is also a commercial gain to the ISPs through savings on transit and peering, and indeed is the ISP actually delivering the content in full ensuring zero ad revenue for the content provider are we getting to plain old greed now?

Or are we just getting onto that someone had the idea that this was a way to stick it to 'the man'?

So, yeah, I'd welcome some explanation why caching entire sites and in turn serving them up from caches is quite acceptable and drew no complaints while establishing a database, with no need to actually hold the content post-analysis, is so reprehensible that it demands what I can only consider juvenile action like this? We can have nice circular arguments about legality, etc, but my opinion is that the action is juvenility dressed up in a bit of contract law.

EDIT: Another thought as I was loading the dishwasher. A few browsers, most notable Internet Explorer 8, contain anti-malware features which presumably must necessitate the analysis and referencing of websites in a database. Then there are all the externals guards which use a combination of analysis and a database. You guys have started billing Microsoft, Symantec et al too for their use of your 'content' for commercial purposes, right?

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

Ignitionnet, I am not sure what your aim is here, to ridicule people for trying or to support the ISP.

As for the caching of websites by ISPs that would be illegal.

Do you own a website that you have designed, built and written a lot of the content for?

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

So what does a proxy/web cache do then? A lot of ISP's use them, are they all breaking the law?

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

My aim is merely to point out the rather gaping holes in your logic. You are equating this process by Talk Talk with the use of your content for commercial purposes which obviously isn't the case. Talk Talk are in no way that I can see infringing on your rights as a content owner, they are taking the content, processing and classifying it. Per my previous post by your logic any company that does anything similar is violating your copyrights, which would require you to pursue Microsoft, Google, Symantec and others who will take user reports, analyse the reported sites, and use this data in web shield schemes.

Then I'd suggest you contact the police, there are many ISPs that use or have used caching not to mention many private corporations running appliances.

Frankly you're wrong - if you aren't ntl were breaking the law for many years. I don't remember seeing you or any other content provider launching any kind of legal action or reporting this criminal activity.

Yes and it's irrelevant in any case. What I have or have not done has no bearing on this matter.

If you think you've a strong case get the court summons issued and report them to the police if you think their actions are illegal. If it helps this may be useful.

If they were copying your content verbatim and passing it off as their own I'd be totally with you, as it is they are scanning the pages their customers are visiting for malware and classifying it. If anyone should be offended it is their customers whose privacy this potentially endangers, I am at a loss as to how this prejudices you or violates your rights as a content holder.

If automated processing of content for malware / virus detection purposes is an issue does this mean if I create a program I can charge Google if their GMail service virus scans it? Does this make the scanning of any content by a virus scanning program a violation of its' copyright?

If you could address this, my main point, presented in these several ways rather than incorrectly stating caching is illegal, trying to garner sympathy as a content producer, and trying to assess why I disagree with you it'd be most appreciated.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

The Caching of websites is illegal????

Oh that's it, that has to be the most ridiculous thing I have read in this thread so far. :)

Hatari, with respect, if you're going to come here and make statements like that, PLEASE be prepared to back those claims with some fact. I'll help you. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2...lation/18/made There is nothing in "The Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002" that states that caching a website as part of a networks normal course of business is illegal.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

This may also clarify the issue (at least in the US of A).

Pinsent Curtis And this is from the UK's e-commerce regulations

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

That has got to be the most stupid ill informed statement i have ever seen posted on this forum.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

Let me as an web site owner say this No ISP should be caching any of my page there is code in the page that says do not cach this page, so I found a ISP doing caching of the web page then I would take that ISP to court.

NTL obeyed the code in the pages, so no need to take them to court.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

That's not what was said. The statement was made that web caching is illegal, full stop. When obviously this isn't the case.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

It would be interesting to see how the court reacts. While you are asking that the page not be cached, the court could argue that by publishing a page with no access restrictions, You are relinquishing any right to say how that page is carried.

---------- Post added at 19:18 ---------- Previous post was at 19:13 ----------

Indeed, caching (for all it's faults) is a fundamental part of how the web works.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

What was this code that ntl were obeying? I'm asking specifically for what you used that they were obeying.

Would also be interesting if you could inform me on how you know ntl were obeying this code.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

This is the code.
As I said NTL did obey this code, I know this with me been on NTL, thay did cache the pages before I put the code on the pages.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

You do know that many caches don't read those tags, and even if they do this meta tag doesn't mean the page isn't stored in the cache as there's no obligation on caches or browsers to honour it? The HTTP standards do not set an obligation to honour this at all.

If you want to ensure the cache complies you actually need to use HTTP 1.1 cache control headers.

You may find this webpage useful as it both intelligently discusses caching, explains properly how to ensure your content isn't cached, and gives some discussion as to why obsessively setting pages to not be cached isn't necessarily a good idea.

I suspect you'll ignore that bit and start obsessively adding no-store cache-controls to your pages but *shrug* it's your bandwidth costs :)

It's worth noting that some hardware, which caches at the bitstream level, will cache your pages anyway. I work for a company which manufactures such hardware and neither we nor any of the other vendors in that market have had any lawsuits from any content providers, still if you want to be the first that's your prerogative.

Again, how do you know you weren't being served pages from the cache? You have just said that you know because you were on ntl - how did you know?

In a number of cases the response to that meta-tag from caches that actually honour it is to cache the data and validate with the source site in a similar manner to how they react to the cache-control no-cache header, then serve the page from disk anyway so they are storing your content.

Just a few points. There seem to be some quite gaping holes in knowledge on one side of this argument which don't really advance the issue. Few things undermine one's argument as much as making statements which are incorrect.

You're aware P2P caching is legal I take it? As are Usenet / NNTP servers? I would suggest this is rather more shaky legally thian ignoring a non-compulsory tag in website code. If Cisco / Microsoft / Yahoo / Google aren't suing ISPs for caching their IP I can't say I rate your chances too highly to be honest.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

First off it is a legal obligation to comply with the code specified.

Second I know NTL did not cache the page for one simple reason, the content on the page would be updated wen I uploaded new content to my web server.

Now plese stop trying to defend the undefendable.

I am not going to reply to you any more.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

Just repeating yourself doesn't make it so - it would be helpful if you could actually link to the ruling/statute that states this.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

Not sure I believe it is. It *is* a requirement of the various HTTP standards that the directive be respected, but following HTTP standards is not a legal requirement.

I suppose copyright law might apply.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

Maybe you need to talk to a good Copyright lawyer. If the T&Cs of a website forbid caching then caching is illegal, that is in the code or robots.txt or any other T&C. Google do not cache sites if told not to nor do any of the major search engines.

As for TT, they have been sent the T&C under which they are permitted to access/attempt to access my websites.

As for gaping holes in my logic, I would be interested in exactly what they would be. If TT breaks the T&Cs then there are several routes that will apply. If they obey the T&Cs then they will not be accessing/attempting to access my websites.

Someone mentioned Google. As part of the agreement with Google a site will be malware free, else Google have the option to remove it from the search indexing. Google index some of my sites with my permission. If I change robots.txt to bar Google, Google stops indexing. In addition, as I mentioned above Google does obey non-caching code on pages.

TT has ignored robots.txt on some of my sites, which bars them.

Now if you want to know what I am doing about it you will have to wait and see as it happens. Sorry this is a public forum and I am not going to publish for the world to know what or when I am doing this or that. Yes, I will publish what has done, as I have to date but only after it is done.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

No it is not a legal obligation to comply with that Pragma, it's not even an obligation within the HTTP standard.

ntl's caches may well have been treating your content in the manner I described - verifying it with the origin server then serving some content from the cache - you have no way to know this is the case or not without having detailed logs of the transactions.

I can defend whatever I wish, sticking your fingers in your ears and singing 'I can't hear you' because you can't back up your points merely undermines your arguments, not mine. You clearly didn't know how cache control works and made a blanket statement which you can't cite any kind of proof for.

---------- Post added at 11:11 ---------- Previous post was at 11:10 ----------

It's not a requirement of HTTP that that meta is respected, HTTP 1.1 cache-control headers are an obligation.

---------- Post added at 11:15 ---------- Previous post was at 11:11 ----------

Ignoring the rest of it as there has been no legal precedent I'm aware of in the UK on these matters - legal precedent in the US is that caching is 'fair use' regardless of code within the websites.

Breaking T+Cs is not illegal, if these copyright lawyers of yours are telling you this they are quite mistaken. It may leave a civil suit open but it is most certainly not against the law.

I look forward, with interest, to seeing how this pans out, presumably in court.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

Sorry, any breach of a Statute is against the law, whether the recourse is via the Criminal or Civil Courts. Statutes passed by the UK Parliament and given Royal Assent under the Royal Assent Act are Laws not something you can obey if you feel like it and ignore if you don’t. Also don’t forget EU Directives and Precedents apply in the UK.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

Please show/link to the statute to which you refer.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

Yep.. Looks like I misread my own info..

---------- Post added at 16:09 ---------- Previous post was at 16:00 ----------

No one is arguing that you can ignore statutes. You can't. We are merely pointing out that breaking a site's Terms and conditions is not actually illegal. Any action you perform that breaks those Ts&Cs may be illegal, but Ts&Cs themselves are not legally binding.

I do believe, however, that UK copyright law allows for a form of caching though. I'll admit, I could be wrong.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

As above. I will note however that it was inaccurate of me to refer to breaking T+Cs as not illegal, I should have referred to it as not being criminal - my mistake.

I'm struggling here. Hard to take you seriously when you claim any and all caching is illegal and refer to consulting with lawyers and are insinuating that you are taking legal action against Talk Talk.

Sorry, just difficult to take comments at face value when you refuse to provide any kind of information to back it up.

If it helps though for those jumping on the RIPA bandwagon this is probably not a violation of RIPA - it could be considered to be an automated process as there is no point where the data is available to humans, alternatively it could be said that it is being used for malware prevention and that malware prevention is a part of the communications service.

This could get very interesting. I do hope you win whatever suit you run, the consequences could be very interesting in how ISPs react to a content providers whose content relies on their networks to reach customers setting one-sided terms and conditions at a whim and litigating.

Clearly ISPs, especially those the size of Talk Talk, simply don't have the resources to police such things especially if large amounts of web masters jump on the bandwagon. It soon becomes more efficient to simply ACL said sites on border routers.

Someone pass me some popcorn :)

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

So, you believe all ISPs are breaching statutes, but refuse to state which one - Ooookaaaaay, then.

You are going to have to tell someone, sometime - if your premise is not open to public scrutiny (quite amusing for someone who is fervent about openness:D), not really much chance in court, is there (it's not Perry Mason/LA Law, where you can suddenly suprise the other side with previously secret evidence, you know ;)).

btw, T&Cs don't supersede the laws and statutes of the land, you know - they have to be aligned to them, or they are, in themselves, valueless (such as a T&C that states something that is illegal is invalid).

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

He didn't ask what you are doing about it. I suspect he doesn't want to know that (I know I don't). He asked what statute you think is being broken.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

Stuart by giving that information here that will signal the route/s I am going down.

If anyone is really interested in what is going on, the whole thing is documented at http://www.the-phoenix-broadband-adv...ic,1828.0.html complete with copies of correspondence.

BTW All, please read my posts and don't make assumptions about what I write.

I will not be bothering to reply again.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

Correct - I didn't realise was open to a different interpretation - Hatari must have been making assumptions about what I wrote......

a) one has to register to read this stuff - really open, then.....
b) lack of information and clarity often leads to assumptions being made
c) bye

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

So, you can't give that info here, but have documented everything elsewhere? BTW, I fail to see how telling us what statute caching your content is breaking will actually give anyone an idea of which route you are going down.

I've made no assumptions. I've read what you wrote, and asked questions based upon only that. Questions which you have failed to answer.

Fair enough.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

I have seen the quality of the spelling and grammar in your correspondence with Charles Dunstone along with your implications that you have legal advice, though this is questionable given the content within those emails.

I note you claiming that Stalk Stalk is illegal - I have doubts. It's not Interception by the RIPA definition any more than an ISP scanning one's email for viruses could be considered as such.

Trying to claim 10 pounds per connection from Stalk Stalk doesn't strike me as something that'll go down too well in court.

Claiming copyright breaches - I don't see how Stalk Stalk is breaking copyright any more than a visitor to your website is breaking copyright. Yes, we download your content too.

Complaining about ignorance of robots.txt is a bit odd, the robots.txt file is for things like the Google spider which traverse through links, etc, of sites. It is in no way respected by caches. If the Stalk Stalk software is merely replaying customer requests it is not a spider, so no need to honour robots.

I just went to two of your sites - there is zero cache control on there. Odd that, given caching is illegal according to you, you do none of the well known mechanisms to prevent it. I even went as far as capturing a full packet level transaction for each to see if there were any HTTP 1.1 cache-control headers present. Couldn't see any.

Your .org.uk website selling site design. IANA but I understood that a postal address is required for websites which are offering goods / services?

You don't appear to have a limited company registered at Companies House - somewhat odd that you are looking for business on your design site and claim to have designed million hit per month sites. Can't see such million hit per month sites anywhere on your portfolio or even a reference to building such sites either - strange, I would have thought this would be a fantastic selling point.

I would suspect that keeping the information on your site is purely about driving traffic to that site up. As it will inevitably be looked at by Talk Talk there is certainly no legal motive there.

I really, really am looking forward to seeing if any legal action happens. I must confess some doubts that it will, especially having seen the emails which will, inevitably, be used as part of the action. I am sure that what could be construed as an attempt to extort Talk Talk will go down fabulously.

Yep I may well need some popcorn.

Bye!

EDIT: Just read your recruitment thread on Think Broadband. Nice touch having the correspondence initially in the open then making it registered users only. Pretty lame excuse, if you could happily spot the Stalk Stalk boxes, they apparently being their two DNS servers, it seems odd it would suddenly get more difficult and require you to make the site registration only.

If you were that concerned about your site's security from Stalk Stalk's boxes you'd just HTTPS it - it is hosted by a company that gives free SSL after all.

Someone posting how you aren't a dictator is also a nice touch, enjoying the advertising and non-answers in your own posts too.

Still at least we get to the crux of what you're after in the end - money.

Amusing.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

The discussion seems to be descending into personal attacks which is regrettable. Surely an intelligent person doesn't need to resort to that sort of thing? Wouldn't it be better for us all to stick to the topic rather than go for the person? It looks like the useful part of this thread is over.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

Sadly we aren't being given any information to debate just insinuation. With that available there is little recourse but to assess the reliability of the persons making the insinuations.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

Quite amusing seeing a "taking the moral high ground" stance from someone who posted on another forum on July 24th and on the 26th Looks like entrapment to me....;)

Or even worse......

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

And the relevance of that post to the topic of personal attacks on individuals was...? I think people need to be careful that their lack of factual knowledge about this situation doesn't lead anyone to make statements that they might later regret. There have already been a number of lamentably inaccurate comments above which I will forgive on the basis that they were made in ignorance. Just be patient. Remember that other people may actually know things that you can only speculate about. I wouldn't want anyone to get egg on their face.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

Your argument is circular.

Breaking the law is indeed breaking the law, however you have not demonstrated that the law has been broken.

I'd be quite happy to make an argument that website content caching is a 'permitted act' under either section 31 (incidental inclusion) or section 72 (free public showing of a broadcast) of the UK CDPA.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

Just to try and get back on topic if possible:

The C/F terms and conditions say the following:
http://www.cableforum.co.uk/about/21...and-conditions

Would you expect users of this site to adhere to those T&Cs?
And if they didn't?

For example if someone, did any of the following:

You'd do something about it right?
And if they kept doing it, no matter how much you told them to stop?

I'm just using this site's T&Cs as an example of a website asserting it's right to control access and use. I'm not citing the examples above and saying that the TalkTalk system breaks those particular terms.

My experience has been that C/F tend to take a fairly robust attitude to enforcement of their T&C's. As do other websites.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

If someone breaches our T&Cs, they get warned. If they do it repeatedly, they get 'banned' - that is, their posting rights are permanently revoked and we actively seek to prevent them from re-registering. What we don't do is attempt to prevent them from accessing all those parts of the site which are publicly viewable without registration.

The fact that a website is published means that the publisher implicitly accepts that certain things may be done with it. The question here is whether the creation of user accounts with additional privileges is analogous to the use of certain lines of code to attempt to control the behviour of other, automated internet systems.

Our membership system requires active human involvement and specific agreement to a set of conditions, in order to gain access to parts of the site that are inaccessible otherwise. I don't see that as being much of a comparison with a line of code that asks a spider or other web cataloguing system not to record certain content when that content is visible and not protected by any password.

Of course, you might then want to argue that the code in question amounts to a password protection against web-crawling systems, and that by ignoring it, the operator of that system is effectively 'hacking' your site. Personally I can't see a judge going for that.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

Thanks. I think that all makes my point quite nicely. Of course we are talking about YOUR T&Cs, aren't we, so the things you don't do aren't really relevant to MY case - the fact is - you have terms and conditions and you intend to enforce them.

Some of your comments above suggest you are not aware of the basics of the dispute between certain websites and TalkTalk.

I suggest that you read it all up again, because the things you are saying above, clearly indicate some mistaken assumptions about the actions certain website owners are taking. Especially when you make reference to what judges might or might not "go for".

The TalkTalk members forum should give you a grasp of the basics and it is available to all to read.

Another hypothetical question - how often and how comprehensively does your C/F site get scraped? If I was to use - say - the firefox addon Scrapbook Plus to download the content of the entire C/F site, twice a day? Using a dedicated server and a nice big fat terrabyte level hard drive?

What would you do about that? Let's assume for the sake of argument that I was not a member of C/F - just a commercial operator, compiling a marketing or malware database for which your site's content was a valuable component.

Any comparison to any actual scraping exercise carried out by any particular company is of course, entirely accidental.

Or if I got tired of the screen scraping, and decided on a DdoS attack instead. Would you act to prevent that sort of abuse?

I suspect the point would come at which you would enforce your rights. How?

Website owners have rights. They set Terms and Conditions. They notify those Terms and Conditions. Others can abide by them or not access the sites. I think the way C/F cleverly puts it is like this:

It is quite clear that you take website owners' rights to protect their sites very seriously. The C/F Terms of Service show that. Or perhaps I should say - they suggest that YOU clearly take your OWN right to protect YOUR OWN site seriously. I'm not really very sure how you feel about MY right to protect MY sites.

TalkTalk are of course free to NOT visit my site, NOT to scrape it, NOT download material from it, or NOT impersonate their customers while visiting it. I've told them that very very clearly. It's a very simple point but one they are struggling to grasp - and they don't seem to be the only ones.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

The US instinctively understand that isps are in a position of responsibility which is easily capable of being abused. It is one thing to ignore the privacy of individuals but by doing that en masse an isp can profile other online businesses merely by data analysis of ingoing and outgoing traffic of individuals.

What happens when a large multinational conglomerate (possibly foreign owned) acquires an isp and starts analysing traffic to UK competitors businessess?

Online businessess have to cry foul to the UK government till a rigorous set of laws are made regarding isp activities and these laws are properly policed and properly enforced.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

Further information on the ICO involvement so far on this issue is here http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/reques...ncoming-111620 and http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/reques...alk%20talk.pdf http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/reques...e%20tt.pdf.pdf Seems to be something of a slap on the wrist for TalkTalk from the ICO and it is ongoing.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

You seemed to have ignored this part of the Talk Talk email (and there are you going on about breaches of privacy...;) )

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

Since the e-mail was published by the ICO under the freedom of information act, surely it is the ICO who would be ignoring that statement? I can only assume the FOI cannot be overridden by notices in e-mail footers.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

Ah, it's ok if someone else does it for you......;)

And from the whatdotheyknow website

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

....but, but ....

The information hasn't been republished in full, it's been linked to, which is the established way of complying with copyright laws on the 'net. (Even the Daily Mail fan-boys do that)

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

Strange - it looked to me as if whatdotheyknow were publishing it in full........

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

Anyone interested in getting back on topic on this one and actually discussing the content of the FOI revelations that I provided a link to?

for example - the TalkTalk explanation of how their system works and the difficulty of reconciling the claims of TT to not be processing personal data in the urls they intercept and harvest, with both the user experience of personalised urls being used by the TalkTalk system to access sites just accessed by customers (and breaking some of them because of that), and the website evidence that the urls used by the TalkTalk system did NOT have personal information removed from them?

Or the fact that the ICO are not happy that TalkTalk kept quiet about it even in regular liason meetings with the ICO during the period of the trial?

Or the fact that the ICO are not happy that customers weren't told by TT what was happening?

Or the fact that the ICO are still reserving their position on the DPA/PECR side of things and are not declaring it all legal and above board?

Still - if you prefer a discussion about how to squeeze the STalkSTalk genie back in the FOI/Whatdotheyknow bottle, don't let me stop you. Here's an article you will no doubt enjoy - Tony Blair explaining just how jolly difficult government can be with the FOI Act getting in the way. (about para 29)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2...rney-interview

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

nope, it is about a webmasters rights over their own content and how it is accessed
wrong again, it is not the same as caching, caching data by the ISP is done on the fly while the data is in transit to the user and is allowed so that the carrier can reduce bandwidth and provide a better level of service (less latency for faster page delivery only, this is exactly why it is done by many firewalls / proxy servers in companies as well as scanning for viruses on the way through)

this stalking system replays the content from a different source, it is the ISP who is making this second request(using the url scraped from the users communication with the website) not the ISP customer

as to the costs, depending on the package a websites is on with its hosting provider, a number os packages have bandwidth limits or costs, whilst these may not be large to some people to smaller niche sites they could make the difference between profit and loss
nope, nothing personal just appears to be webmasters trying to uphold their rights under T's and C's , copyright etcas i have said caching is not an issue (so long as the relevant "no cache" tags etc are honoured)

but this system IS NOT caching pages, it works by stripping urls form a communications stream, which are then passed to another server and then the URL's are replayed to the website by the talk talk equipment to enable them to scan the pages

whilst talk talk will be offering this as a "free" service to its customers it will be used as an "added feature" or "incentive for customers" and so may be seen to provide indirect revenue by the fact of more customers, businesses like talk talk will not put this sort of system in place just for its customers without seeing a clear cost benefit at the end of the daythese systems respect robot.txt entries, and use freely available lists, websites can block the ip ranges scanning them easilly as they are well know ranges, so why does talk talk need to build its own database? unless it will scan sites for more than just malware?

a patent from huawei that seems to fit the system in use seems to suggest the sytem can "categorise" pages it does not say what for though, i will leave other to speculate on that one

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

Who verifies what an isp (or search engine company) is actually doing with it's hardware and software?

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

You thought wrong then.

Your lack of knowledge of the details here, is leading you seriously astray. This dispute between webmasters and TalkTalk is not about privacy. It is about enforcing the terms and conditions for access to web sites.
Their are privacy and interception issues that relate to TalkTalk's programme, sure - and those are matters for the enforcement authorities (ICO, police, CPS).

But don't get confused between privacy and contracts.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

The only way an ISP will be found out if its doing something it should not be is when users notice something out of the ordinary, IE phorm, Talk talk, and other secret trials ;)

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

http://www.official-documents.gov.uk.../7586/7586.pdf
and
http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/inf...P_Briefing.pdf

which provide some useful guidelines as to what does and does not constitute "traffic data" and "communication data".

It is quite illuminating comparing TalkTalk's published statements of their own ideas about those definitions with the government's own definitions.

Especially: (from the gov.uk pdf)
"traffic data may identify a server or domain name (web site) but not a web page"

and giving an example of "traffic data"
"web browsing information to the extent that only a host machine, server or domain is disclosed;"

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

Well my lack of knowledge of the dispute between Hatari, yourself and a very few others and Talk Talk. Yet to see any major websites make complaints about this which seems somewhat odd.

The privacy / interception issues, sadly I do not really have the time to investigate extensively, I not retired/semi-retired so I'll just stick with having profound doubts.

---------- Post added at 13:05 ---------- Previous post was at 12:51 ----------

Sorry, making it available online does give up certain things.

You're an admin on Hatari's forum, I don't for a second take your opinion as being unbiased any more than his money grab.

Depends. Given that caching is illegal though, clearly a breach of rights, it's all quite academic.

So block this 'different source'? It's not as if you don't know what the source is?

I have incredible doubts on this. Small niche sites aren't run to make a profit as a general rule. I would welcome an illustration though of where this system has caused a financial loss.

There is no copyright issue here. The system is not distributing the content to others, it is analysed and destroyed in an automated fashion. If there is a copyright issue here every single visit to a website is a violation of copyright.

There is a very easy way to stop this, that Hatari, et al are instead choosing to send bills and even discuss enticing Talk Talk to sites in order to bill them just undermines.

I would strongly suggest learning what the phrase 'Without prejudice' means given the approach taken.

Hatari, the man championing this 'cause' by all accounts, disagrees. There is no requirement to honour that meta tag as I've already mentioned.

Which strikes me as less of a copyright issue than storing and then forwarding the pages, impersonating the origin site as a cache does.

Of course. So what?

Sure?

Speculating is getting into tin foil hat territory, which is admittedly modus operandi but has no place here.

Talk Talk operate DPI, they can trivially play games with content through that if they so choose.

'Well known ranges'? You guys have been discussing the IP addresses that Stalk Stalk is using for months and done nothing to block them.

At a guess at least one of those categorisations may be 'malware infected or not' - as advertised.

Others could be content classification, age appropriateness, etc. They wouldn't be the first or last company that does this.

I do get what you are saying, I just fail to see the problem. You are very aware of where these connections are coming from yet, as webmasters, you jump up and down about how these systems are violating your rights yet you do not choose to take the most rapid approach to remedying the breach - block the servers - instead discussion charging for access, creating redirect loops to DDoS the ISP and other things.

Just block the damn things and get on with whatever behind the scenes. Again - modus operandi - get attention and be seen to be sticking it to the man.

In Hatari's case of course get attention then close off your forum to increase website traffic under a lame excuse of 'security'.

I'm sure it's no coincidence that the people posting on this thread are only seen for things like Phorm and CView. Any wonder I cast a cynical eye on this campaign, especially when no serious action is being taken to remedy the 'issue' but only ways that create more drama?

If you like I would be happy to assist you guys with the appropriate configuration to block the Stalk Stalk servers, just let me know. Given your profound indignation I'll even do it for free.

Yes I'm being an ass - pretty much as the other side will be when they ask 'If it was that much of an issue why didn't you take 2 minutes and block the servers from contacting your site instead of trying to extort large amounts of money for each access which would have cost far less than 1/10000th of the requested charge?' or maybe 'Could you explain why you were discussing ways to use the service to engineer an attack on Talk Talk's network?'.

TLDR

I seriously do get your point, however the legal high ground has been lost through the various emails, all usable in court, containing nonsense, and most of the moral high ground is gone through the tabloid way in which Hatari has gone about this. His cynically closing the appropriate section of the website off and advertising it to drive up registrations, the absurd level of the charge he wanted to level at Talk Talk, the poorly spelt and punctuated babble he sent to Talk Talk, even the silly way he got all cagey and tried to advertise for hits to his site on here as well.

Talk Talk were out of order with this and could have done it a lot more cleanly, the stuff I've read has been laughable and derisory. Any court action will be a mess, on what was potentially a nice, clean open and shut case that would have slapped Talk Talk in the arse for their actions. It's a shame that a real professional didn't take this up and run with it.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

Yes - I agree 100% with you there.

Once again you are unfortunately making statements that because of your unavoidable ignorance of the details, are understandably wide of the mark. Probably best to stick to discussing the publicly available material.

Think for a moment about unwise allegations like:

But why would they tell YOU? (or me for that matter?)

You are obviously worried about the quality of private legal advice being recieved. Please don't be.

And you know what I ate for breakfast presumably?


Please don't trouble yourself. It's a kind offer but not needed. That particular bus left a long time ago.

The rest of the rather highly charged allegations (EXTORTION? - careful!) I will leave to wither away on the vine. There are more profitable discussions to be had on other matters. I'm still waiting to hear some intelligent comment on the 3rd party material I posted earlier on this forum.

I've always understood that highly charged, personal and libellous comments were not approved of on C/F. Nor are public squabbles.

***********************************************

I'll just repeat the last post I made in case it gets lost in this other stuff.

http://www.official-documents.gov.uk.../7586/7586.pdf
and
http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/inf...P_Briefing.pdf

which provide some useful guidelines as to what does and does not constitute "traffic data" and "communication data".

It is quite illuminating comparing TalkTalk's published statements of their own ideas about those definitions with the government's own definitions.

Especially: (from the gov.uk pdf)
"traffic data may identify a server or domain name (web site) but not a web page"

and giving an example of "traffic data"
"web browsing information to the extent that only a host machine, server or domain is disclosed;"

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

They wouldn't. But, however, he does work in Telecoms Networking (as far as I am aware) so may be in a position to have heard something either directly, or through friends/colleagues.

However, the fact that you guys seem perfectly happy to talk about what you are doing in public would suggest (to me at least) that while you may or may not have obtained legal advice, it hasn't gone that much further than that.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

PR value. The same reason Hatari broadcast it.

Closing gate after horse has bolted.

Yes I know, it's earlier in this thread. I don't recall mentioning you by name in that statement though and no evidence Hatari has done so, so just going by the information at hand.

Attempting to charge Talk Talk ten pounds per access to a website is fairly simple to categorise.

No personal squabble here, just stating my opinion. I don't know you as a person nor do I have any desire to so can't judge you. Per earlier threads it would appear that all content is fine so long as it's on the right side of the discussion.

There is nothing wrong with highly charged comments. I'm sure the moderators appreciate your concern though.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

Never assume that you know what someone else is doing.

But feel free to speculate away (preferably in private) - but it doesn't make for a very profitable discussion here does it?

Now where was I before I was so...

****************************************

http://www.official-documents.gov.uk.../7586/7586.pdf
and
http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/inf...P_Briefing.pdf

which provide some useful guidelines as to what does and does not constitute "traffic data" and "communication data".

It is quite illuminating comparing TalkTalk's published statements of their own ideas about those definitions with the government's own definitions.

Especially: (from the gov.uk pdf)
"traffic data may identify a server or domain name (web site) but not a web page"

and giving an example of "traffic data"
"web browsing information to the extent that only a host machine, server or domain is disclosed;"

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

FYI:

The group mentioned in this thread are not the only ones taking action on this matter.

There are others of a more political persuasion who are in discussion with Talk Talk, and who have taken legal advice, without making any noise in public. However they have different concerns, specifically network neutrality, rather than concerns over content rights.

The Huawei solution is virtually identical in operation to the Great Firewall of China, not surprising given it's the same hardware vendor.

The solution performs various heuristic analysis in order to combat fast-flux malware hosting.

More to come.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

As I have stated before, I have made no assumptions. I don't know what you are doing but I do know (from experience) that if you are doing anything involving legal action, you are probably not allowed to talk about it. Certainly not in a public forum.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

Why don't isps concentrate on restricting the ip addresses that initially place malware and such on the internet?


And follow that up with prosecutions?

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

I wish them every success.
This is not a willie-waving contest.

It would seem that TalkTalk are coming under pressure from several directions at once, and in respect of several different aspects of their monitoring and tracking "malware detection" process.

So far, I am aware of the ICO who is currently investigating DPA/PECR concerns, website owners who are concerned about their rights to control access to their sites, and this action you have mentioned from parties concerned about network neutrality. (now of course, making a noise in public, via your post). And there may be further criminal law consequences too arising out of what TalkTalk have done, which will be for the relevant enforcement or prosecution authority to report on as and when they see fit.

I'm not aware of any group of websites taking action over content/copyright issues but perhaps you have more details of that. Which website owners are those?

All of which seems to me to be likely to give TalkTalk a number of headaches. I have no interest in stopping, libelling or ridiculing, any of them.

In fact I'm trying (doggedly) to encourage discussion of some aspects - particularly the defnitions of traffic data, and communications data given here in official guidelines.
http://www.official-documents.gov.uk.../7586/7586.pdf
and
http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/inf...P_Briefing.pdf


Exactly. Absolutely agree.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

Done using Hatari's terms and conditions slightly modified, which raise concerns over content.

If there is nothing to do with content or copyright issues behind it all fair enough, just how it comes across.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

i fail to understand how where i am an admin has anything to do with this topic

if you actually look i have made few posts there, on the talk talk topic

as far as i am concerned this is about a webmaster ability to control access and if they require then the ability to charge for commercial access to a website

this service provides nothing to the website (does not provide traffic like search engines etc)

this service is easilly defeated by websites by using soure ip to serve a different page to mask any malware it is supposed to identify

and it provides no protection for the first visitor as the site is checked after the visit

in short it is about as usefull as a chocolate teapot

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

I thought that the service spidered sites as well as its' replay function, so it would presumably just run through the links on the site. Are you saying it only replays earlier requests?

How serving malware via a different IP address would make any difference would also be good to know. The Huawei technology is, hrm, rather good at analysing content by all accounts.

Thanks in advance. Interesting to know how this works in more detail.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

you have mis-interpted my comment about serving different pages

using various scripts a website can serve a different page depending on what the source IP of the request is, i know of several sites that do this (no to avoid malware detection but to provide a polite notice to users from certian ISP networks)

the current information is it only follows talk talk users after the event, it does no proactive spidering as far as i am aware, unless you can provide information to the contrary

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

Understood.

I have asked and understand firstly that this is an extremely unlikely course of events, given previous experience from anti-malware that does spider and stroll the internet and secondly that the system has countermeasures to complicate this. No specifics were given sadly, but to describe this as being completely pointless as a service would strike me as harsh.

On the one hand an argument has been made that this service is different from other anti-malware because they come from well known IP ranges and are easy therefore to identify but on the other it's described as useless because malware can be tailored to hide from it. This is a rather contradictory series of statements.

I was not aware of spidering but it was mentioned as a possibility in this thread. If there is no spidering done this service doesn't have a requirement to read robots.txt as far as I'm aware. This is to be read by bots when they follow a link to another site - robots.txt is the first file they should read to ensure they behave themselves.

Given that ignorance of robots.txt is a charge levelled at the system that it would appear to not have functionality necessitating reading robots.txt is relevant.

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

several people have been told (as far as i am aware) that it does honour robots.txt

but evidence did not support this

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

Do you run a website yourself? In which case, have a look at the logs for May, June, and July. Or maybe you aren't a webmaster?

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

Why ask the same question twice, just in a different way, RJ?

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

I notice on your website T&C's that you make specific reference to "agreed" conditions of access which you have notified to a particular third party.

Are we to take from this that your battle is won and that they have agreed to your specific terms in relation to access to your site?

Re: TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?
 

I suggest you read the various website Terms of Use/Access published by the companies of TalkTalk Group plc.