TalkTalk tracking you, phorm?

[Rchivist]

Thank you.

Date of enforcement notice corrected.
My apologies for the transcription error.

[Rchivist]

More info on the TT members forum, from someone who is both a TT customer AND a webmaster. http://talktalkmembers.net/forums/sh...&postcount=770 This seems to be consistent with other reports of problems experienced by other TT customers during the covert stage of the trial, with broken duplicate logins, and the reports from other webmasters of "passing off" issues with the TT bot. As the ICO investigation of the covert trial continues, there will need to be a clear explanation of these particular phenomena.

Originally Posted by Rchivist

More info on the TT members forum, from someone who is both a TT customer AND a webmaster. http://talktalkmembers.net/forums/sh...&postcount=770 This seems to be consistent with other reports of problems experienced by other TT customers during the covert stage of the trial, with broken duplicate logins, and the reports from other webmasters of "passing off" issues with the TT bot. As the ICO investigation of the covert trial continues, there will need to be a clear explanation of these particular phenomena.

if those actions have happened, TalkTalk are completely out of line.

Could you give more details, please, of the ICO investigation?

[Admin edit (Chris) - irrelevant personal information removed]

[Rchivist]

Originally Posted by foreverwar

*****, if those actions have happened, TalkTalk are completely out of line.

Could you give more details, please, of the ICO investigation?

No, sorry, - not if you are looking for something new. My current understanding is based on what I or others have already posted - I'll leave out anything based on rune reading!

1 - TT are already having complaints monitored by ICO and having liason meetings with ICO following the Jan 2008 enforcement notice because of earlier DPA breaches, and that "is ongoing" ("ongoing" as of 7th September 2010 - FOI request). ICO do operate something called a watch list - I suspect this means that TT are on it.

2 - that ICO did not know about the summer 2010 covert trial until they discovered the info from 3rd parties and that they were "disappointed" about that (FOI request and subsequent press articles).

3 - That ICO also at the same time, expressed concern about lack of consumer notification and consumer consent even in the trial situation (that seems to represent a slight shift in their position on trials since the BT/Phorm saga)

4 - that TT have since made various representations to ICO about what they have been doing, and ICO are comparing those with other reports that they have received from the field - issues such as whether the urls used by the bot are stripped back to the domain, or actually refer to a specific page, and whether personal information (session ID/login detals) was removed or not - whether it may have been left in by mistake, or whether TT misled about that in public statements etc.

My understanding is that TT has already publicly acknowledged but not explained, some of these discrepancies/concerns, but that there is, as yet, no public resolution of the discrepancies, and the ICO has not produced any decision about whether, if true, those represent DPA breaches.

The latest TTMF post referred to above, would seem to fall into that category - it isn't a NEW claim, it is simply a further instance of another webmaster repeating a claim made by others, at a much earlier stage in public discussions about the "side-effects" of the trial - and saying - "me too". I posted that TTMF url, because some have questioned the extent of webmaster awareness or the extent of harmful effect for webmasters. That post seems to be evidence of one more webmaster backing up the claims of others.

5 - that further discussions are taking place between ICO and TT and others, on unresolved issues and that the ICO will respond further in due course. My expectation is that the further discussions will have to include discussion of reports and logs submitted by webmasters, relating to problems with urls containing personal data, used by the TT bot. I can't confirm that.

As far as I know that is all available already in the public domain, either via the TT Blog, the TT members forum or the press articles resulting from the FOI request on whatdotheyknow.com, about the ICO investigation.

The wheels at the ICO do grind exceeding slow, even in cases where there are major high profile statements about prosecution - so don't hold your breath. It could easily be twelve months before the ICO actually took any further action - or longer.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...olen-sold.html (Nov 2009)

There may also be other processes relating to police and civil actions on other non DPA matters relating to the covert trial, but there is no public information available about those and unlikely to be, until outcomes are clear.

(Polite request - my personal information on cableforum has never included a first name. It still does not, so I'd be grateful if none was not used please, even though it seems more friendly. My profile indicates the personal information that I have consented to being made public on CF. Thank you. )

[Peter_]

Originally Posted by Rchivist

(Polite request - my personal information on cableforum has never included a first name. It still does not, so I'd be grateful if none was not used please, even though it seems more friendly. My profile indicates the personal information that I have consented to being made public on CF. Thank you. )

No one on here can ever know your name unless you actually tell them or post it in a thread.

That's not strictly true Masque.

People, can we please now stop the amateur sleuthing and respect each other's requests for privacy. Unless it is explicitly relevant to the topic of this thread there is no justification for gathering off-site information about other members and re-posting it here. This includes personal names. Some people are happy for theirs to be online, some are not.

[Peter_]

Originally Posted by Chris

That's not strictly true Masque.

I suppose so but it takes the sleuthing as above which to me is not something I would actually do.

Originally Posted by Rchivist

Snippety snip snip

a) my apologies for using information that you had previously provided - it will not happen again.

b) I am sorry, but none of what you have posted could reasonably be called an "investigation" - the ICO are not carrying out (to the best of my knowledge) an active inquiry into TalkTalk's actions re this latest tom-foolery; they have asked for more information, they have expressed their "disappointment", but this, imho, is a far cry from an investigation

c) you pointed out a response from the ICO last week to support your proposition

Originally Posted by Rchivist

https://nodpi.org/wp-content/uploads...y-followup.pdf

You may check its veracity and interpretation direct with the ICO.

you forgot to mention that you had sent the FOI request in....

Re Chris's post above, I believe this is relevant to CF'ers because there are a small number of posters (on CF and other forums) who cross post each others' posts on this and other forums to support their case, trying to show a ground-swell of opinion when it is just a small coterie (I admire their enthusiasm, if not their application of that enthusiasm); this also involves linking to various FOI requests (and their answers) that have been submitted to the ICO, thus further supporting the alleged ground-swell.

I believe it is relevant that if someone posts a link to support their argument/proposition, the fact that the so-called evidence was actually gathered by themselves (or one of four or so others) makes a difference (I believe it is perhaps potentially misleading to withhold this information) - I am, of course, willing to understand if the CF mods think differently, and wish to edit this post.

[Rchivist]

Originally Posted by foreverwar

you forgot to mention ....

We seem to be back to the issue of off-site amateur sleuthing.

[bluecar1]

Originally Posted by Chris

That's not strictly true Masque.

People, can we please now stop the amateur sleuthing and respect each other's requests for privacy. Unless it is explicitly relevant to the topic of this thread there is no justification for gathering off-site information about other members and re-posting it here. This includes personal names. Some people are happy for theirs to be online, some are not.

i have requested information removed, but a mod rejected it, can i resubmit the request?

Sorry people, but the CF Team has better things to do than to constantly be monitoring this thread and responding to complaints about who has said what, to whom and where.

We have striven throughout to strike a balance between members reasonable expectations of privacy, and the fact that some members have posted information relevant to this debate elsewhere (whether on old Cable Forum threads, or elsewhere).

For future reference, we consider gratuitous 'outing' of forum members' real-world names and personal affairs to be a breach of our T&Cs relating to privacy. We do not consider it a breach of our T&Cs where members have named themselves in the past on this forum (i.e have already outed themselves) or where information not originally posted on Cable Forum is of direct relevance to the discussion here.

The smooth running of Cable Forum requires a certain level of self-policing from our members, both in terms of what they post and what posts they choose to report to us. I think the guidelines I have posted here should be more than sufficient to allow even this thread to continue to proceed smoothly. If it turns out that they are not, then I will simply close this thread again and not re-open it.

Last chance saloon, people. Please be excellent to each other.

[Sir John Luke]

One for the tin-foil hat brigade? (I understand TalkTalk are using huawei).

http://www.huawei.com/products/datac...log.do?id=3597

From the Huawei website

Our products and solutions have been deployed in over 100 countries and have served 45 of the world's top 50 telecom operators, as well as one third of the world's population.

One must be careful not to confuse the specific with the general....

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by Sir John Luke

One for the tin-foil hat brigade? (I understand TalkTalk are using huawei).

http://www.huawei.com/products/datac...log.do?id=3597

This will mess with their heads far more, virtually everyone uses Cisco.

[bluecar1]

Originally Posted by Sir John Luke

One for the tin-foil hat brigade? (I understand TalkTalk are using huawei).

http://www.huawei.com/products/datac...log.do?id=3597

the thing is, from what i am reading TT appear to ge using the Huawei GREENET solution for the anti-malware service, the BTA solution appears to be a simple bolt-on or upgrade to that service

so is that where the income is going to come from to pay for the green net system, as i can't see TT paying for it out of the kindness of their hearts

as to the Feeva code on cisco routers, that operates in a totally diferent way from my understanding the last time i looked at it, as it did not appear to build a profile as such but was providing a form of location tag

but i will go back and revisit to confirm if it has changed