Forums
| BadPhorm - When good ISPs go bad! :: Forums :: Fight Back :: OIX Advertisers |
|
<< Previous thread | Next thread >> |
| Digital Spy | ||
|
Moderators: Jim Murray, narcosis, felixcatuk, Sammy, revrob
|
| Author | Post | ||
| fortytwo |
| ||
 Registered Member #549 Joined: Sun Sep 28 2008, 11:04PMPosts: 5 | I've been a member of Digital Spy for some time, I can't remember why I joined now but you can get some useful information there. I recently had a problem with Freeview when the digital changeover arrived. You have to log in to post and also have cookies enabled, normally I don't have third party cookies enabled at all, but by mistake they were on this occasion. When I noticed this I looked at the cookies and found that there were nine cookies there (apart from digitalspy ones) in three groups, a.webwise.net, webwise.net and oix.net. Anyone a member there and noticed this? Would they be the same cookies that BT were experimenting with a few years ago? | ||
| Back to top | | ||
| revrob |
| ||
revrob  Registered Member #372 Joined: Wed Apr 23 2008, 04:09PMPosts: 640 | They ARE phorm's domains. http://whois.domaintools.com/webwise.net http://whois.domaintools.com/oix.net If you are using Firefox have you considered using the Dephormation addon which detects any links to phorm domains like webwise or oix? - and if you switch on logging (temporarily - or you get a massive log building up) it will record the various browser requests - which you can then use as evidence in a complaint. You can also put those domains into your hosts file so they redirect to 127.0.0.0. But it would be worth asking Digital Spy themselves - preferably publicly - I doubt they would welcome being publicly associated with phorm. I'll have a look at the site in the next day or so - I can't see anything there at the moment but I haven't registered as a member. It is truly amazing how many sites run a variety of third party tracking cookies. I've recently located one site (a news aggregator) that runs 7 trackers from Facebook Connect Google +1 Google Analytics LinkedIn Widgets OpenX Twitter Badge Twitter Button and it also scrapes copyrighted website content without prior consent (contrary to CDPA) for commercial purposes, and puts entire pages of other sites inside its own iFrame. It's hosted on the amazon cloud in the usa. It plants jquery.js scripts on your hard disk, and also contains doubleclick and flash scripts. It is "created" by a well known privacy campaigner who regularly complains about google, the US based cloud, trackers, flash, and content scraping and is threatening to report sites that are not compliant with the ePrivacy Directive, to the ico. He will have to report his own content aggregator because it isn't compliant either. I can't get a peep out of him about it. If you are prepared to take the risk then you can find it here. http:/ /bit.ly/bhdwl8 (link deliberately broken to protect the unwary) You really have to keep your eyes open to see what people are up to. | ||
| Back to top | | ||
| revrob |
| ||
| revrob Registered Member #372 Joined: Wed Apr 23 2008, 04:09PMPosts: 640 | Also bear in mind that if you ARE using the Dephormation addon (or someo other addons which set default opt out cookies) tthen it will generate obfuscated cookies for some phorm domains. I've tried a login to digitalspy forums and only collected digitalspy cookies, and my browser alerts don't suggest any attempts at other cookies being set - so we need a bit more detail on what is happening with your connection. [ Edited Thu May 24 2012, 12:37PM ] | ||
| Back to top | | ||
| fortytwo |
| ||
| Registered Member #549 Joined: Sun Sep 28 2008, 11:04PMPosts: 5 | Thanks for your replies revrob. I'm afraid that my ability to provide you with much technical information regarding this is very dubious. I do have the Dephormation add-on enabled on my pc but I have no recollection of seeing any indication of a link to a Phorm oix site on Digital Spy although it does show the banner on the Nodpi homepage so I assume the add-on is functional. I'm not sure if I have the add-on properly configured though. Regarding the DS site, I very rarely have cookies enabled there because normally I use it to see if something I'm having a problem with has been covered before, or for general information which of course doesn't require you to be logged in. I had the Phorm cookies come up once before about a month ago but I couldn't put my finger on where I had picked them up. It was by accident that my third party cookies were enabled which allowed me to pin down the source ie.Digital Spy, a few days ago. Some of your comments/ suggestions about iFrames or jquery.js scripts are beyond my level of competence I'm afraid but I really ought to get to grips with my Hosts file. | ||
| Back to top | | ||
| sigma |
| ||
 Registered Member #1259 Joined: Sun Apr 01 2012, 11:25AMPosts: 10 | Webwise was previously associated with particular ISPs in the UK, BT, Virgin and TalkTalk, but I believe that the cookie was set by the ISP rather than a web publisher. Can I ask who your ISP is? No worries if you'd rather not say. | ||
| Back to top | | ||
| Peter N |
| ||
  Registered Member #507 Joined: Wed Jul 30 2008, 02:08PMPosts: 34 | fortytwo... I use DS most days - usually reading without logging in but when a certain TV show is on, I'm in there and posting regularly. I've never had a webwise cookie from them - and I deliberately don't block any phorm cookies. The dephormation protection is the likeliest source but it's definitely worth following this up just in case - it was only down to a couple of people spotting odd clues that exposed the 2007 secret BT/phorm trials. To the best of my knowledge, the only "webwise" cookies that ever existed stemmed from the BT/phorm tie-in - there shouldn't be any way for them to be set other than by using BT at that time. If this can't be attributed to dephormation doing its job, do you have any recollection of what part(s) of DS you visited when you got those cookies (that's a huge domain with numerous sections as well as the forums) and did you follow any links that took you off DS? | ||
| Back to top | | ||
| revrob |
| ||
| revrob Registered Member #372 Joined: Wed Apr 23 2008, 04:09PMPosts: 640 | A couple of things you can try to see if DS is setting cookies you don't want. Try visiting in IE, - firstly delete all the cookies using Delete Browsing history (with the cookies box ticked) then visit DS and say yes to everything - then look at internet options - general tab- Browsing history - settings button - files - to see what cookies you have collected. In Firefox - you can Disable Dephormation temporarily, clear out any webwise/oix cookies, and visit DS and check what cookies arrive. Clear them out. Close Firefox, reopen it. Then re-enable Dephormation protection, and do the same again. I imagine you will NOT see any webwise or oix cookies - but check anyway. BUT if you visit a site such as the phorm.com web site then it is likely that dephormation addon will create some obfuscated webwise/oix cookies which will persist. Remember that some privacy addons create lots of optout cookies. I can't remember which one now - perhaps TACO/Abine? | ||
| Back to top | | ||
| fortytwo |
| ||
| Registered Member #549 Joined: Sun Sep 28 2008, 11:04PMPosts: 5 | Sigma My present ISP is BE, although it used to be BT until their dalliance with Phorm. Peter N and revrob I haven't had much of an opporunity to try to confirm the Phorm cookies over the weekend. I tried browsing all over the DS site using Epiphany (the browser bundled with Ubuntu). The browser doesn't seem to have as much choice in privacy as Firefox just 3 selections. 1 Always accept 2 Only from sites you visit (eg. not from advertisers on those sites) 3 Never accept I used 1 and found no sign of Phorm cookies just DS cookies (loads of them) and some for scorecardresearch and sageanalyst I'll try doing what you mentioned using Firefox when I next get the chance. | ||
| Back to top | | ||
Powered by e107 Forum System