Comments on: Wikimedia Foundation opting out of Phorm

By: David Gerard

David Gerard — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 14:10:23 +0000

“it’s already well-known in cryptanarchist circles as a hidebound adherent to any demand from a government… a ‘correct line’ institution in the Marxian sense”

I’m sure you’ll understand if people fail to quake in their boots at this.

By: GT

GT — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 23:37:19 +0000

As another poster above indicated, this should be done via htaccess – you simply can not trust Phorm (or any entity that collects data on behalf of governments).

At the end of the day, if Wikimedia does not take adequate steps to ensure that the rights of its patrons are not violated, then Wiki’s name will be even further reduced (it’s already well-known in cryptanarchist circles as a hidebound adherent to any demand from a government… a ‘correct line’ institution in the Marxian sense)

By: John den Haan

John den Haan — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 10:52:14 +0000

Well-done!

By: Bawolff

Bawolff — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 03:08:37 +0000

Shouldn’t that be wikimediacommons.mobi not wikimediacommons.mobl ?

By: Charles

Charles — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 17:42:31 +0000

Thanks very much Wikipedia for helping UK internet users. Most appreciated.

By: Nick

Nick — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 17:29:16 +0000

This is great news. Thank you Wiki for thinking about the users first.

By: Midnight_Voice

Midnight_Voice — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 16:01:02 +0000

Nice action, and praiseworthy, but your “we consider the scanning and profiling of our visitors’ behavior by a third party to be an infringement on their privacy” isn’t a good reason for it, I’m afraid.

Those visitors will all independently have chosen to be scanned and profiled by Phorm (assuming that the ICO will successfully insist on Phorm being Opt-In, as it has said it must – though this may be a big assume).

This being so, it’s not for Wikipedia to deny them that ‘privilege’.

But it *is* for Wikipedia to deny Phorm the right to profile Wikipedia’s responses; and this is what you have done, and more power to your elbow.

So, must Phorm get details of the requests those visitors make to Wikipedia?

No; you can go one step further, and prevent this. In order to operate, Phorm has to create a cookie on the user’s machine that purports to come from Wikipedia.

If you feel that this would be an act of forgery, of ‘passing off’ as it is called in the UK, or a copyright infringement, or a breach by a third party of Wikipedia’s cookie policy, then you should let Phorm know, in the strongest possible terms, that this will not be tolerated, and will be opposed by recourse to law if it is found to be happening.

You should also know, apropos of this, that if Phorm do use your Wikipedia name in breach of copyright or trademark registration, and you become aware of it, then failure to defend it as above prejudices your exclusive rights to it.

I am not a lawyer, but I am sure you have one; please put the above to them if you are unsure if I am correct or not in this matter.

By: Norbi

Norbi — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 13:55:40 +0000

Lvova :
Norbi : >#5 by Lvova - April 17th, 2009 at 07:20 > >Can you repeat it with wikipedia.ru?.. The Wikimedia Foundation is not concerned with “wikipedia.ru”
and what, and do not want to have any relationship?

The respective owner of this domain has to request the opt-out personally. Just as David Gerard wrote:

David Gerard : Wikimedia can only do this for domains it directly controls. There are a lot of wikipedia.* domains which aren’t under the direct control of the Wikimedia Foundation, for assorted historical reasons. (This is getting sorted out slowly.) So the registered contacts for those domains will need to send opt-outs separately. This is why opting-out is fundamentally flawed.

You may wish to try to find out the owner of any website, by performing an whois lookup and then you could ask him or her to request the opt-out. This site may be helpful ;) http://www.nic.ru/whois/?hint=wikipedia.ru&query=wikipedia.ru By the way... "ru.wikipedia.org" is already included in Brions request, because it's a subdomain of wikipedia.org.

By: Lvova

Lvova — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 13:04:56 +0000

Norbi : >#5 by Lvova - April 17th, 2009 at 07:20 > >Can you repeat it with wikipedia.ru?.. The Wikimedia Foundation is not concerned with “wikipedia.ru”

and what, and do not want to have any relationship?

By: Louise Ferguson

Louise Ferguson — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 11:43:03 +0000

Excellent news, Wikipedia. Opting out is indeed fundamentally flawed, but it is all that we have right now.

By: Weo

Weo — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 11:27:18 +0000

I have requested exclusion of my domains too, and I’m encouraging everyone I know to do it too.

By: David Gerard

David Gerard — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 10:37:48 +0000

Wikimedia can only do this for domains it directly controls. There are a lot of wikipedia.* domains which aren’t under the direct control of the Wikimedia Foundation, for assorted historical reasons. (This is getting sorted out slowly.) So the registered contacts for those domains will need to send opt-outs separately.

This is why opting-out is fundamentally flawed.

By: Norbi

Norbi — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 10:25:00 +0000

>#5 by Lvova – April 17th, 2009 at 07:20
>
>Can you repeat it with wikipedia.ru?..

The Wikimedia Foundation is not concerned with “wikipedia.ru”

By: phormaverse

phormaverse — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 08:34:16 +0000

Don’t forget – it isn’t just BT Webwise who are operating this horrible stuff – there is Korea Telecom with Smartweb, which is just another Phorm incarnation – and there may be others (including Virgin Media and TalkTalk in the UK). Watch your website logs very carefully for evidence of scraping after you have made this request – some people have suggested that Phorm IPV4 Assignment IP addresses are allegedly STILL crawling their sites even after requesting them not to.

By: William

William — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 08:20:59 +0000

Well done Wikipedia. Well done Brian. Exactly what your readers, donors and contributors wanted to see you do. Thanks.

By: Joanne

Joanne — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 08:10:34 +0000

Brilliant news. The sooner these parasites are gone the better.

By: JHorb

JHorb — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 07:55:31 +0000

Thank you. I hope others will follow suit.

By: Lvova

Lvova — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 07:20:09 +0000

Can you repeat it with wikipedia.ru?..

By: Martin

Martin — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 23:52:27 +0000

Well done and thank you. The UK web community will be grateful.

Prepare to be scraped. Check your logs.

By: Pete

Pete — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 23:43:49 +0000

Phorm is a parasitic disgrace to the UK, and a blight on the creative efforts of all those who make the internet the valuable information resource it is.

Thanks for supporting the campaign to stop it.

There is a petition to the Prime Minister here;
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/dataprofiling/

By: warescouse

warescouse — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 23:32:49 +0000

Fantastic news

By: Morosoph

Morosoph — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 22:55:52 +0000

It might, additionally be a good idea to block Phorm servers using htaccess, since a ‘passive’ record of visited pages will, most likely, be kept, even if it doesn’t inform their algorithm.

Sample htaccess files can be found at dephormation https://dephormation.org.uk/index.php?page=7; more options (such as php blocking) can be pulled down from their ’server-side’ menu.