Yep, I used Libertysurf. A pretty good definition of the term unsustainable.

  Yup. That's exactly how I felt about it at the time. It was nice while it lasted.

Actually, I think it was Screaming.net, who were bought by LibertySurf, who were bought by World Online (when all the problems started), who were bought by... Tiscali!

Screaming.net was so coooool! 

Nadger: Do you think you are merging Xtreme (Pipex) and Screaming (Screaming.net) to make X-Stream? 

Kingfisher who owned Woolys and Comet at the time sold Libertysurf to Tiscali http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1106497.stm

I remember signing up for their 20 quid a year unlimited dialup. It was great for a while but after 4 months I was struck off as a 'heavy user' and told I wasn't entitled to any money back at all. I took my LS disk back to Comet and told them I could no longer connect and they gave me my £20 back!

Those were the days eh! 

Real blast from the past

LoL! Well done! 

Why do you think you pay your TV license, Shutter?

Has anyone else noticed the announcements (in the US press) that a company called Phorm has struck a deal with Virgin, BT and Carphone Warehouse to analyse their users browsing habits and use the data to target advertising at them. The analysis is of the traffic through the ISP, not just at the cooperating website/cookie level that the current targeting systems use. They will therefore (and are proud of it) be able to profile you on the basis of ALL your browsing, not just that which goes to advertising websites.

It appears that users of these ISP's will be able to opt out of receiving the targeted advertising, but will have no way of avoiding the scanning and behavioural analysis of ALL their internet traffic (it is by no means clear that the analysis is restricted to web traffic) by a US based company. The privacy implications are scary!!!

I presume that even though Plusnet is part of BT that this deal between BT and Phorm does not cover Plusnet customers, but it would be nice to have some confirmation.

I find it interesting that I have only seen this deal, by three major UK ISP's, announced in US based media.

For details see http://www.iht.com/articl...8/02/15/business/AD18.php

Or any Virgin forum where they are up in arms!!!


 

There's already a thread running on this here.

More than ten million customers of the UK's three largest ISPs will have their browsing habits sold to a company with roots in the murky world of spyware.

The deal has sparked fears over privacy, but today Phorm, the firm behind the new advertising system, strongly rejected such concerns.

BT, Virgin Media, and Carphone Warehouse have agreed to feed data on their subscribers' web activities to Phorm. Data will be fed into the Open Internet Exchange, Phorm's advertising network, where advertisers will pay to target interest groups. Frequent visits to the BBC's Top Gear site might result in being served up more car ads, for example.


<snip>

http://www.theregister.co...25/phorm_isp_advertising/

will this also include plus.net
 

No.

Although Ian Wild is in favour of it so it may happen in the future.

I suggest you add your comments to the existing thread on the subject here

Hint... use the search function

Who said I was in favour of it?

What I said was that if the majority of the benefit is given back to consumers and people are explicitly made aware that it's happening with their data, I can't see the problem with approaches along these lines. That's quite different don't you think?

Ian

Well I am up the creek because I am with NTL / Virgin Media.    

On a Cable Modem with up to 2mb

Uh No, if you can not see a problem then you are in favour of it happening is how I read those paragraphs together.

I'd like an opt out option for this please.

SW.

Sorry, let me see if I get this right. When I pick up Metro, and happen to look at one page for more than 20s, the paper does not know which article I am looking at specifically and does not auto-magically display new adverts based on that nor does it send me some SPAM based on this.

It sure has potential ... of all things I am not interested in.

SW.

Because we have to 

Even if i just wanted to watch ITV and Channel4 i'd still have to buy a TV license, they would still have adverts..