Wikimedia Foundation opting out of Phorm
Posted by Brion Vibber on April 16, 2009
After some internal discussion on whether opting out of the Phorm user-profiling system in the UK would legitimize it, we’re going ahead and requesting an opt-out for all the domains under the Wikimedia Foundation’s control:
Subject: Phorm opt-out for Wikipedia.org and related domains Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 14:28:11 -0700 From: Brion Vibber <brion@wikimedia.org> To: website-exclusion@webwise.com CC: private-l@lists.wikimedia.org To whom it may concern -- The Wikimedia Foundation requests that our web sites including Wikipedia.org and all related domains be excluded from scanning by the Phorm / BT Webwise system, as we consider the scanning and profiling of our visitors' behavior by a third party to be an infringement on their privacy. Here is a list of our domains which should be excluded (please exclude any and all subdomains as well): wikipedia.org wikipedia.com wikipedia.co.uk wikipedia.cz wikipedia.fr wikipedia.info wikipedia.lt wikipedia.net wikipedia.nl wikipedia.org.br mediawiki.com mediawiki.org quickipedia.net quickipedia.org toolserver.org vikipedio.com vikipedio.org wikibook.com wikibooks.com wikibooks.cz wikibooks.org wikicitaty.cz wikidata.org wikidisclosure.com wikidisclosure.org wikidruhy.cz wikifamily.com wikifamily.org wikigis.com wikigis.org wikijunior.com wikijunior.net wikijunior.org wikiknihy.cz wikimania2006.org wikimania2007.org wikimaps.com wikimaps.net wikimediacommons.co.uk wikimediacommons.de wikimediacommons.eu wikimediacommons.info wikimediacommons.mobl wikimediacommons.net wikimediacommons.org wikimedia.cz wikimediafoundation.com wikimediafoundation.net wikimediafoundation.org wikimedia.hu wikimedia.li wikimedia.lt wikimedia.org wikimedia.pl wikimedia.se wikimedia.us wikimemory.org wikimorial.com wikimorial.org wikinews.org wikipaedia.net wikipedie.cz wikiquote.com wikiquote.cz wikiquote.net wikiquote.org wikislovnik.cz wikisource.com wikisource.cz wikisource.org wikispecies.com wikispecies.cz wikispecies.net wikispecies.org wikiversity.com wikiversity.cz wikiversity.org wikiverzita.cz wikizdroje.cz wikizpravy.cz wiktionary.com wiktionary.cz wiktionary.org Thank you for your time. -- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org) CTO, Wikimedia Foundation San Francisco +1 (415) 839-6885
Received autoreply:
Subject: Publisher Exclusion Request Autoreply Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 14:28:30 -0700 From: website-exclusion To: Brion Vibber Thank you for your submission to the Phorm website exclusion list. If there are no obvious grounds to doubt the legitimacy of the request the URL will be blocked as soon as possible, usually within 48 hours. Requests must be made by the legitimate owner of the domain. If we have questions regarding your domain Phorm may take a number of steps, including attempting to contact the domain administrator by email for confirmation of this request. If the request remains questionable and is not confirmed within 10 days, the URL will be removed from the exclusion list and an email will be sent informing you of this decision. Where applicable, please ensure that the Administrative Contact details for this domain are up to date. If you need to update them, please resubmit your request when the amended details are visible in the WhoIs database - (use a public whois service such as _http://who.godaddy.com/whoischeck.aspx_ if you are unsure it has been updated)
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.
Fantastic news
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/
Well done and thank you. The UK web community will be grateful.
Prepare to be scraped. Check your logs.
Can you repeat it with wikipedia.ru?..
Thank you. I hope others will follow suit.
Brilliant news. The sooner these parasites are gone the better.
Well done Wikipedia. Well done Brian. Exactly what your readers, donors and contributors wanted to see you do. Thanks.
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.
>#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”
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.
I have requested exclusion of my domains too, and I’m encouraging everyone I know to do it too.
Excellent news, Wikipedia. Opting out is indeed fundamentally flawed, but it is all that we have right now.
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:
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.
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.
This is great news. Thank you Wiki for thinking about the users first.
Thanks very much Wikipedia for helping UK internet users. Most appreciated.
Shouldn’t that be wikimediacommons.mobi not wikimediacommons.mobl ?
Well-done!