The incident does have a bearing on BT's integrity and competence. Not only were they warned about this possibility quite some time ago, they made statements that specifically ruled out PlusNet customers being affected.

Someone commented that it was odd that only one RIN customer was affected. Given that BT is supposed to be trialling 10,000 users, it is even more odd that there are only 3-4 maximum examples of Webwise invitations being discussed on the entire internet - one went to a BT Broadband Anywhere customer and snarled up his mobile device badly, and another went to a Plusnet customer. We only have one other example verified and that person hasn't been able to give details of any cookies set. There are about 9,996 triallists out there who are completely silent. There was more evidence on the internet of the COVERT trials in 2006 and 2007 than there is of this 2008 one.

It raises real questions about the effectiveness of the trial and the rate at which it is proceeding and whether it is truly random - or whether it is in a form which differs from that which was publicly advertised by BT Retail as being about to take place on September 30th (coincidentally just at the time when Phorm's mid term financial results were due out, revealing catastrophic losses and a collapsing share price)

See posts here discussing integrity and competence of BT
http://www.beta.bt.com/bta/forums/message.jspa?messageID=45407#45407
http://www.beta.bt.com/bta/forums/message.jspa?messageID=45554#45554

My main concerns about this news are not that PlusNet are doing anything wrong - I imagine they are FUMING (like many execs and employees in BT Group too) - but that it reveals just what sort of a job BT are doing running their ISP over in BT Retail.
http://www.donottrustwebwise.org
http://iswebwiselegal.com

Edited by revrobert (Tue 11-Nov-08 12:09:36)

In reply to:

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This could have happened to any other ISP that uses BT's network.

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Nope I dont think so... someone else asked me about this elsewhere yesterday, and I'd already drawn my own conclusions even before Pete's response, yesterday afternoon.

Its my belief that this is purely to do with RIN and the Central Plus product.
After-all which other ISPs use the Central Plus Product?

This didnt happen to all customers - only one customer that was using RIN.

BT Wholesales description of BT Central Plus is quote

With this option, user logins are authenticated within BT broadband network and service providers do not, therefore, have to provide a RADIUS server.

Note the bit in red!
Once authenticated on RIN its extremely hard to tell who the real ISP is.. the IPrange and rdNS all appear point back to BTBroadband (aka BT retail)

and its also very important to bear in mind this did not happen with the vast majority of circa 200,000+ customers who connect via ISP Centrals and who are authenticated by Plusnets own RADIUS servers.

In reply to:

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BT Wholesales description of BT Central Plus is quote

With this option, user logins are authenticated within BT broadband network and service providers do not, therefore, have to provide a RADIUS server.

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I think that almost certainly means the BT Wholesale broadband network, just someone didn't think to include the word.

In reply to:

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Once authenticated on RIN its extremely hard to tell who the real ISP is.. the IPrange and rdNS all appear point back to BTBroadband (aka BT retail)

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Hasn't it already been established in this thread that this is to be expected, as RIN is BT Retail Internet Network?

Hehe, yeah - I meant it in the context of "unfortunately" for the case of BT wanting to intercept traffic, and "fortunately" for us.

>> Hasn't it already been established in this thread that this is to be expected

umm - sorry didnt realise I couldn't add my 2p too.
There were quite a lot of posts to read, and I'd directly responded to this one.

If you view it in threaded mode you'll see there were no other responses down that string... and I can honestly say I hadnt seen all the other responses in the whole thread when I made my post.

What is it about this forum that makes people start sniping at each other. ...
granted you havent as such.. but some of the other comments in this thread do set the tone.

In reply to:

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What is it about this forum that makes people start sniping at each other

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Maybe they prefer it to posting on the FC forum


/gets coat and shuts the door quickly

I could give you a time line of the article, but suffice to say it takes time to put them together get the quote and do a myriad of other things at the same time.

Imagine if it had turned out to be something like the bill payer had migrated the connection to BT Total, and the person posting did not know this or that it had taken place early. That would have been egg on our face, if we'd published without checking.

Can I suggest you look into Limited Service Selection, i.e. I can have two logins that connect to different BT Centrals or one to a Central and another to Central Plus.

It is all just a case of how your data is routed, almost every ISP is just a routing command or two away from another ISP.

All this excitment because, in the words of the OP

In reply to:

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a Plusnet user has received the Webwise invite page.

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I did reply to my own post acknowledging the article you posted.

And yes, before you say it, I guess you do take considerably more care to verify the veracity of your articles than certain other news websites!