Ruling the airwaves

If you could get away with committing an offence knowing that from the point of view of the authorities someone else did it, would you?

I opened my netbook today and decided to search for wifi access points within the vicinity of my home and discovered a total of 14 unique networks including my own. I was surprised by this as I don't live in a particularly densely populated area.

My first impression from the list of network names was of slight bewilderment that some of them were named after either the operator or their house number and street. Free information.

Not especially useful to me really, but now that I knew some of their names I decided to see how far I could potentially go in order to become one of these people from the comfort of my chair.

Approaching this, I knew that many of the wireless routers supplied by ISPs are configured by default to use a weak security algorithm called Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) rather than the much more secure Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA).

WEP was determined to be an insecure security algorithm in 2001 and was deprecated by the IEEE because it did not serve the purpose it was designed for - to secure your network. It can be cracked within a few minutes with freely available tools. In fact my own ISP, O2, supplied me with a router that was configured with WEP enabled by default, leaving my network wide open for anyone with a few minutes spare.

Knowing this, I decided to boot my netbook into Backtrack:a linux distribution focused on network auditing and security. It's a nice distribution and can be burned on to a USB stick or DVD for use as a "live" system. Opening kismet I discovered some more details about the wireless connections in my area.

I was interested in finding out whether they were using WEP or WPA. It's possible to brute force attack a WPA secured network but it could take longer than the universe will exist to crack. Anyway, within minutes I had retrieved the keys for all of the WEP secured wireless networks in my area. The Aircrack website details how to use the tools to do it if you're interested.

At this point I could bridge all of these networks and load up any of my favourite peer-to-peer software with lots of music, films and games shared and from the point of view of the BPI or any other organisation that attempts to monitor our internet usage it would be my neighbours who were doing it. As a result, they'd get the BPI threat letter and any resulting court action. Perfect!

It's surprising in these days of fraud, identity theft, ID cards and 24/7 surveillance that people have such a blase attitude towards protecting their own identity. I do however think it's bad sport for ISPs to supply hardware that is preconfigured in such a way that your home or small business network can be compromised by anyone that wants to use it.

Is it fair to assume that an ISP will supply hardware that is as secure as it can be upon installation? I think so. Consumers should not be expected to be knowledgeable about the technicalities of wireless encryption methods. Indeed, the consumer may not even have a wireless enabled computer yet their network would be wide open and they wouldn't even know.

I await the case whereby someone that didn't do anything wrong actually gets prosecuted based on what they are perceived to have been sharing. Who would be liable? The consumer or the ISP for supplying hardware that permitted anyone to use it?

Top of the Phorm

Success! Shares in Phorm dived 40% yesterday when BT said it wouldn't be using their system (although they have not fully terminated their agreement with them).

Phorm is a company started by people that made money by infecting your computer with spyware that now offers a similar service that you can do nothing about. At the ISP level, they spy on your web usage and provide targetted advertising based on it.

Carphone Warehouse/Talktalk have also pulled out and the only remaining ISP with a commitment to Phorm is - you guessed it - Virgin Media.

Apparently Phorm are now focusing their business on Asia and have gained a foothold in South Korea. I suspect they are probably used to being spied on though.

Am I bovvered?

Everyone's got a website these days, haven't they? I once swore I'd never make a blog, but here we are.

Blackpool Council has not one, not two, but ten websites. Ten.

That might not be such a surprise to some; large companies have more than that in some cases. It was, however, a surprise to me, a lifelong resident, because I had only heard of one of them.

Here's a list:

Visit Blackpool
The official tourism website for Blackpool

Blackpool4Me
Has the amazing hook line, "where local people and communities create the site". This site allows local clubs and organisations to have a page on it. From the site, "Blackpool4Me is not your average website - it is loads better! It is a website of websites, in fact its the website of websites." Ok.

BSafe
Blackpool Community Safety and Drugs Partnership. Lots of pictures of Police officers on the street. Sightings of the loch ness monster are more common. "BSafe Blackpool is committed to reducing crime, disorder and substance misuse in the town, reassuring the public through a series of innovative projects and sophisticated intelligence." Not very good at it then, looking at the figures.

Blackpool Coastal Housing
An "Arms Length Management Organisation" created by Blackpool Council. They soon wont be arms length when they move into the town centre. Manages Council houses.

Blackpool Unlimited
An online portal supporting business in the town.

ReBlackpool
Site listing various projects relating to the regeneration of Blackpool.

Blackpool CPS
No, not Crown Prosecution Service, but Corporate Print Services.

Blackpool Build Up
A 3-year project run by Blackpool Borough Council and Blackpool and The Fylde College, aimed at training adults in construction skills.

R U Bothered
Aimed primarily at Blackpool's yoof with some forums and some information about yoof services.

BSFBlackpool
Building Schools for the Future. Where these schools are I do not know, but according to them it's a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Am I about to start slagging them off for having loads of sites? Surprisingly, no, I'm not. I will say, however, that despite some of them sporting web design company names at the bottom, none of them are particularly well designed and there is no house style, indicative of delegation to various Council departments to do their own thing.

The main issue I have really is the underpublication of these sites. I had a look on the R U Bothered site, as I had no idea what it would be but assumed it would have something that related to youth issues. There's a forum on there with 10 topics spanning around 18 months. Thats how under used it is, because nobody knows about it.

Had I wanted to start a business, would I have known about Blackpool Unlimited? No. Did I know what the Blackpool Build Up project was? No. Did I know that Blackpool was apparently building next generation schools? No.

Branson Pickle

According to the Evening Gazette, Blackpool's "broadband connection" is about to become "one of the best in the country".

These opening words in the article left me a bit confused. Is journalist Nick Hyde telling us that Blackpool is so behind the times that it has only one broadband connection? Or maybe, just maybe, he is a lousy reporter that has been fed by Virgin Media's publicity machine and knows absolutely nothing about the subject he is writing about.

The latter, I think.

So lets digest the article. Mr Hyde is saying that people in Blackpool can now acquire "one of the best" connections in the country. Best in terms of what?

I can tell you now that Virgin Media is far from the best Internet Service Provider in the UK at the time of writing. My history with them is well documented on this blog: to summarise:

• I've been a customer since the year dot
  
  
• I was very happy to pay premium price with Telewest due to second to none reliability and completely unlimited connection.
  
  
• Virgin took over and offered me a 20MBit package, then applied throttling across the board once I was locked in a 12 month contract.
  
  
• Their Chief Executive declared that net neutrality is "a load of bollocks".
  
  
• They proceeded to sign deals with music/film lobby groups to monitor internet usage.
  
  
• They are more interested in sucking up to lobby groups and the Government than they are about their customers' privacy.
  

Anyhoo, according to the article in the Gazette we "have only been able to get broadband speeds of between 8Mbs and 20Mbs" in Blackpool. What the hell is a Mbs? A Major bullshit story? I'm sure we get more than 20Mbs in Blackpool from the Gazette alone if that is the case. Another sign that the author, Nick Hyde, is completely clueless about the subject and by this point his journalistic oesophagus was probably full of the advertising that Virgin had sent him.

Next we have a cracking technical case for Virgin being a "massive boost" for business.

Steve Pye, chairman of the Blackpool-based Federation of Small Businesses, said: "My connection at the moment is 8Mb and sometimes it can be a little slow and even crash." Time you switched from Virgin then Steve? Internet connections don't crash: computers do.

He follows on to say: "When you are part way through putting a deal together this ("crashing") is not a good thing." How is 50MBit going to help then? If your connection sucks, increasing the bandwidth will make no difference; you will just be paying more for a connection that still sucks.

I'll give him the benefit on that but it's still not all good with Virgin. Lets say the 50MBit was needed to conclude the deal: with Virgin Media's Stalinist throttling policies the deal could similarly be lost if the connection was used for for more than 30 minutes at full speed. This is because after that point Virgin Media has decided that you are in the top 5% of users and as a result your bandwidth is cut by 75% for the next five hours. It's automatic, there is no discretion and it will not be revoked. Bye bye deal.

I am absolutely baffled as to why our local newspaper is freely advertising Virgin Media and clearly the article writer has done very little of his own research. Given that it's not uncommon for the Gazette to publish Government policy and agenda as news, a part of me believes it's an active push for Virgin to be the preferred provider of broadband services because they are currently the only ISP to have caved in to the Government and the BPI.

Virgin's 50MBit rollout isn't even news. It has been available for ages and in fact I was offered it a few months back when I left them. The only reason to have it is if you have lots of money to waste on having the "fastest".

For normal web browsing and average iTunes use, you don't need it.

For heavy downloading, there are much better and significantly (5 or 6 times) cheaper products around.

Vive la Revolution?

So, Lord Carter today will be announcing a £3billion "Digital Britain" project for delivering broadband internet to every home in the UK as well as plans for "combatting" piracy.

Their benchmark for bandwidth is 2Mbit which, yes, compared to dialup is fast but compared to all broadband connections in the UK at the moment is the slowest and is certainly not a speed that will provide good content delivery for much longer than a couple of years.

In some countries such as Sweden and South Korea, the norm is 100MBit with some homes able to have 1000MBit. Investment was placed in better, future proof technology and they are benefitting from the foresight of their Governments by having the means to deliver high speed data into almost any home.

In the UK we are stuck with DSL: if you can get a BT telephone line - which everywhere other than extreme rural cases can - the chances are you can easily get 2MBit already and have been able to for 4 or 5 years. Standard broadband speeds in the UK are between 8 and 20MBit depending on what you want to pay for. Yes, there are a few rural villages that consist of a few giant farmhouses, mansions and barn conversions that are so far away from urbanisation that they can only get dialup, but having seen some sob stories from these people about it my conclusion was that they probably have enough money to buy the entire internet.

So where's the story?

The story, I believe, is that the "broadband in every home" chunk of the forthcoming statement is a whitewash for the underlying business deal that I suspect has occurred between the music industry lobby groups and the Government in relation to the other part of the story.

Remember I said it would cost £3billion for the broadband project? Well, that money has not been allocated by the Government, which means somebody else is paying for it and I believe it's the music industry.

But what would be in it for the music industry? Simple really, the license to continue to bully people into believing that downloading a few tunes turns them into a criminal with the percieved backing of the Government and Police.

I would even go further and suggest that these internet connections that the Government is wanting to put into homes would come with a caveat - that the music industry can monitor them and can freely acquire personal details and surfing habits of users in order to build a case against them.

Currently this isn't possible, because ISPs are not allowed to disclose details of their customers due to the Data Protection Act. Most of them do not want to either. The only reason anyone would even want to pay for a premium 20 or 50 Megabit connection is to download movies, music and games and if ISPs decided to hound them about it, they'd either leave or cut their subscription to a cheaper one.

Richard Branson's Virgin Media is "leading the way" on this so called anti piracy jaunt. Given their love affair with the BPI I was not shocked to hear that they are now promising to disconnect people that they percieve to be downloading copyrighted content.

We already know that the BPI crawls torrent sites, tries to download complete files from people and then sends a threat to Virgin who pass it on to their customer. I have had one myself, and due to my own anger at that and Virgin Media's throttling policy I am now an O2 Broadband customer. I suspect this is how Virgin will continue to determine someone that is using their network for distribution of copyrighted content, but given their acceptance of spying services such as Phorm I would not be surpised if their statement that they will not spy on users is a complete lie.

In fact, Virgin said they wouldn't disconnect users for file sharing less than a year ago but a quick wave of the wallet from Universal and they have gone back on that promise.

Thankfully they are the only ISP as yet that is persecuting its users in this way and actually there are plenty of superior ISPs in terms of performance these days. When I phoned them to cancel I was told all other ISPs throttle like they do and they started offering TV packages and so on. I was leaving anyway.

As I said I am with O2 Broadband (also known as Bethere/Telefonica) now. I was told I'd get 13MBit down my phone line, and I get 13MBit so I am happy about that. I got about 14MBit with my 20MBit Virgin cable line. The big difference is that after 30 minutes of downloading on Virgin, they cut the bandwidth by 75% for the next five hours, completely nullifying the point of having a high speed "unlimited" connection.

Working it out, it appears that in any 5 and a half hour time bracket on Virgin Media, I was able to download about 10GB. 3GB in the first 30-40 mins and the rest across the next 5 hours. On O2 Broadband I can download 26GB in that time and the best bit is I'm paying four times less for it than I was for Virgin Media. Winner!

The falsehood that is Virgin Media

I've been with Virgin Media, or Blueyonder as it was for about 7 or 8 years now. We got it installed when they first dug the road up past our house to put the cable lines down, and were mightily impressed with the blazing download speed of 52k/s (0.5 megabit). Who wouldn't be when the only alternative was dialup internet?

The price was £37 a month which was and still is a lot, but we were paying for the "best". The price is the same now, however the connection has been upgraded to 20 megabit which theoretically gives a maximum download speed of about 2000k/s. I was well impressed when last year I found that Blueyonder were upgrading my 10 megabit connection to 20 megabit for no additional cost.

The current fastest package offered by Virgin Media is still 20 megabit which is around the highest maximum downstream you can reasonably get in the UK. Their other packages are 2 megabit, 4 megabit and 10 megabit. They claim that they will soon offer 50 megabit connections. Cool.

Why am I completely pissed off with them then?


1. Virgin Media are involved with Phorm.

Phorm is a company that makes money from targetted advertising. Loads of companies do that. Every time you subscribe to printed or online media they ask you what other magazines you read so they can mailbomb you with advertising related to the subject of your favourites.

But Phorm gleans its information in unethical ways: by making deals with ISPs to spy on your web usage. It then matches your surfing habits with its database of advertisers and funnels targetted advertisements to your browser, no doubt creaming commissions off at various stages in the process.

Apparently Phorm has entered into these "institutionalised spyware" deals with leading UK ISPs (BT, Virgin Media and Talk Talk). I guess they hope that when people realise that Phorm is associated with these large companies that customers believe they are in safe hands when they are clearly not if they care about online privacy.

Why should I be so cynical about this? Phorm could, after all, be honorable. Unfortunately for them Phorm has an unpleasant history. According to the wikipedia entry in it's previous incarnation as 121media it creating an advertising system called ContextPlus and at least one product based on this was labelled as spyware by a leading antivirus company. This product formed part of a further system called Apropos which, when installed (usually without you knowing) did exactly what Phorm plans to do with Virgin Media, BT, and Talk Talk - spied on internet usage and sent browsing habit details back to them.

Apropos was one of the old traditional types of spyware which used tricks to stop you uninstalling it. Funnily enough, the Virgin Media homepage has plenty of information to help protect users against this form of spyware yet by getting involved with Phorm they appear to be planning to actively solicit and institutionalise spying on their customers. It just goes to show how suddenly morals and ethics are forgotten when there's a chequebook being waved.

Fortunately for us at the moment, the Information Commissioner's Office has stated that Phorm would only be legal as an opt-in service.


2. Virgin Media sold me a 20 megabit connection
....but its only really 5 megabit.

When I first read that Virgin Media were going to start applying a 75% bandwidth throttle to "the top 5% of downloaders" I thought this would mean those that leave their connection hammering downloads day and night, racking up hundreds of gigabytes per month of data.

Virgin Media have tended to advertise their products around downloading more and more media, faster. Indeed my 20 megabit package is advertised as "supersonic". Not for one minute did I think I would be affected by connection throttling since I don't leave my PC on overnight downloading, and rarely download tons of files. But I am.

Problem is, Virgin Media dictates that if you use your connection at full speed for more than 25 minutes between 4pm and 9pm (unless you use the internet at antisocial times) then you are a heavy user.

If I wish to download say a couple of game demos from XBox Live in the evening I'll get around 1400k/s for half of the download and then after that it's game over and the connection speed is reduced by 75%. For the next 5 hours. This makes me a top 5% downloader according to Virgin Media, despite other users downloading thousands of gigabytes more data per month (albeit overnight).

Virgin Media's throttling hours cover almost the entire day. Home from work, go on the internet, download something or other to watch, or some tunes. Maybe let the kids play some games online on their PC's or whatever. Boom throttled: come back in 5 hours.

Sure, even under throttling you can still surf sites but if you're on a home network with a few people using it it soon gets slow, particularly if you want to download anything or watch Youtube.

In addition to being throttled, they also make the connection crap. Your ping times skyrocket and in a lot of cases web sites don't even appear due to packet loss. I guess this isn't intended but it certainly happens.

I think Virgin Media has labelled normal internet usage in 2008 as heavy usage in order to basically cream more profit from their customers. Their XL package is nothing more than a gimmick. In fact all of Virgin Media's broadband packages are gimmicks because you simply don't get what you expect to pay for. They are aware that people on these packages like to have freedom to download a lot of multimedia content: indeed that's how they publicise it.

Sure, they have covered themselves with lots of small print but the overall idea you get from their advertising campaigns is that it's brilliant for people that like to download. How can it be when relatively insignificant users such as myself are being capped on every day in a blue moon that they actually try to download anything of significance (i.e. a Linux ISO or some TV shows)?

How can it be allowed to advertise something as unlimited - which has a crystal clear definition - yet apply a usage restriction to it? That seems like a pretty fundamental contradiction to me. No company should be permitted to redefine the dictionary in order to create an advertising gimmick.

When you get 75% of your bandwidth removed after 25 minutes of full speed downloading within a 5 hour time bracket, are you even getting your money's worth when you could have two of Sky's "unlimited" 16 megabit ADSL package for less than what Virgin Media charge for 20 megabit?

According to Virgin Media, the 20 megabit connection has a higher cap threshold than their other 2, 4 and 10 megabit connections. I disagree. With the 20 megabit connection, you get throttled even faster than you do on their 2 megabit connection.

On 2 megabit, you get throttled after 41.6 minutes of full speed usage. On 20 megabit you get throttled after just 25 minutes! For the next 5 hours of course.

It may well be fairer if outside the peak hours of 4pm-9pm I could actually get the speed I am paying for without being throttled for 5 hours after every 25 mins of full speed downloading.

Not so fast! Amazingly, Virgin Media also applies a throttle between 10am and 3pm as well, so you can only be throttle-free in the middle of the night when obviously you're likely to be up and on the PC.

The Advertising Standards Authority has slapped their wrists a little but let them off the main issues, like alleged mis-selling. Virgin Media should absolutely not be permitted to advertise a 20 megabit product in its current state. They should clearly say that it's only 20 megabit for 25 minutes at peak rate and then you get 5 megabit. They should not be allowed to use the word unlimited. It's simple.

When it was Blueyonder the service was better, the reliability was.. well I never had to call them for 6 years.. so I guess that's pretty good. I wasn't capped either. Branson conglomerate comes in and it becomes shite! It compares almost exactly to his train network: old leased tilting trains that are marketed as cutting edge (despite most of Europe having them since 1990) and priced significantly higher than other forms of transport.

On the Virgin Media newsgroups some people think that having your connection speed cut by three quarters for most of the day is better than having a monthly bandwidth cap. I disagree. It might be better for people that leave their PC on downloading all day and all night, but with a monthly cap at least you know that you will get the advertised speed when you need it.

For people like me that don't leave their PC on downloading stuff all the time, knowing I CAN download that demo from XBox Live and that it won't take forever is better than sitting down at 7pm and waiting an hour and a half for it to download (by which time I'm bored of it already!).


3. Virgin Media are in bed with the BPI

Not much to say about this that isn't on the link but the BPI, or British Phonographic Industry, are pressuring ISPs to threaten users involved with copyrighted material.

Virgin Media is one of said ISPs that is actively doing this despite being the ISP that for years has based its marketing strategy on having the fastest connection and being able to download more and more multimedia.

Recently they mailed letters to some of their customers threatening them with disconnection if they were to continue. They claimed it was a mistake and that they wouldn't be cutting people off.

No smoke without fire I am afraid. Virgin Media are constantly linked with stories involving various copyright organisations and threatening to disclose information or disconnect people.

Ironically, Virgin Media carries a news feed packed with all the games, movies or music you could ever want and is free to download as a Virgin Media subscriber.


4. Virgin Media thinks net neutrality is bollocks
...and believes they are bigger and better than they actually are

Unsurprising really given the other tampering they do/plan to do with our connections, the CEO of Virgin Media has declared that he is happy to throttle content providers if they don't pay his company large sums of money.

Surely this simply means Virgin Media will lose customers unless the user classes the slowness of say BBC iPlayer as normal and just stops using it. I wonder if they will throttle Youtube. I know Virgin Media is a large company but they are minnows compared with Google.

I read also that they were starting to throttle Usenet usage. I guess it's not because of a bombardment of compliments about their service: more that they have noticed people switching off torrents due to "web sherrifs" and going to Usenet which in many cases is faster than BitTorrent and can't be policed by outside agencies. They may be able to monitor it, but they can't remove anything from it.


5. Virgin Media helplines are all premium rate
...and you always have to hold for more than 10 minutes

Speaks for itself really, unless it's a Virgin Media helpline in which case it only speaks to you after 10 minutes of hold music.