Webwise Exclusion Email Address

Send an email to website-exclusion@webwise.com to request that your website is not scanned by Webwise.

Excluding Webwise Using Robots.txt

How are robots.txt files handled by Webwise?

The Webwise system observes the rules that a website sets for the Googlebot, Slurp (Yahoo! agent) and "*" (any robot) user agents. Where a website’s robots.txt file disallows any of these user agents, Webwise will not profile the relevant URL. As an example, the following robots.txt text will prevent profiling of all pages on a site:

user-agent: * disallow: /

The following example will restrict profiling of a directory named "images":

user-agent: Slurp disallow: /images

The system will request the robots.txt file from the root of the host e.g. www.domain.com/robots.txt. When requesting the robots.txt file, the system will follow up to 5 redirects. If no robots.txt file or an HTTP error is returned, if the returned file is not in single-byte ASCII (ISO-8859-x) format, or if the file size is greater than 50Kbytes, then the URL will be marked as allowed for profiling.

Website owners should note the following aspects of the Webwise system’s interpretation of robots.txt files:

• Malformed robots.txt files will result in the URL being disallowed for profiling.
• Any of the well-established line-termination tokens are interpreted as a newline, i.e. DOS, UNIX, old-style MacOS linefeeds. Multiple linefeeds are ignored.
• Web-encoded URLs are decoded and handled as normal.
• Variable capitalisation within the robots.txt file is converted to lower case and processed.
• The system does not support Google extensions to the robots.txt standard.

Webwise Opt Out For Web Site Owners

I own a website which contains private/sensitive information which I don't want to be scanned by Webwise. What can I do to achieve this?

While the privacy safeguards built into BT Webwise mean that sensitive or private content on websites is not compromised, the system also offers a number of mechanisms by which website owners can prevent pages being profiled if they wish. Website owners may implement any of the following methods:

1. HTTPS: No HTTPS traffic passes through the system or is profiled
2. Standard HTTP password-protection : Pages protected using standard HTTP password protection, as defined by RFC 1945, will not be profiled
3. robots.txt: The Webwise system will observe the rules that a website sets for major search engines using the robots.txt method. If the website's robots.txt file is set such that "*" (any robot) is not permitted to crawl it, then Webwise will not profile its pages.

Alternatively, you may request specifically that your website is not scanned by Webwise. To request that your website not be scanned by Webwise, please email: "website-exclusion{at}webwise.com".

How To Disable Webwise

I delete my cookies regularly, and I want to keep Webwise switched off. How do I do that?

If you regularly delete your cookies and want to ensure that Webwise is permanently switched off, add "www.webwise.net" to the Blocked Cookies settings in your browser.

To block cookies in Internet Explorer 7 (windows xp)...
Tools (menu) >> Internet Options (menu) >> Privacy (tab) >> Sites (button) >> enter "www.webwise.net" in the address field then click on the Block button.

To block cookies in Firefox 3 (mac)...
Firefox (menu) >> Preferences (menu) >> Privacy (tab) >> Exceptions (button) >> enter "www.webwise.net" in the address field then click on the Disable button.

Please add a comment if you can provide instructions for other browsers.

TrackMeNot extension for Firefox

The TrackMeNot extension for Firefox by Daniel C. Howe and Helen Nissenbaum protects users against search data profiling by issuing randomized queries to popular search engines.

Features include:

• Firefox 3.x compatibility
• Realtime Search-Tracking
• Dynamic URL/Header Matching
• Burst-Mode (default: off)
• Cookie-Anonymization (default: off)
• Improved Timing Mechanism
• Improved Logging (cookie-actions, etc.)
• French language version
• Improved support for non-latin characters
• Selective click-through (for non-ad links)
• RSS support for seed-generation and substitution
• Burst-mode (default: on) with query permutation

TrackMeNot extension for Firefox: http://www.trackmenot.org/

Blocking Phorm won't stop it, warns privacy group

Open Rights Group says opting out is not enough
Rosalie Marshall
vnunet.com, 27 Apr 2009

A data protection group has warned that opting out of Phorm will not prevent the technology from processing data that users enter through web site search portals.

Companies such as Amazon, Wikipedia and LiveJournal have taken the decision to block the controversial advertising technology from scanning their sites because of the privacy implications.

However, Open Rights Group executive director Jim Killock has since admitted that, even if web sites opt out of the programme, ISPs supporting Phorm will still be able to profile users visiting those sites.

"This is because Phorm can scan search requests entered in those sites, even if it cannot detect the web site pages users are viewing," Killock said.

"For example, even if Google opts out of Webwise, when a user types in a Google query and they are using BT, it will still go through Phorm before it reaches BT."

Killock added that Phorm does not gain permission from either senders or receivers of the information before it processes the data.

Phorm uses browsing information to serve accurately targeted advertisements, and is soon to be rolled out under the Webwise brand by internet service providers BT, Virgin Media and TalkTalk. However, as the time for deployment nears, the controversy surrounding the technology only seems to be increasing.

Most recently Phorm came under attack from the European Commission (EC), which argued that UK government authorities are running foul of European Union privacy and data protection laws by not taking action against telcos that use the platform.

The EC's move initially prompted the Open Rights Group to call on large technology firms to opt out of Phorm by sending an email to Webwise.

"While we recognise that an opt-out is an entirely second-rate way of dealing with this problem, we would strongly urge you to take advantage of it in order to immediately reduce the risk of harm to your company and to your customers," said the Open Rights Group.

FirePhorm.com

TrackMeNot.org

Webwise.com

Phormfree.com

Phorm.com

Phormfree

Wikimedia becomes latest to ban Phorm

The Wikimedia Foundation has asked Phorm to exclude all its domains and websites - including Wikipedia - from Phorm's BT trials, because it considers such scanning to be an infringement of its users' privacy.

Phorm's automated reply said it was likely the ban would go into effect within 48 hours.

Amazon Says No To Phorm

The online retailer does not want its domain screened by the firm's controversial advertising technology.

The backlash against British online behavioral-advertising company Phorm picked up speed on Wednesday, as online retailer Amazon confirmed that it had asked not to be screened by the Web-browsing tracker.

"We have contacted Webwise [Phorm's product name] requesting that we opt-out for all of our domains," said a spokesman for Amazon.co.uk, via email. Web site owners who do not want their pages scanned by Webwise, Phorm's tracking software, can specifically request to block the technology, according to BT, an Internet service provider which admitted last year it had tested Phorm on its customers without their consent. Phorm monitors Internet users' browsing to better categorize them and match them to advertisers.

Livejournal opt-out of Phorm

From Mike Cardwell's Blog... Today I convinced the good people at Livejournal to request that livejournal.com and all of it’s subdomains be added to the Phorm Webwise exclusion list. I contacted their privacy department, expecting a boiler plate non-informative response, but it went quite differently. I got a direct response from their Director of Engineering and Operations (Tupshin Harper), and permission to quote him.

The response I was received was short, but very sweet:

From: “LiveJournal.com Support”
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 2009 16:30:08 +0100
Subject: Re: [staff] Phorm

I have requested exclusion of livejournal.com and all of its subdomains from Webwise indexing. Thank you for bringing this to our attention.

-Tupshin Harper
-Director of Engineering and Operations
-LiveJournal, Inc.