Naughty, naughty...

i spotted a nasty way to propagate viruses earlier, Gmail had already categorised it as spam so i assume it's getting on a bit now but i'm still... well, impressed is the wrong word since it's a way to trick people into opening a almost certainly harmful file but it's pretty ingenious all the same. What it does is uses an apparent hole in Google or more accurately in Google's advertising accountancy system; when you open an advert from Google it gets passed through a tracking system that keeps count of which adverts are displayed and visited, before being kicked forward to the actual site. What this little exploit does is use that tracking system, the email that it sends from infected machines starts http://www.google.com/ and most people consider that a trusted site, but the rest of the address is just some gunk that's been borrowed from a legitimate advert and, at the end of the string, it passes Google a different address. That address is in Poland and points specifically at a file called "video.exe"

i doubt i have to say to anyone technically-minded enough to be reading the drivel i write knows not to click on an email attachment or link with a .exe suffix but this is sneaky... the URL itself is over ninety characters long so it "buries" the file extension and, more importantly, although it doesn't obfuscate things very much this way if you know what to look for, the use of Google's name is probably going to "sell" this link to a fair few people...

Terrible Phorm

Phorm, for those unaware and they're doing their best to keep people that way, is all about advertising; at the moment, when you see a banner on a website, it might have some degree of targeting towards you but more often than not it'll be for some random product or service that you have no interest in. What Phorm does initially sounds quite promising, it means that as long as the sites you visit are all signed up, you get specifically targeted adverts. If it sounds slightly insidious then that's because it is, but that isn't the whole story because there's the question of how the advertisers know which banners to place and that comes down to deals that Phorm is trying to arrange with the various UK ISPs, BT, Virgin Media and TalkTalk; what they essentially want to do is insert their systems within the link between the user's computer and the outside world in order to gather data on what that user is viewing. To placate people they're saying that the data would be collected anonymously and that they're only interested in trends, so if a significant number of users visit a site that sells decorative cakes and later go to somewhere selling fancy dress, there's the assumption that more users would do the same if they were aware of the fancy dress site and Phorm's clients can therefore target advertising on the cake site.

So what's so bad about that you might ask? Well it's not so much the idea of targeting adverts (although that in itself is rather insidious but it's been happening for years now), but there is a huge questionmark over the whole concept. The basic model seems to be that when a user's browser puts out a request for a new site, that request gets side-lined by Phorm's hardware, anonymised and stored - the request isn't passed on and instead they're relying on the way that web browsers automatically send another request if the first gets misplaced for some reason - in other words, Phorm are in ur internets, reading ur HTTP requests. Is that a problem if it's anonymous you might wonder, but the question is more a case of can we trust marketing people to stick to those particular guns or even to have the guns out in the first place? All we will have is Phorm's word that they're not keeping far more data than they're claiming and there's very little that we or even the people at the ISPs can truly keep a tab on what is and isn't going through their virtual T joint. Or indeed what comes out on the way back to the user, again there is only Phorm's word that they won't tamper with the results of searches to inject their clients into results favourably and it wouldn't take much work to actually achieve that.

If the company had a spotless or at least a relatively clean history this would still be an issue of some concern, but Phorm seem to have a consistent record of attempting to conceal or suppress the truth around their endeavours; a Wikipedia article about them was ham-fistedly edited by someone directly involved to remove true but possibly damning information, trials have been held of the system in the last six or so months that saw tens of thousands of BT broadband customers monitored without their consent or even awareness and most attempts to get information out of them regarding the system and it's uses rarely gets more than a "no comment" unless it's someone like the BBC in which case the PR drones come out in force. If that weren't enough to make people suspicious of the company, the fact that they were previously called 121media and produced, amongst other things, adware should set off a cacophony of alarm bells. They even claim that different logged-in users will be treated independently so goodness only knows how much actual data is being harvested.

The Phorm "service" (for want of a better word) will be "opt out", in other words users will have to be aware that their browsing is being monitored in the first place and that they've got to do something in order to prevent that happening - that is assuming, of course, that opting out actually works and, considering 121media's previous connections with dubious advertising techniques, the idea that the Phorm opt-out works just like the unsubscription addresses on most spams (or in other words it just confirms that you're there to be advertised at rather than getting you removed from anything) wouldn't be hard to accept. If anyone wants further information, there's always BadPhorm and the aforementioned Wikipedia article, although i'll add the usual disclaimers about Wikipedia and not taking it as gospel at this point...

i bought a terrible DVD...!

i watched one of the daftest films i've ever seen yesterday evening; I Bought A Vampire Motorcycle was released in 1990, put together on a shoestring budget and lots of friend and family goodwill and probably one of the funniest things i've sat down and watched for a while. Starring Neil Morrissey, then already well known as the slightly gormless sidekick Rocky in Central's Boon but well before he started hanging around with Martin Clunes or indeed voicing one Robert the Construction Worker, this is essentially "Boon does comedy horror" since a large number of cast and crew were "borrowed" from the hit ITV show! Although Morrissey gets the lead role here as Nick Oddie (or Noddy to his mates), both Michael Elphick and David Daker appear as coppers and other members of the cast and crew are present throughout including the late Tip Tipping performing some of the more adventurous stunts.

Even more surprising were some of the other cast who weren't directly involved with Boon (or appeared for an episode) who were persuaded to appear; Burt Kwouk makes a short, silent cameo as the somewhat menacing owner of the chinese takeaway, Daniel Peacock, who regularly appeared in the Comic Strip productions and the television version of Whoops Apocalypse appears as Buzzer, the first victim of the titular creature but the biggie has to be Anthony "C3PO" Daniels playing the priest that Noddy rather desperately finds on finally working out that his bike is a killer. There's loads of wonderfully cringeworthy one-liners, quite a bit of blood, guts and bodily fluids (seriously, this is one film that doesn't sit well with popcorn!) and a fair few cheap but very cheerful sight gags such as Noddy ordering a pint of cider and a crossbow bolt, fired by the leader of a motorcycle gang, thudding into the bar next to his hand. The vampire bike (a Norton Commando, apparently... and still buried in the producer's shed as one of the extras demonstrates) goes from being quite menacing to highly amusing as the special effects budget doesn't quite manage to make it seem realistic, the cast really go for it as do the extras who are mostly friends and family of the film makers (or the writers, producer and whoever else was available in some cases) and it's topped off with a silly soundtrack. In short, worth a couple of quid on DVD!

What a weekend...!

Well, yesterday saw the finale for Torchwood season 2 and i must admit that it was more twisty than the average helterskelter! Captain John was fabulous and i'm hoping he's going to be a fairly regular character (as were the 1900s Torchwood ladies...!) and Gwen really came into her own. i'll admit that i cried at the end, but i'm a soppy get and it was a very sad moment; i won't say exactly what happened in case there are folks reading who haven't seen it yet, but the entire episode was an emotional roller coaster that somehow managed to go out on a high from the biggest low point. i do hope a new season has been commissioned because it really needs to be continued.

And as Captain Jack and company head off into the sunset, a certain police box comes barreling out of an ethereal tunnel nearby because the Doctor is back. i can't remember if i've previously mentioned my doubts about Donna coming in as a full-time character but generally speaking she's more like the Donna at the end of "Runaway Bride" and, apart from a few moments that were vaguely reminiscent of the late Lauren (the scene where the two finally clap eyes on each other being the one that springs to mind) she didn't get on my nerves as such and the quiet moments with her grandfather with the telescope,the truncated version of which appeared in the trailers, were very well done on Catherine Tate's part and far better without the bit about the Doctor that was added. The Adipose were incredibly cute little creatures and i was quite pleased with how their part of the story ended... i suspect a few people would've found them a little too cute with the little waves and so forth but i liked that and it was in keeping with what they were meant to be...

And i simply have to mention the fantastic Bernard Cribbins in there as Donna's grandfather simply because it's about bloody time he had a proper turn at being in Doctor Who rather than one of the Hammer movies - although you'd think he would know the significance of the little blue box! And his little dance... well, it might be considered over the top but he's Donna's relation so it must run in the family! And speaking of guest appearances, there was another that i won't mention specifically but it was at the end and i really didn't expect it that early in the season - who knows, perhaps that particular "ghost" will be turning up throughout? It'd be a killer way to do the "no doctor" story for this season...

And a little "television moment" that's just happened as i was writing this blog, one of the Thunderball machines on the National Lottery Live jammed up and stopped working on air - not an Earth-shattering moment but still a point of note.