Welcome to PhormCheck

This site is intended to provide a service to webmasters, allowing them to more easily detect whether Phorm or other DPI spyware is likely to be active for clients accessing their site, and to act on that information.

It's currently under construction, but you can access a beta version of some of the planned features.

Please use the navigation bar at the top of the page to explore the various ways to use this site.

Site News

9 Feb 2009

The Joomla! plugin has had a couple of minor usability tweaks. It now won't redirect accesses to the administration pages, so that you can't accidentally lock yourself out of your site. It also now uses a setting of 'none' to indicate no redirection, rather than blank - this avoids a problem interaction with Joomla!'s defaulting system. You can download it here or read more about it on the Framework Plugins page.

29 Nov 2008

With the help of Grumpy Bob, the Joomla! plugin has now been updated to be usable with Joomla! 1.5. You can download it here or read more about it on the Framework Plugins page.

27 Nov 2008

The anti-Phorm plugin for Joomla! has now been released on the Framework Plugins page. It's never been easier to keep the evilness of Phorm at bay from your Joomla!-powered website!

20 Nov 2008

The Website Tools page has been updated with an improved version of the PhormCheck client library, which now includes tools to query the PhormCheck database, as well as automatically generating warning banners for suspicious IP addresses, and an easy-to-use cookie-tampering detection system that doesn't require any javascript or other client-side techniques.

What is DPI spyware?

What's all the fuss about? Simply put, DPI ('Deep Packet Inspection') spyware is a new technology being trialled by several large ISPs that aims to monitor everything that you do online, and use it to build up a profile of you. Products such as BT's WebWise (also known as Phorm) then aim to sell that profile to online advertisers, to display a 'better class of advert' on the webpages that you visit.

This is alarming because there is no way to avoid it - even if you opt-out of this digital wire-tapping, all of your web activity is still being monitored and profiled, you just won't get the ads. It's as if your postman was being paid to open all of your mail and make a copy of it, before posting it through your letter box - just so that you could get better junk mail.

If you're a webmaster, your site content is being ripped off by the DPI spyware companies, without your consent, so that other sites can target your visitors more effectively. Does that sound alarming? It should.

Read more at the many excellent sites listed in the Useful Links page.