Poor Computer System Design
I just tried to make a payment through my on-line bank account. As the payee has moved their account since last time, I needed to change the sort code and account umber. But you have to delete the old entry and re-enter a new one, as there is no other way.
I finally did the transfer, but even then, there were quite a few textual bugs in the screens I saw.
This is very poor system design and is another entry in that fat book called How Not To Design A Banking System.
The Peer-To-Peer Invisible Firewall
I still have some money on deposit with my bank, as I need it to pay builders and things like that, but I don’t think I will have it there for much longer.
This morning, I got a load of messages trying to target my non-existent NatWest account. As I have never had a message targeting any of my peer-to-peer lending accounts, it would seem logical that any fraudster will more likely get my bank account details than say those of the peer-to-peer lenders.
But suppose they did break into my peer-to-peer accounts, they could only transfer money back to my main bank account, which was used to load the money to the accounts. So I doubt it would do them any good.
So to get any of my money out of the peer-to-peer sites, they’d probably need to take complete control of the site and replace the software with their own.
With my software hat on, I would propose that that is virtually impossible.
So in my view in addition to the obvious security on peer-to-peer sites, there is an additional invisible firewall, due to the design of the sites.
This would make them a very unlikely target for a sophisticated criminal. They would find it easier to set up a completely bogus site and get punters to deposit money with them, for onward transmission out of the country. Hopefully, that would be spotted, given the high-profile nature of sites like Zopa, Funding Circle and Ratesetter, who have been through the mill on credibility with the media, regulators and politicians.
They can’t all be wrong!
Disappointing BT Sport
As a BT broadband customer, who used to get Sky Sports through them, I am disappointed with their new BT Sports. The only decent football matches are on Saturday lunchtime, when I’m travelling to see Ipswich, either home or away. The solution is probably fibre-optic broadband, but I can’t get this where I live, within walking distance of the City of London.
Abbey National Lives
On Wednesday, I got some money out of a cash point machine in Bethnal Green. It was a branch of Santander and it was close to a bus stop, so was convenient, as I was waiting for the bus.
This morning, four days later it appeared on my on-line bank statement fully annotated.
Cash machine wdl Abbey
According to Wikipedia, Abbey was rebranded as Santander in 2010. But obviously, they haven’t updated the computer systems.
It seems to me, that millions of crap programmers are alive and well and working for banks.
It’s Just Not Good Enough!
On Sunday morning, I heard a guy called the Casual Hopper on BBC Radio 5. As he was raising money for a reputable cancer-related charity, I thought I might send him a donation.
So I logged in to his Just Giving page and donated, using my John Lewis Partnership card. I got an acknowledgement from Just Giving, as expected. However, a few minutes later, I got a message from them saying that the payment had been rejected. Now as I’d just paid my credit card bill, I knew that I was some thousands of pounds below my credit card limit.
I then attempted to login to my Partnership card account and found the problem. Their system was down and I couldn’t log in.
I have managed to login this morning, but there is no trace of the payment to the Casual Hopper. In fact, there is no trace of any payments made by the account and I used the card twice yesterday in Sainsburys and Waitrose.
If we can use our cards on a 24-hour basis, surely we ought to be able to see the information in a likewise manner.
After all, if I missed a payment, they’d be on me like a ton of bricks.
It’s just not good enough!
Especially, as it’s caused grief and extra work to a whole series of people like the Casual Hopper, Just Giving and of course myself.
Why You Should Have A Personal E-Mail Address
I use a personal .com e-mail address based on my name and have done for many years. I always recommend that people have an e-mail address based on something like a .com, .co.uk or something related to where you live.
it was brought home to me this morning, about what a pain not doing this can be.
A friend has just changed their Internet supplier from BT to Sky. They used to use a BT e-mail address and now they’ve had to change to a Sky one! Consequently all of their friends have had to be informed and will have to update the entries in their address books. I don’t use a smart phone for e-mails, so with me all I have to update is Microsoft Outlook.
Incidentally, I’ve just looked up my friend’s probably preferred e-mail address and it is available at six pounds for two years.
That sounds like a small price to pay for something that will last forever and won’t ask your friends to change again.
The Enormous Amount Of Energy Used By Computer Servers
In all the hot air talked about fracking, wind power and nuclear power, very rarely does the argument stray into energy usage. The only thing people seem to worry about is the cost of their household energy bills and filling up their car.
But accpording to this academic report from Stanford University in 2010, over ten percent of all US electricity was used to power computer and IT equipment. Here’s the relevant part.
In 2010, over 10% of electricity in the U.S. was due to computer and IT equipment usage. At the current rate we’re going, analysts and experts figure that 10% of the world’s power bill will be spent on running computers. To give a more concrete example of how much energy this is, Dixon shows that one 50,000 square feet data center uses about 5 megawatts, but continuously. This energy output would satisfy the needs of 5000 homes. In another staggering example, assorted US data centers use a collective 7000 megawatt data centers from seven different plants; this is more power than is used by the State of Mississippi. Even more surprising is that this astronomical power consumption is just by the plants themselves – cooling systems use as much energy as the plants.
Also in this article in the FT. it says that in 2010, Goggle used about 258 Megawatts continuously.
Since this refers to 2010, I wonder how much of the UK’s energy usage goes in that area now.
According to this article, in 2012 average demand for electricity was 35.8 Gigawatt. Just imagine having to pay that bill!
So let’s assume that only five percent of that energy is used for computer servers, so that is 1790 megawatt. Bear in mind that the UK’s largest power station, Drax, has a capability of generating 3960 megawatts or seven percent of the UK’s electricity. So nearly half of its output and the enormous amount of CO2, Drax emits could be used to power computer equipment.
I need better figures here, but it would seem that a substantial part of UK electricity is used in computing.
But help is at hand in this area. To make computers use less power, you can do many things; like write better software and install more efficient cooling systems.
The biggest fight though is in the area of making chips that consume less electricity and there’s a war going on there, between the dominant Intel and the upstart from Cambridge called ARM. Whether Intel can hold off ARM is a subject for debate, but in a year or so, the average server will consume a lot less power than it does now. Unfortunately, the search, social networking, data storing and other IT companies will be a lot bigger, so all we will be doing with better technology is eating into the growth in energy usage.
I think though, this will mean that many large server farms will relocate to countries, where energy costs are lowest.
Beware Of Angry Tweets
According to this article in the Daily Mail, an analysis of Twitter messages from rail passengers has shown that South West Trains are the least popular train company.
I took the company yesterday to Portsmouth Harbour in order to go to the Isle of Wight and I have no complaint about them, except that for First Clash passengers, they are the meanest. On a similar length journey to Ipswich, I may not get many perks, but at least I can get a free bottle of water or a coffee.
I know it’s not much, but it’s the thought that counts.
I wouldn’t choose the company, if there was an alternative, except that Waterloo is a better station for me than say Victoria.
Perhaps though companies should take more notice of what is said on sites like Twitter!
An Unseen Advantage Of Peer-To-Peer Lenders
There are three main peer-to-peer lenders in the UK; Funding Circle, Ratesetter and Zopa and I have extensive filters and Google alerts that look for any fraudulent activity concerning these companies.
Have I just not found them, but I haven’t seen or heard of anybody trying to get access to any of their web-sites for illegal purposes. I’ve not even heard of anybody trying to hack Wonga either.
On the other hand I’ve had over thirty phishing attempts in the last few weeks to try to get into my non-existent Barclays account.
So are you at an advantage if you keep your savings with a peer-to-peer lender?
Certainly at present you are! But phishing attempts will come, even though I think they would be a very difficult scam to setup and target successfully.
Why Would You Bank At Barclays?
Over my life, I’ve banked at Barclays at some times and I’ve never really had any complaints, although at times, I’ve had a bit of aggravation.
But looking at the spam, I’m getting, I wouldn’t be banking there now, as they seem to be the target of most of the phishing attempts, I’m getting in my Inbox. In fact, I had six this morning and I think I’ve had about twenty in the last week.
One of the reasons I bank at Nationwide, is that they only send me two e-mails a month, to tell me my statements are ready. I even send those to an e-mail address, that I don’t use for anything else.
I do wonder if phishing Barclays accounts is more successful for criminals, as why would they target Barclays customers, rather than those say of First Direct, about whom I can’t ever remember receiving a phishing message.
I think I’ll keep all the bank phishing messages I get over the next week or so.
