On Line Loan Applications
Someone just tried to put a link to an on-line payday loan company in this post on my blog. As you can see the post is about wind power, so why would someone interested in wind power and Ireland, click away from the page to some dubious on-line loan provider?
I deleted the comment, as I always do with those that aren’t constructive to the blog.
But it got me thinking!
So I typed.
online loan application
Into Google to see what turned up.
The first page had about twenty links, of which only half were for legitimate sources in my view. The rest were in my view the on-line providers, that I find dubious.
I’ve also looked at my spam and note, there are quite a few payday loan companies trying to advertise using my site, but they have been stopped by the spam filter in WordPress.
A Million Items Short Of A Full Search
A new search engine called Million Short has arrived on the Internet.
You search, just as you would with Google or your preferred search engine, but it cuts out a required number of results, like a million or a thousand, from the most used web sites.
Click here to try the search.
It might tell you something useful, but on the other hand it’s fun!
Fraudsters Are Targeting Wonga Customers
I have never used Wonga and I never will, but I received this e-mail supposedly from them this morning.
Customer Satisfaction Survey 2013
At Wonga.com, we sincerely value your opinions.
As part of our continuous improvement process, we’re conducting a survey to benchmark the opinions of our customers.We will use the resulting information to better serve the needs of our customers.
We kindly ask you to take part in our quick and easy 3 questions customer survey. In return, we won’t charge you ANY INTEREST on your next loan application!
Here is how you proceed:
• Download your personal survey attached to this email.
• Select the desired answers on your survey.
• Log in to your Wonga.com account to validate your survey.
We thank you in advance for your time and effort in making Wonga the best payday lender in the United Kingdom.Sincerely,
Wonga.com Customer Service
Message ID:
I wasn’t sure if it was phishing spam or something from the company, which has used one of my e-mail addresses.
So I did what you should always do with this type of message and used Google to search for “Wonga 2013 2013 customer satisfaction survey”
I found this page. So it’s a phish and of course fraudulent!
In some ways it’s rather ironic, that a rather dodgy company in my view, is being used as a hook by criminals to get mugs for their frauds.
What No Zopa!
Or any other peer-to-peer lending site for that matter, are mentioned in the best fifty web sites to save money in The Times.
After all, both lenders and borrowers get a better deal here.
Or perhaps, I’m reading the figures upside down.
Ticketmaster Gives Captcha The Boot
I don’t like the Captcha technology on web sites, that define, whether I’m human or not. it’s all because I have a gammy left hand and can’t always be relied on to get it right.
So I was pleased to see that Ticketmaster has ditched the dreaded system for something better. It’s all here on the BBC.
Let’s now make all passwords and questions case insensitive, so that I can get them right first time.
A Cautionary Tale
I don’t mess about with hardware and although, I could probably do quite complicated work on PCs at one time, I couldn’t now, as my knowledge is way out of date.
But this tale from the BBCs web site, shows how you might fall into all sorts of security holes if you do.
Their technology correspondent changed the motherboard on his home PC and consequently, the various security systems thought he was committing credit card fraud, as the computer address had changed.
Now he, thought he knew what he was doing. He did hardware-wise, but he got caught out, by intelligent checking software on the Internet.
when I feel, one of machines is getting to the end of it’s life, I buy another machine and gradually swap everything over, still doing most of the work on the old machine.
So whhen it dies, I just move the last update over and put the old machine in the bin.
A Mini Tablet Computer With A Built-In Printer
My little tablet computer, which is a Samsung Tab 2 with a seven inch screen. I use it to answer e-mails, keep a list of tasks and details of my drugs and INR results.
It does the job well, but it doesn’t handle all scenarios.
Say I was an architect working on a new house. I could make notes as I walked round the site and type them up later to give to the builder, who may not be very computer literate. But that is more hassle than I need.
Imagine though being able to write on a pad of paper, perhaps a few centimetres across, with a standard ball point pen and then give the paper copy to the builder. This is how many people work, using Post-it notes for the purpose.
Suppose though, that the pad fitted over the screen of the tablet computer and that could capture what was written as an image, so that when I got back to the office, I could download the various images to my computer for safe keeping.
In the late 1980s, I saw a demonstration of a system, where signatures were captured, that had been written by a standard ball point pen, through a thick pad of paper.
So the technology has existed for some time.
This idea has potential and all of the technology exists somewhere.
As with the double-sided credit card holder, I want one. And I want one now!
Pointless Spam
I just had a spam e-mail with the title – Never Pay For Auto Repair
I’m very tempted to reply to say that I don’t pay already, as I don’t have a car.
Taking The Prison Bus
I have joked that the 274 bus, is the prison bus for Pentonville a few times, as it always seems to drop of and pick up unfortunate wives, partners and girl-friends in the vicinity of the prison.
I took the bus back to The Angel, so I could get some shopping before coming home.
What surprised me was outside the prison, I was getting a rather strong Wi-fi signal. Was it escaping?
The Internet For Timely Information
I generally look each morning, at the list of the ten most read pages on the BBC’s web site.
This morning, only one of the ten is not about the weather and seven are concerning school closures. In order they are Notts, Essex, England, Leicester, Kent and Shropshire.
In pre-Internet days, parents would have listened to local radio.
The Anonymous Widower 