Not Taking Notice Of My Unsubscribes
One national charity, which I think does a lot of good work, but which I’ve never supported keeps sending me e-mails, so I might buy something from them on-line.
I unsubscribe each time, but still they keep coming. I think I’ve had thirteen since the start of November.
I do wonder, if a lot of people now wouldn’t support this charity, as they’ve had a similar treatment. Which I wouldn’t!
If I get a tin rattler in front of me, they’ll get the reasons.
Are BT Winding Me Up?
BT have said, I can’t have fibre-optic broadband, as I’m too close to the exchange. But this poster has appeared opposite my house, on a BT box.
That is just not on. So should I complain to OFCOM?
A Quick Analysis Of Bank Phishing E-Mails
I have been collecting bank phishing e-mails since July.
I’ve received a hundred and six of them, with most banks being mentioned a couple of times. The scores were as follows.
Halifax – 2
Nationwide – 2
HSBC – 9
Santander – 2
Lloyds – 2
But this is dwarfed by twenty six aimed at customers of RBS and Natwest. Let’s face it, if you’re a phishing expert, you might target a bank with well-publices problems, as an e-mail about security issues might be expected. Incidentally, I’ve never had an e-mail of any sort from Nationwide, except for a monthly one, to say that my statement is ready. But that has no links in it.
So that is another reason to leave the bank, as because you are obviously not that savvy in staying with them, you might be the sort of person, who falls victim to the scam.
But I wouldn’t think of moving to Barclays, as they score a massive 53 in the period.
It would seem to me, that the time you are most vulnerable to scams is just after you’ve changed banks, so as there are still Barclays phishing e-mails flying around, I’d avoid them.
Passwords
The BBC has an article on their web site today about passwords for Internet sites.
I go in to lots of sites and there are some I never use as their security doesn’t suit me.
If a site insists, I use a shift to enter a password, then that company doesn’t get my business. I think that Verified by Visa insists on this, so I never use my Visa card on-line. So if I see an on-line transaction, when I check my Visa account, I know it’s fraud.
Incidentally, I think it’s a good idea to only use one card for on-line transactions and keep that secure in a close place by your computer.
My passwords are generally based on phone numbers, that I remember from my childhood, which were like the classic Whitehall 1212, which was Scotland Yard. You can check your password here. They say, that it would take a PC a thousand years to crack one of my passwords. But even my immediate family wouldn’t probably have known the number.
And all it was was an old London phone number.
Even the last phone number I had in Suffolk, which was Thurlow 789, would take a computer 10 days. The previous phone number at Debach, which was on a small exchange called Charsfield and was just three digits, would take a thousand years. Unless of course you had my details from the 1970s.
Incidentally, if I translate my current phone number, back to the exchange name that would take 27 years. If you want to translate your London number, there’s a list here.
So it would appear you can be both lazy and secure!
nPower’s Job Losses
There is a story today about job losses at nPower.
I have just left the company after good service for three years.
I read about Ovo and moved there mainly because they would save me over a hundred pounds a year, as I wouldn’t have to pay the Green Levy.
Since their customer service has been very good, something I couldn’t complain about for nPower.
The biggest difference though, is that the literature and web site of Ovo is a lot better than nPower. As I said in this post, I have a single A4 sheet of paper, which summarises everything. It’s only a small point, but it just shows how large companies don’t think.
Perhaps this is why nPower is getting rid of so many expensive customer support staff.
After all in a few years time, virtually all of us will be managing our energy suppliers through the Internet. So support is all about design of the web site.
It would be interesting to see a league table of the ratings of web sites of energy companies!
London’s Name Advantage
It has just been announced that London has now acquired the .london domain name extension.
If you go through the major cities of the world, it generally would seem to work for many like Paris, Berlin, Rome and New York, but it doesn’t work for cities with longer names like Edinburgh, San Francisco and Copenhagen.
So do the short-named cities like London have an advantage? try typing in the domain name for the mayor of Vladivostok!
A Hassle And Courier-Free On-Line Purchase
I’ve had various issues with couriers in the past, like this episode.
So on Saturday night, when at 23:00 or so, I decided I needed some new trousers, I ordered them on line from Marks and Spencer and said that I’d like to pick them up sometime today, in their shop at the Angel. I chose the Angel store, as usually I pass through the area, at least once a day, often when I go to the Waitrose a few doors away or Chapel Market.
The original e-mail from Marks, said that the trousers would be in store after midday, but this morning I got an e-mail saying that they had been delivered to the store at 09:30.
I picked them up just after lunch.
Forty years ago, this small store, had been our local Marks and Spencer when we lived in the Barbican and most Saturdays we’d push the children up the hill to the Angel to do our weekend shopping.
Times have certainly changed. Picking those trousers up from Marks and Spencer was certainly less handle and there was nothing couriers could do to to throw spanners in the works.
We Need More Openness Everywhere
This story from the BBC is a big dose of common sense from MPs. Here’s the jist.
Councils in England should publish annual parking-charge accounts if they want to prove they are not being used as a “cash cow”, MPs have said.
I think we need much better access to all government data.
Here’s a few ideas.
If you run a company, as I’ve done several times, you have to publish a set of simple accounts, including things like cash flows and a profit and loss statement.
Why shouldn’t the government publish such a brief set of accounts, which the man on the Dalston Omnibus could understand?
But of course they don’t!
Some years ago, I tried to find the data to do create some simple accounts for UK plc. The data is there, but it is in several different places and despite help from a BBC financial journalist, I thought I had better things to do, than dig holes in treacle.
I would also like to see an anonymised database of those who are in prison. A man like me would be described as male, 60-70 in reasonable health, who was a non-smoker living in North London.
It would allow those, who make wild statements about prisons to be challenged and hopefully, it would lead to better justice and penal policies.
I must admit, that it has got a lot better in recent years with the growth of the Internet, but too often, data that would help us to have better lives is hidden from view.
The NHS is one of the worst for hiding data. There has been a lot of discussion about A & E units in recent years. Surely, a database should be available on the Internet, of all visits to this department. Again, it would be anonymised.
It would then be easy to find out for instance, how many drunks turned up at various hospitals demanding treatment.
The trouble is, that a national database in this area of the NHS, would show how A & E departments should change to get fit for the twenty-first century. Some would be obvious candidates for closure, whereas others would need to be expanded with special units.
As Charles Babbage said
Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all.
Give everybody the data, so that we can all finish the job!
You don’t make a good omelette without breaking a few eggs.
y
A New On-Line Film Site
I caught this article at the bottom of a page in the Standard yesterday. The title describes it in one.
New player to stream 1,000 British films spanning a century.
It’s all here on the BFI.
i’ve signed up and it supposedly starts on next Wednesday.
I’m Trying To Say Farewell To Currys
I have bought the odd thing from Currys in the past, and somehow, they seem to have got hold of my e-mail address. As I’m trying to de-clutter my life, I unsubscribe from every list that sends me an e-mail, as most are about as useful to me as a chocolate teapot.
Currys sends me on average an e-mail a month for goods I don’t want, but there is no unsubscribe address on their spam. I’ve tried contacting customer support, but then they believe in the old adage that if you ignore someone long enough, the problem customer will go away.
With electrical goods, I find what I want and then search for the cheapest price, from a company I want to do business with.
Currys are definitely not on that list.
The Anonymous Widower 