Have Carluccio’s Cracked Wi-Fi?
In Manchester yesterday, I had a breakfast-cum-lunch in Carluccio’s in Manchester Piccadilly station.
It was the first of their caffes, where I found that wi-fi had been installed. As it was a station that supposedly had Network Rail’s wi-fi, I gave it a go and found that I could collect to Carluccio’s network.
And very good it was too! It was also pretty hassle-free, in that there was no login or registration process. Which is as it should be!
I hope that they don’t find their hot-spot gets used as a free download for masses of data, but there is nothing worse than going into a pub or restaurant and finding that getting a Wi-fi connection is a complete hassle.
But then, all I ever want to do is check e-mails, read a few web pages or use the machine locally. I don’t listen to music, play games or watch videos or live action on a small device.
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.
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.
Perhaps the Funniest Address On A Spam E-Mail
I just had to laugh, when I saw this address on a typical lottery scam e-mail.
From The E-mail Lottery Winner Office Address: 23-31 Huddersfield Row, West Yorkshire United Arab Emirate HD2 5TXR
Tel: +971527819868
Contact Agent: Mr. Frank Anderson
Obviously, West Yorkshire is not in the United Arab Emirate or the United Arab Emirates even.
But the phone code, 971, is in the UAE.
The address and post code obviously aren’t valid.
I’ve checked the headers of the e-mail and it might have come from the UAE.
It did create an early morning titter, though!
Free Wi-Fi In Marks And Spencer
I had a cup of tea in the new Marks and Spencer in New Change in the City today and they have free wi-fi.
Although, you do need to sign up to something called The Cloud. I just did on my home machine and it doesn’t seem to onerous.
Do I Need A Smart Phone?
I’ve recently bought a Samsung Tab 2 7. This is the seven inch screen or the small one.
I can keep it in my pocket and use it to send e-mails and surf the Internet. I checked my Zopa and bank details on Saturday and even entered a small post to this blog.
I’ve only a wi-fi version, which proved excellent on the train on Saturday. But then we are seeing more and more free wi-fi hotspots in pubs and cafes everywhere.
So quite frankly, I’ll stick to my Nokia 6310i for phone calls and text messages.
Who needs a smart phone?
The Dyslexic Spammer
I’ve just had two copies of this simple spam message.
Do you need a laon
As it was headed Dear Sir/Madam and both copies were sent to the same male e-mail address, he or she is pretty stupid as well.
