At: ashok.org.uk/tags/rants/security/fuckwittage

Tags

Rants, Fuckwittage, Security

4 posts tagged with:

X Rants
Strongly felt, often strongly worded.
X Fuckwittage
Examples of fuckwitted behaviour.
X Security

Fuck the Police

(As you'll have spotted, there's strong language here. If that offends you, I suggest you move along. I try not to swear with wild abandon, but instead I try and save it for abso-fucking-lutely deserving cases.)

A nasty thing happened to me seven months ago today, and for most of that time I've been avoiding talking about it, let alone writing about it. To the few friends I have bothered with this, you have my deepest thanks: for your thoughtful suggestions but mainly for patiently listening to me with a sympathetic ear, even when I was far from my normal self.

Just before Christmas last year, late at night in Soho, a number of things happened that were deeply shit. The nastiest bit wasn't any of these:

  • being jumped in the street by three miscreants, while trying to make my way home with Mary
  • that the attack was, to me, pretty clearly motivated by three young white thugs seeing a mixed-colour couple, and feeling some caveman-like desire to 'protect' the white woman, who was not in any threat, except inside their tiny little cave-brains.
  • having my bag nicked, containing nearly every bit of portable electronics that I owned

The really nasty thing that happened was that at a moment where I felt victimised and in need of support and aid, that the Metropolitan Police turned up. That's when the evening went from being unpleasant to a proper fucking cock-up. Somehow they saw three white blokes laughing, and one distressed pale brown bloke, and assumed the singular guy in torn clothing, crying was the culprit.

Tagged: Rants, Fuckwittage, Security, Social, Police

Posted at 05:21 EDT, 18th July 2009.

11 comments.

Harvard Business Review Fuckwittage

It's a little thing, but if we are to have a hope of educating users to protect themselves online that reputable sites don't behave just like the fraudsters.

Here's a quick spot of fuckwittery from Harvard Business Review.

Tagged: Rants, Fuckwittage, Security, Technology, Web

Posted at 05:29 EST, 21st February 2008.

No comments.

Halifax Stupidity

Argh.

The front page of Halifax's online banking has an extravagantly stupid 'feature'.

Somehow, they have managed to publish their warnings about phishing attacks so that they look like, well, a bit of a phishing attack!

Tagged: Rants, Fuckwittage, Security, Technology, Web

Posted at 14:23 EST, 5th February 2008.

No comments.

'Verified' by Visa

While using my Halifax Visa card online recently, I bumped into the Verified by Visa programme.

It's a nice idea, in theory, but the implementation I saw was woeful. It was depressingly similar to a phishing attack, warmly assuring me about security by chatting about it in the Web page, while hiding the parts of my browser that can tell me that more sensibly.

Like most geeks, I try and educate my less geeky family and friends about how to behave safely with technology. Things like this make that job harder.

Update at 17:51 EDT, 21st April 2007 – Follow-up: Guardian coverage

Tagged: Rants, Business, Fuckwittage, Security, Technology, Web

Posted at 11:22 EDT, 31st March 2007.

4 comments.