I've always been quite wary of the Telephone Preference Service (and its sibling the Mail Preference Service). It makes me nervous that the do-not-spam list is held by an organisation that promotes direct marketing.
After getting more marketing calls, and this weekend a spam text message from Firezza (a local pizza firm, no link-love from here), I finally signed up for the TPS for my mobile number and our home number.
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Tagged: Technology, Security, Business, Rants
Posted at 06:45 EDT, 19th May 2008.
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.
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Tagged: Web, Technology, Rants, Fuckwittage, Security
Posted at 05:29 EST, 21st February 2008.
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!
Pictures of the stupidity
Tagged: Rants, Fuckwittage, Security, Technology, Web
Posted at 14:23 EST, 5th February 2008.
I'm unsurprised at recent developments at Oxford as over-zealous proctors fine students for misbehaviour using evidence from Facebook.
I think there's some real trouble with people understanding quite what they're publishing, and to whom.
Worse than that, I think people have a false sense of security when they tag their updates as 'friends only' on sites like Twitter, Facebook and so forth.
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Tagged: Web, Technology, Security, Rants
Posted at 04:12 EDT, 20th July 2007.
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
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