Have Comcast? Have a data cap? (yes). Are they billing accurately? Do they care?

Are they billing accurately?  Maybe?  Do they care?  Definitely not!

http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/12/comcast-admits-data-cap-meter-blunder-charges-wrong-customer-for-overage/

"I called Comcast... and was patronizingly informed that 'it must be somebody stealing your Wi-Fi,'

When he got Ars Technica involved:

Oleg provided us his full name and address so we could check into his situation with Comcast. The company investigated the problem after being contacted by Ars and confirmed that its meter readings were inaccurate. “We have reached out and resolved this,” a Comcast spokesperson told Ars. “There was a technical error associated with his account, which we have since corrected.”

 ...

“It turns out their system had my modem MAC address entered incorrectly, there was an off-by-one typo that was hard to see so they were counting data from some modem who knows where,” Oleg told Ars.

Comcast.  Die.  Die. Die.

#Comcast #ComcastDieDieDie

The Down side of cloud updates, and how to infuriate your customers

Well, this is a new one, how about a Fortune 100 company, Philips, making a IoT product, Hue, with a tenuous grasp on a small market share makes an open product that seems that in spite of a few warts is pretty good, and getting better, decides to change their strategy?

What if it's to delete the "open" part and only talk to own products, Breaking its functionality for users of existing third party products?

From Techdirt: Lightbulb DRM: Philips Locks Purchasers Out Of Third-Party Bulbs With Firmware Update

Well, the customers were furious, with light bulbs that they can't turn on, and hopefully, they'll (safely) light their Hue hub on FIRE, send it back to Philips, buy a third party hub and never buy another Philips product again.

I certainly won't.

Note to "bright bulbs" at Philips.  (get it? snort).  You know the razor blade and handle story.  Well this is what you did.  You sold a handle and a bunch of blades, and someone else made blades that fit the handle, and you changed the handle so the other peoples blades didn't work, even the ones already bought, and the customer still uses.  For some reason, the customer can't have multiple handles, but they can buy a handle from the "other guys", throw yours away, and never buy another blade from you again.

Update:  Philips backs down, also from Techdirt, that was quick - https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151216/07562133099/after-spending-day-as-internets-punching-bag-philips-walks-back-firmware-update-that-locked-out-third-party-products.shtml

Oh would Experian PLEASE JUST DIE DIE DIE

You're a credit reporting service for heavens sake!

Experian suffers biggest one-day fall after T-Mobile US hack

you had one job  :-(


Oh they will do your credit monitoring too -

https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2015/10/02/t-mobile-customers-hit-by-experian-breach-get-credit-monitoring-by-experian/

Update!  T-Mobile gets a clue (thanks to customers freaking out - so make clue-by-four) 

The Register reports that

T-Mobile US hires someone other than bungling Experian to offer ID theft monitoring to hack victims

Hopefully this doesn't mean that TransUnion gives up our data

WINRAR vulnerability puts customers at risk

They say Data isn't an asset - it's a liability, same with connectivity?

According to ZDNet's  Charlie Osborn - "A severe security flaw apparently discovered in the WinRAR suite could allow hackers to compromise user systems."

Hmm.  Without reading the article, I thought "If it's WinRAR, and it has no connectivity, a vulnerability won't be too bad, even if got PWNED by bad compression parsing"

Wonder what really happened?

P

Ad Blocking in a nutshell

I block ads and you should too, and I will until the following changes:

1. Third party Ad networks contain malware
1. That, combined with bugs in browsers, means your system is wide open to fake ads that can take over your system
2. There's nothing the web site I'm visiting can do about it if the ads are served by a network
3. There's no excuse to get cryptolocker from the Huffington Post
2. Ad content takes up too much bandwidth
1. All my connections have data limits.  I do everything I can to control that data, and ad blockers it only one thing in my list 
3. The size of the ad content takes too long to load
1. Ad blockers noticeably speed up the web browsing experience 
2. It's not right that I think my connection is down because I'm waiting for a flash video
4. The latency of ads slows down the whole site
1. As above, but this happens for different reasons 

See all this?  They are Objective reasons that the advertising model is harmful to consumers.  I said nothing about the aesthetics, where the images don't match the content, or whether the colors in the ad clash with the site, or whether I'm interested in Ashley Madison, or clothes for "big and tall" men,  or colostomy bags, for that matter.

I don't care about the ads themselves, you gotta pay for the web, it's the networks that are ruining the experience, and people will block until the networks get their act together.

Yeah, about Windows 10 Privacy, 7 is likely my last windows OS :-(

I haven't talked about it yet, but Microsoft considers Windows 10 a "service", meaning theirs, not yours, and they can monitor anything they want.

As a result, people are panicking and accusing them of all kinds of things like reading your emails which they apparently don't do, according to their blog or TechNet - either in consumer or  enterprise versions.

According to techdirt though, and Ars Technica they don't address other things, like Cortana (Microsoft Siri), remain on and collecting data, and aren't disabled when a user or admin disables telemetry.

As a result, I, and other people a lot more Microsoft-centric than me are moving toward Linux.

:-(

Thanks techdirt!

ATM Advice to keep your card safe - check Bluetooth for "Free2Move" before using the machine

First (Honest!) Make sure your card is linked to a small bank account, not your investment account - now!

And debit cards are more dangerous than credit cards if they get cloned

Now, pull out your phone if you're using an ATM away from home, especially if it's in a tourist area and not physically attached to a bank - check if there's a bluetooth signal called "Free2Move" - if so DON'T USE THE ATM, it's likely been compromised.

If you want to find out more, read Krebs article here:

Tracking a Bluetooth Skimmer Gang in Mexico

or here

Tracking Bluetooth Skimmers in Mexico, Part II