Posts by David Barr

I can agree with some of it

But not with all of it.

I don't see any reason why police should need authorisation to use CCTV or automatic number plate recognition. The rest I'm not sure on.

Rather than require permission in advance, have random audits to make sure bobbies aren't spying on their ex-wife to find out who she's shagging.

As for Cameron just echoing what Labour say, but saying "more" I have to agree there. It seems as if he was put in place to be more Tony Blair than Tony Blair. I'd much prefer someone else. But don't forget this is not America, we're not voting in President Cameron, we're voting in the Conservative Party.

Jonathan hit the nail on the head

Why on earth didn't Tiffany contact eBay and say "Hi. Erm. Let's both make more money!"

Of course as Thomas Baker says if Tiffany had tried to email them and been hit by the auto generated replies (not only that but they delay them to try and ease you into apathy) then I hope the judge takes that into account.

eBay should be seen to have taken all reasonable steps, if they haven't then they need their knuckles rapped.

We're hardly the people in question

I think it's only fair to point out that anybody reading this is extremely unlikely to be the victim of fishing (who the fuck called it phishing, is it those asshats that call stuff e-Account. i-Crap and cyberwossit).

As someone pointed out above it's when the URL "looks like" a banks URL to the casual unsavvy observer.

Sadly we're going to all to get those little card reading gizmos that essentially mean for a short time the fraudsters will be unable to operate... until they develop their software to login to a bank account and then pass the request for the code back to the user. At that point I can't see the gizmos being much use.

So if browsers get advanced and have a bar that says "THIS IS YOUR BANK" then it'll be trojans that will be relied on... hosts file = THIS IS YOUR BANK.

The only way I can think of that would be mainly effective is requiring people to make a telephone call, type in a PIN code and then when a number is read out use that to log in. Sadly though fraudsters will then just try to propogate false numbers. But I suspect BT would be quicker to act on those numbers than the "Internet Police" - which don't really exist (and please Labour don't try to make them).

There's very low incidence of fraudsters sending fake letters to people at the moment, I guess because it's easier to just get dumb people to type in their details. But when doing it by the internet doesn't work, you can bet that the fraudsters will start sending out headed letters saying to call this number to verify themselves or whatever.

Ultimately though there's no way to absolutely prevent it - other than educating every single person that uses the internet on how to spot a fake URL, and how to ensure their system isn't compromised. And even then there's the frequent security holes and the potential to alter hosts files.

Do I need help?

It seems I'm failing to be a good internetter.

I don't see any real gain from upgrading to Vista, so I'm not going to pay for it. I'd rather see a less bloaty, faster OS than a more encompassing one with better features.

But try as hard as I can, I can't find bile and hate within me about it. I want to be like everybody else and hate Microsoft with all of my being, but I'm just ambivalent.

Fair Go?

Australians are renowned for there "Fair Go" ethics, which this eBay decision seems to fly in the face of. Let's hope eBay get a big booting for it, and the EU takes note and shreds them.

They really can make things secure, but they choose to only consider things that will make them more money.

Only Workable Solution

Appears to be to start blacklisting service providers until they clean their acts up.

When users start getting "Your mail was rejected because your service provider does not maintain their system against UCE properly" then they'll start voting with their feet.