Posts by Gerry 3

Who you gonna call? Premium numbers, but a not-so-premium service

Re: Wrong number

That's why London 3xxx xxx numbers were allocated when the legacy 7xxx xxxx and 8xxx xxxx numbers ran out. Seeing a London 020 x where x wasn't 7 or 8 would have confused some people into thinking it was an old pre PhONEday number and they would have mistakenly dialled 0120 x. Woe betide the unfortunate subscriber in the provinces who had the matching digits !

At PhONEday Coventry changed from 0203 to 024 76 numbers, so misdials to 01203 would have been trapped before they could cause any annoyance.

Re: Wrong number

There's only one code for the London system and it's 020. Local numbers start with 3, 4, 7 and 8. The area code can be omitted when calling between 020 numbers.

As Brit cyber-spies drop 'whitelist' and 'blacklist', tech boss says: If you’re thinking about getting in touch saying this is political correctness gone mad, don’t bother

Re: Fair enough

If you find blacklist and whitelist confusing, you shouldn't be in any technical job, least of all at GCHQ.

'Deny Friday' ?

Hmmm... I never realised that the day after Thanksgiving to get back in profit in the US was known as Green Friday.

Will it now have to be called Deny Friday?

Hey, friends. We know it's a crazy time for the economy, but don't forget to enable 2FA for payments by Saturday

SMS is U/S for 2FA

GCHQ told the banks not to use SMS verification: it's insecure because MNOs aren't very good at preventing fraudsters gaining control of your mobile number.

Predictably, people still lose £thousands.

So why are banks such as Santander still refusing to issue card readers for 2FA, which seem to be pretty secure because (1) you need to have your card and (2) to know its PIN?

Motorola bounds out the G8 with a harder, better, faster smartphone for the thrifty

Style over substance?

Does it have an FM radio, preferably DAB/DAB+ as well? Does it have a user replaceable battery? Will it have updates for at least a decade? These are all basics I'd expect but I doubt it'll have any of them, let alone all.

Don't use natwest.co.uk for online banking, Natwest bank tells baffled customer

Not quite as bad as Santander et al

Surprisingly, NatWest is actually one of the (slightly) better banks when it comes to online banking. Unlike Santander and many others, they offer a free card reader. As it requires you to have your card and to know your PIN it's a lot more secure than the predictable telephone questions where the answers are often widely known and/or shared, e.g. postcode, email address, DoB, mother's maiden name etc.

GCHQ have warned the banks that SMS verification is insecure, but most have ignored their advice. This guy found out the hard way.

There is a Santa! BT prises remnants of InLink from jaws of administration

Re: Has it come to this

D'oh ! Payphone calls to landlines are 60p for half an hour.

InLink Limited limited: Firm that puts up UK's ad-supported phone booths enters administration

Wrong. 60p for half an hour.

Halfords invents radio signals that don't travel at the speed of light

El Reg using dial up to catch up?

I spotted this way back in July ! Here's the original in all its glory.

Meanwhile, I'm still wondering who makes a DAB radio without 'set channels that are a bit like the channels on your TV'.

UK.gov's smart meter cost-benefit analysis for 2019 goes big on cost, easy on the benefits

Re: numbers??

Gas meters are also smart: they are battery operated and phone home via the electricity meter.

The Smart Meter Roll-Out Cost-Benefit Analysis (2019) says "The total costs of the programme over the appraisal period are estimated to be £13.4bn, with £13.1bn attributable to domestic premises" and that "Just as with traditional metering, smart meter costs are recovered from energy suppliers’ entire customer bases."

Re: numbers??

You're right about the load shedding aspect: smart meters can implement much more granular power cuts compared to substations switching off whole neighbourhoods (including vulnerable customers such as those who rely on medical equipment or alarm systems). Smart meters can also implement load limiting. It's all down to forthcoming shortages in generating capacity: we couldn't even keep the trains running and the lights on a few weeks ago when there were a couple of glitches.

But you're very wrong about the average bills (even the site you quoted says it's £1254 p.a., or £880 if you're on the cheapest tariff). Similarly, the costs of smart meters are being paid for by customers of the energy companies, not by the government. Even if the government were paying, there's no magic money tree: one way or another we all end up footing the bill. £13.1bn is now attributable to domestic premises and in 2018 there were 27.6 million households, so that's a whopping £475 each.

Re: If "smart meters" are so good

Smart meters for gas are included in the project.

Smart meters alone don't save anything: they may help consumers to use slightly less energy.

Mega Expensive when you want to use it !

Smart meters mean Time of Use tariffs. Only 41.94p/kWh in SE England at peak time...

EPIC demand: It's time for Google to fly the Nest after 'forgetting' to mention home alarm hub has built-in mic

Re: Google Wise Monkeys

Do Know Evil. FTFY !

Ecuador says 'yes' to Assange 'freedom' deal, but Julian says 'nyet'

Re: Verbal subjects

Some of we think that this is taking the post off topic, so us will have to agree to disagree.

Verbal subjects

> Queue isn't a verb

I queued for a bus: that makes 'queue' a verb in my book.

> Us sheeple will just bugger off...

Nope, should be 'We sheeple...'. Stones, glasshouses and all that.

Talk about a GAN-do attitude... AI software bots can see through your text CAPTCHAs

My whinge about CAPTCHA is that the relevant objects are often not neatly contained within the boxes.

If it's traffic signs do you just click the main two boxes, or do you include the pole and the 'spillover' boxes ?

But at least it doesn't ask you to click on the pavement, a stroller or a solicitor...

Shocker: UK smart meter rollout is crap, late and £500m over budget

Re: pros of the smart meter

If your oven was 2MW you'd need a substation to power it !

No legal requirement to inspect meters any more

>although by law they will still have to inspect the meters every two years anyway.

That's no longer the case, the requirement has been scrapped.

Re: What could possibly go wrong?

Or just say NO.

Re: Reluctantly may have to get a smart meter.

Use a camera with a selfie stick instead.

Re: What could possibly go wrong?

You forgot remote disconnection. Smart people with dumb meters will stay warm and bright when there's not enough juice to go round.

Electric Morris Minors

>Apart from the Morris Minor (made in 1966) - we've had it almost 25 years. If they did a hybrid system upgrade for it, we'd get that done too.

You can do better than that - your Morris Minor can go fully electric !

Re: How are these supposed to save energy?

So you're a refusenik, huh? You don't want to have the Sunday roast at 2am and do the washing and tumble drying at 3am?

You need to be re-educated. No more flights or high speed rail travel for you !

Re: Smart meters do not save energy

> What a load of FUD.

It's FACT, not FUD. You're referring to permanent disconnection because of non-payment.

In contrast, smart meters can disconnect individual users for short periods (load shedding) when failure to build sufficient generating capacity means that there won't be enough electricity to go round. It's what they'll do when eye-watering Time of Day pricing (35p/kWh or more) hasn't worked.

Analogue radio is the tech that just won't die

Planet Rock is MONO !

Planet Rock is Mono, in common with many other UK stations that use plain DAB rather than the modern(ish) DAB+ standard used almost everywhere else.

Beware of obsolete new radios !

Buy a new DAB radio at Tesco, John Lewis, Sainsbury's, Currys etc and you may well find you've bought a lemon: many of their own brands are effectively obsolete because they don't support DAB+. They want you to buy twice.

Re: Analogue Radio Must Never Die

The noon Shipping Forecast is LW only.

Re: I'm increasingly ambivalent about technology.

FM does carry Now Playing info, assuming the station can be bothered to implement it. It's called Radiotext.

Which? That smart home camera? The one with the vulns? Really?

Good only for White Goods

I find the Which? reviews useful for seeing what's on the market and what all the bells and whistles do. They seem OK on relatively straightforward things (e.g. the toaster will burn the toast if you use it again immediately) but they are often well out of their depth even on slightly technical thingies.

Not so long ago I was amazed at their review of DAB radios which completely failed to mention the need to check for the Digital Tick. Many well known retailers such as Tesco and John Lewis are still ripping off their customers by selling digital radios that can't receive the ever-increasing number of DAB+ transmissions in the UK, but Which? readers would be none the wiser.

Buried in the hype, one little detail: Amazon's Alexa-on-a-chip could steal smart home market

If it has Alexa inside, I won't have it in my house.

Even if they give it away free of charge.

Sealed with an XSS: IT pros urge Lloyds Group to avoid web cross talk

D'oh !

The Halifax website has a very obvious weakness: the password characters entered via the drop down menu are displayed permanently rather than momentarily.

Their 2FA is also poor because it relies on an SMS. They've never considered that mobile numbers can easily be hijacked.

TV Licensing admits: We directed 25,000 people to send their bank details in the clear

It worked for me !

But I share your views about Capita.

Withdrawing their Implied Right of Access and warning them of the Malicious Communications Act 1988 will immediately stop ALL the threatening letters.

No-one needs to suffer harassment from TV Licensing if they don't need a licence.

You are under no obligation to respond, but if their threats and tricks become too tiresome (e.g. sending registered mail that has to be collected from the main Post Office) you can stop them by informing them that you have withdrawn their Implied Right of Access.

For good measure you can add that as they can no longer send the boys round, any further threats to do so will be treated as a breach of the Malicious Communications Act 1988.

PPI pushers now need consent to cold-call you

Re: maybe....

Ofcom has allocated numbers in the 08979 range for these calls, but the number is not intended to be released to the called party.

Re: 0845

I have an 0701 702 Flextel number for this. Even more expensive !

The Magic Bullet is Not Enabled

There is a straightforward way of identifying withheld and spoofed numbers, it's 1477 Automatic Call Trace. It stores the offending number at your local exchange for subsequent investigation and enforcement action. 1477 would be far easier than plodding through the ICOs website to report a nuisance call, and it's obviously the only way to identify withheld / spoofed numbers.

Unfortunately, there's an unhealthily cosy relationship between Ofcom and those they are supposed to regulate, which means that maximising call revenue is considered far more important than eliminating nuisance calls.

The result is that 1477 is never enabled by default, and you'll be extraordinarily lucky if anyone in your telco has ever heard of it. They'll doubtless insist that you mean 1471.

UK's info commish is having a howler: Site dies amid 'plagiarised' GDPR book scandal

ALL the regulators are useless...

The ICO's website outage means that it's not possible to report yet another scam or nuisance phone cal, even if you think that reporting a spoofed or withheld number will achieve anything and you can be bothered to spend a fair bit of time so doing.

If the ICO, DCMS, Ofcom etc were any good they'd have mandated long ago that all telcos provide 1477 free of charge by default: Automatic Call Trace stores the REAL number at your local exchange for subsequent investigation and prosecution. But that would be too easy, wouldn't it?

Amazon staffers protest giant's 'support of the surveillance state'

You can have Amazon OR Privacy...

Amazon and privacy don't seem to go together.

I rapidly lost interest in buying a PC from them when I noticed that they register all of them on a police database, for my protection of course.

Shades of North Korea... I'd rather take my chances, thank you very much.

The future of radio may well be digital, but it won't survive on DAB

Re: iPlayer Radio

> I cannot think of any other legitimate reason they need to check.

I can.

They're trying to catch people without TV licences who watch BBC programmes via the iPlayer. Of course, it would be far easier to use the TV Licence number as a paywall password, but the BBC are petrified that would see the licence fee being replaced by subscription !

One big scandal seldom reported is that many big supermarkets (e.g. Tesco) and stores (e.g. Curry's) are still selling obsolete DAB radios that can't receive DAB+.

It's just a scam to make the Great Unwary buy twice.

Re: Cars are priority, but what about DAB?

Yes, it has something far better: TPEG. Conventional traffic info is old hat. You're likely to be stuck in the jam before you hear the warning, and most of the bulletin will refer to places you're not going. It also ruins the programme for the majority of people who aren't affected.

A satnav with TPEG is the answer. It receives info from Digital 1 every minute or so and, best of all, will re-route your journey to avoid the jams. Usually no subscription is needed, it's just a one-off fee built into the cost of the satnav.

£12k fine slapped on Postman Pat and his 300,000 spam emails

@ Alan Brown

>"If you disagree with the fact that you have to keep opting out of the Royal Mail's unaddressed mail "service" (ie, their junkmail leaflets), or that finding the optout on their website is akin to stumbling on a filing cabinet in an unlit disused lavatory with a "beware of the leopard sign" out front., then you should be rattling the ICO's cage about it."

Unfortunately I can't see what the ICO can do about unaddressed junk mail delivered by RM. There's no breach of privacy or misuse of stored data just because RM push the same unwanted rubbish into your letterbox as they do for everyone else.

I suspect that the only legal remedy would be to withdraw RM's Implied Right of Access to one's property, but that would be something of an own goal because you'd then have to make endless trips to the sorting office to collect your own addressed mail !

Simply being on the MPS list won't stop Royal Mail pushing unaddressed leaflets into your letterbox, and they instruct postmen to ignore No Junk Mail stickers.

Instead, you need to opt out from their Door to Door junk every 98 weeks. It's a chore, but it usually works quite well.

Re: Junk confusions

Mark, I'm afraid you're the one who is confused, although it's hardly surprising given how devious the Royal Mail are in making it awkward and difficult to opt out !

The Royal Mail's opt out actually lasts two years (left click on the link way down at the bottom of the page), although you might want to re-register six weeks early because it seems that they are very leisurely in implementing requests.

However, I fully agree it should last as long as you reside at the relevant address. There's no need to re-register for the MPS, so the Royal Mail should follow suit.

BBC Telly Tax heavies got pat on the head from snoopers' overseers

You can easily STOP the nastygrams !

@ Will Godfrey

I didn't have a TV and just ignored the fortnightly nastygrams, letting them build up into a pile about two feet high. They became ever nastier, with pictures of courtrooms etc, and were sometimes disguised to look like bank PIN notifications or payslips.

On principle, I still kept ignoring them.

It might have been different if they had politely asked me to confirm that I didn't need a licence, explaining that there was no obligation whatsoever to respond, but they'd be eternally grateful if I would just return the enclosed post-paid declaration form: I might well have done so.

Eventually the goons started to send their nastygrams by Registered mail. As I was always at work when the postman called, that necessitated an unnecessary trip to the Head Post Office the following Saturday. It would have been tempting to keep ignoring them, but there was always the risk that one of them might be something I wanted (e.g. a bank card) or something I didn't want but needed to know about (e.g. a speed camera ticket).

Enough was enough, so many years ago I sent a letter withdrawing their Implied Right of Access (signed as The Occupier). For good measure I also stated that I was fully aware of the penalties for watching live TV without a licence so there was no justification for reminding me every fortnight and, as they could no longer send the boys round, continuing to send scary letters threatening to do so would be an offence under the Malicious Communications Act 1988.

Result: they confirmed they would never bother me again - and they haven't !

Brit regulator pats self on back over nuisance call reduction: It's just 4 billion now!

Re: 60 calls a person

@ AMBxx

Any junk call numbers are added to a list of unwanted callers.

You're probably wasting your time if you're relying on the displayed number or what 1471 tells you. The number will be probably be spoofed, and they'll use a different one every time, just like spammers never use the same email source address twice.