Begs the question why do companies think it's necessary to use third party scripts that have no direct relevance to collecting CC details?
Posts by Halcin
80 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Nov 2011
Payment-card-skimming Magecart strikes again: Zero out of five for infecting e-retail sites
It's a cert: Hundreds of big sites still unprepared for starring role in that Chrome 70's show
Biz! Formerly! Known! As! Yahoo! Settles! Data! Breach! Cases! To! The! Tune! Of! $47m!
Fire chief says Verizon throttled department's data in the middle of massive Cali wildfires
What happens to your online accounts when you die?
Mind behind 16.7m nuisance call menace cops six-year boss ban
Re: Now he can't run a UK biz
But he can get someone else to front one for him
Maybe, but:
The marketing menace was banned in July from directly or indirectly being involved, without the permission of the court, in the promotion, formation or management of a company for six years
Hopefully this means his name can't be on any paper work. Like a letter or a wage slip. So the named person doing his bidding would have to be someone he can totally trust.
Salesforce cloud glitch blurted customer data at unauthorised users
Click this link and you can get The Register banned in China
SMS 2FA gave us sweet FA security, says Reddit: Hackers stole database backup of user account info, posts, messages
Visa
"We learned that SMS-based authentication is not nearly as secure as we would hope, and the main attack was via SMS intercept,"
They're just learning this??
Some companies are still blind to this issue. My bank has confirmed that Visa is implementing an "industry-wide switch" to SMS 2FA. They believe it "has proven more effective in preventing fraud attempts than the current system." Namely Verified by Visa.
So are they painting a big target onto all Visa customers?
How hack on 10,000 WordPress sites was used to launch an epic malvertising campaign
Engineers, coders – it's down to you to prevent AI being weaponised
Either my name, my password or my soul is invalid – but which?
TalkTalk shrugs off moaning customers to claim 80,000 more
Web regulation could push Silicon Valley startups away from UK, Parliament warned
Read the T&Cs etc. To paraphrase: the website owner has the right to do what they want, when they want, how they want. They are the prosecution, judge, jury and executioner.
You have no right to know you've been accused, no right to know who has accused you, no right to know the details of the accusation, no right to defend yourself. And if convicted, no right to appeal. The only thing you are allowed to know, after the judgement, is that you've been found guilty.
What little I know of the laws in Germany, they seem to have further entrenched this attitude as the "best" solution. Granting unaccountable, private companies even more power over our lives.
This is not acceptable. And as the online world is becoming less optional every day, it is not something we can frivolously disregard. And yet, the prospect of allowing politicians and "civil" servants in on the act, doesn't exactly fill me with joy.
'Fibre broadband' should mean glass wires poking into your router, reckons Brit survey
Indictment bombshell: 'Kremlin intel agents' hacked, leaked Hillary's emails same day Trump asked Russia for help
Gullible?
Are peeps gullible enough to believe one fake news? Prolly not. But then this misses the points. The hard part to understand is plurality. It's not just one story that convinces people.
Make a lie simple, and repeat it enough times and peeps will begin to believe - there's no smoke without fire.
Then there's confirmation bias. Peeps are more inclined to believe stories about $the_opposition.
Echo Chamber. Peeps only pay attention to anything that supports their view. And will ignore those that challenge their world view.
It's the constant drip, drip, drip: Oh look he/she/their are at "it" again. And there's fatigue, peeps simply get tired banging their heads against a seemingly unbreakable able wall.
Mastercard goes TITSUP in US, UK: There are some things money can't buy – like uptime
Re: Backups and redundancy, FFS
Stop blaming the customer for the failings of the systems/software. It's not down to users fix the issue, it's down to the providers/developers/management.
If you want customers (your paymasters) to continue using your solution (and paying your wage) then you fix the problems your solution creates.
Fitness app Polar even better at revealing secrets than Strava
Is it because "Talking Heads" constantly use "The Innocent Have Nothing to Hide"™ to guilt people?
Or are App developers, by making privacy so difficult, are taking advantage of peep's laziness so they (the developers) can profit from the data? "Sharing is Caring!!!*"™
*Three exclamation marks to indicate the (forced) manic happiness needed when expressing this statement.
Banks told: Look, your systems WILL fail. What is your backup plan?
No more slurping of kids' nationalities, Brit schools told
Re: Fair enough, but as a matter of balance
"nationalities" != language spoken
Place of Birth != language spoken
My Mother was born in Burma and yet she is English (with an English birth certificate) and her first language is English. I was born in England and have an English birth certificate, but my first language is Cantonese. (Complicated family)
If you need info on languages spoken then ask about languages spoken. It is clear that the collection of this info has ef-all to do with helping the schools or children. And your suggestion is disingenuous at best
Infamous 'Dancing Baby' copyright battle settled just before YouTube tot becomes a teen
Perhaps I'm being dense, but given the ambiguous nature of the Ninth Circuit ruling, what was Universal appealing?
And why did the Supreme Court refuse to hear that appeal? Was the ambiguity not enough to justify their time?
I can kinda get my head around a higher court refusing to accept a case (not sure about this one though). But bouncing it back down, feels like a teacher telling a student "Not good enough, try again".
While it's standard practice to take pot-shots at lawyers. Lets not forget their paymasters. If lawyers started to abandon idiot paymasters who failed to heed sensible advice, we'd all be in trouble.
This is one of the very few times I am left bamboozled by the judgement of the judges.
Want to know what all that Fortnite hype is about? Whoa, Android fans – mind how you go
nbn™ CEO didn't mean to offend gamers, just brand them unwelcome bandwidth-hogs
Morrow had said as much during Monday's committee hearing, adding: “No-one designs a network to where everybody uses it at the same exact time”.
When the $%£@ does he think users would be using the network?? Does he even know what happens to his very own employees? The majority get out of bed at the same time, go to work at the same time, go home at the same time, and go to bed at the same time (approximately).
So evening is the only time the proletariat have for using his precious network. Or does he honestly think plebs should be required to get out of bed at all hours of the night to better manage network usage for him?
A competent CEO would insist on a network to be designed to cope with real-world requirements.
Look how modern we are! UK network Three to kill off 3G-only phones
Re: Allocated spectrum
IMHO none of the mobile operators should be allocated their own frequency blocks. Surely thats ridiculously short sighted
Yes, in a way it is "short sighted". But you also know the alternative: a monopoly. And monopolies are crap. It doesn't matter if it's a state owned monopoly (Network Rail) or a private monopoly (OpenReach). Monopolies are bad - end of.
Hacking train Wi-Fi may expose passenger data and control systems
Virtue singing – Spotify to pull hateful songs and artists

Spotify says it’s willing to deal with such debates, has teamed with advocacy groups to develop its policy
I would like to think that all advocacy groups are started for the right reasons - to tackle issues that need tackling.
However, they (the advocacy groups) need to turn everything up to eleventy-stupid just to be heard. but they never say "our work is done" or "we have achieved parity". The second any organisation is created, self-perpetuation becomes top priority.
They are run by a self-appointed minority. They are not accountable to anyone, not even to people/groups/interests they claim to represent. Dismissively suggesting I join such advocacy groups, is not the answer. There are so many claiming to speak on my behalf, there simply isn't enough hours in the day.
Courting disaster: Watchdog slams UK justice digitisation plans
Waymo robo-taxis to accept fares in Arizona in 2018
ServiceNow goes for more Now, a bit less Service
Password re-use is dangerous, right? So what about stopping it with password-sharing?

What £$%^ arrogant!
To reduce the prevalence of password re-use, reduce the NEED for sodding passwords. Stop bullying users and start bullying the websites that demand users create an account for every inconsequential function.
Users are not an unlimited resource for you to do with as you please. Users are your paymasters. Stop making life more difficult with ever more convoluted complicated bloatware and start making the technology easier to use. Or is that not glamorous enough for you?
Google will vet political ads to ward off Phantom Menace of fake news
It's World (Terrible) Password (Advice) Day!
Re: What about paper?
@Charles 9
I suspect you have been watching too many Hollywood films.
I'm talking about treating a bit of paper (with your password on) with the same care you would give £$1,000. Would you leave £$1,000 laying around for anyone to pick up? Are you that careless with your money?
What about paper?
There was a time when everyone screeched "Don't write it down!" Well, why not? Ok putting up a large sign, for all to read, is clearly silly.
But everyone has spent their entire lives learning how to look after little bits of paper. It's called money. We all have special gadgets, devices and procedures for keeping paper safe. As a society we have been learning how to do so for centuries.
How often do El Reg publish an article about crim's breaking into houses or offices to rummage for bits of (non-currency) paper? How often are people mugged for the passwords in their wallet?
A challenge - here is a copy of my paper based password reminder:
A5dQ1 t6F2P0 e4e2G8
m23ZX 8GjK4 DeW4I
mIiL8 qb4V3 60A1a
Now hack my account! Which account? Exactly.
So where is the evidence to show any/all paper based solutions are terrible? (evidence, not opinion :P ) This has been an issue long enough for there to be evidence, so where is it?
That's no moon... er, that's an asteroid. And it'll be your next and final home, spacefarer
Will our Descendants Feel the Same Way?
Watch a video, film or documentary about people from 50 or a 100 years ago. Do you feel connected? Can you understand how they feel? Do those long dead people have any idea what life is like for you?
Now imagine you are on a spacecraft traveling through the void of space. This little world is all you have known. It's all your parents have ever known. It's all your grand-parents have ever known. And it's been this way for hundreds of years.
You have no interest in what's outside your little world, because, for hundreds of years there has been nothing but void.
How can you maintain an optimistic zeal to explore when faced with that tiny world for your entire life? How can you engender excitement in your belligerent, cantankerous teenage children? And it's not just your life, you'll be fighting generations of history.
Traditions and aspirations change with each generation. And I find it difficult to believe our descendants will know, care or even understand why we sent multi-generational spaceships into the void. And if they do, will they thank us or hate us for condemning/committing them to that life?
Happy having Amazon tiptoe into your house? Why not the car, then? In-trunk delivery – what could go wrong?
Why do companies belligerently insist on trying to deliver at a time they know damn well you will not be at home?
I can get my food shopping (cost £40) delivered at 10pm for as little as 50p, so don't bother telling me it's more expensive for Amazon (other online companies are available) to deliver after the evening rush-hour.
Evening deliveries would mean saving money on fuel - less traffic congestion. And an almost guaranteed first time delivery because someone is at home.
Great Western Railway warns of great Western password reuse: Brits told to reset logins
Age checks for UK pr0n site visitors on ice as regulator cobbles together some guidance
Re: How is Porn Harmful
Being serious for a moment, I understand one concern is that over-stimulation from teh pr0nz and excessive onanism can cause issues with sexual response IRL.
Correlation is not causation. Did the researchers look for, or exclude alternative explanations? Like, for example, the individual "over-stimulating" so he/she can get the "dirty deed" over and done with asap to minimize the risk of being caught? er no. None of the published research I've seen have made any attempt to consider or exclude alternatives.
The people conducting what little research there is, started with the assumption that porn is bad and went looking for "evidence" to support their assumption. That's called confirmation bias
This sounds like PPPs trying to justify their puritanical attitudes with pseudoscience.
Did somebody say Brexit? Cambridge Analytica grilled: Brit MPs' Fake News probe
Voice assistants are always listening. So why won't they call police if they hear a crime?
The Great Bulgarian Streaming Scam may well have been scummy, but Spotify got paid
UK.gov's Brexiteers warned not to push for divergence on data protection laws
Face, face, face! Apple, TrueDepth and a nose-driven iPhone X game
IBM's chief diversity officer knows too much and must be stopped!
A tiny Ohio village turned itself into a $3m speed-cam trap. Now it has to pay back the fines
Govt 'comprehensively ignored' advice over NHS data-sharing deal
Eggheads: Cities, don't woo rich Amazon with sweetheart HQ deals
Brit escorts: Without the internet to keep us safe, we'd be totally screwed
Feds charge Barclays trader with fraud in Hewlett-Packard deal
Amazingly....
no one on the other side of the pond is ever charged. Not just Barclay employees, but all the others*. In Europe, there is always some "explanation" for the complete lack of criminal charges.
The criminal behavior of our "elders and betters" just keep stacking up and yet...
*Like say, staff in other banks, car manufacturers, bod's in charge of football (soccer). Other examples are available.
South Australia bins emergency alert app, contract
Fridge killed my baby? Mag-field radiation from household stuff 'boosts miscarriage risk'
Really?
For example, airline crew members get an estimated annual average dose of cosmic ionizing radiation – ionizing radiation from space – that's three times higher (3.07 mSv) than the general public
I have check various sources and they all say that the natural background radiation for the general public is 3mSv. So how can 3.07mSv be three times higher?