Joe asks 'Is it me or what?'

Chrome browser: a cautionary tale

As my many readers know I don't often do techie posts but I felt this story deserved wider readership as a cautionary tale.

 

A friend of mine, let's call her Alice had a problem with her laptop and borrowed one from another friend, Bob. The laptop was running Windows 7 and Bob, who should have really known better as they were a professional IT guy, didn't bother to create a new profile for Alice but just handed over their password.

Alice was used to using Chrome as she used Gmail, Google Apps etc., and promptly installed it. They used the laptop for a few weeks until their new one arrived and often took advantage of Chrome's offer to save form data such as passwords. Again, probably a bad idea but she had a plan. When the time came to return the laptop she uninstalled Chrome and expected that her form data would disappear with it.

However, Bob now decided that he wanted Chrome and installed it, as he began to use it he noticed how many sites had saved passwords and discovered that all of Alice's data had been restored. This gave him access to email and many other sites although a few, such as banks, were protected by two-factor authentication (this is where you need to provide a second credential such as a password created on your mobile or from a dedicated device the bank has given you).

 

Nothing earth-shattering and all easily avoidable but just goes to show how you can be caught out even though you thought you were doing the right thing, in this case uninstalling a program.

 

Errors made along the way with my scale of insecurity out of ten, ten being very insecure:

• Not creating a new profile and giving someone your password (Bob 10)
• Not creating a new profile on a borrowed machine (Alice 8)
• Letting Chrome remember stuff on someone else's machine, rather than use a proper password manager such as LastPass (Alice 9)
• Not checking that data had been removed after the install (Alice 5)

 

Recommendations:

• Set up two-factor authentication for email (and other key sites), it's easy to use and well worth the thirty minutes it takes to set up and the slight inconvenience
• Do not hand out your account password, even to friends (and do have a password protecting your machine!)

Coincidence, I Don't Think So

Before we recently moved offices there was a Wetherspoon's pub nearby which I used to frequent a couple of times a week after work. I liked the idea of a pub that was no frills, good choice of inexpensive beer and no TV, but the original aim of the chain seems to have deteriorated into a place that caters to the How fast can I get drunk cheaply? brigade.

There were two of us and for our last round I went to the bar and ordered a dark rum and coke and a whisky and soda, no ice please, this was a busy night shortly before Christmas and I had had to wait over ten minutes to be served. The first attempt by the barman was a whisky and coke and I pointed out his error politely. He threw the drink away and started to fill a glass with ice, I told him we didn't want it. The third attempt had him reaching for the Bacardi, a white rum, and I pointed out that he'd now made three mistakes for a two drink order. he wasn't happy and spoke to the manager who asked me to explain the problem. I politely pointed out how three times the relatively simple order was wrong. The manager's attitude was typical of many places, if I didn't like it I could leave. so we did, and never returned.

Last week I visited another Wetherspoon's with my dad, we arrived just before 11:45 for lunch. The menu offered breakfast though and that sounded fine so after we had queued for some time we ordered two, or tried to. The lady on duty, the only person serving in a huge place, proudly informed us that it was too late as it was one minute past twelve, and wouldn't budge despite our protestations about when we had actually arrived. She tried to mollify us by saying the lunch special was a lovely steak and ale pie, so I ordered one, only to be told a minute later that it was off. So the lunch special was sold out before lunch had even started...

There was news of Wetherspoon's in the media lately, they are closing 33 pubs across the UK, eight of which are in London - coincidence, I don't think so.

Choose Your Battles

Choose your battles is a phrase that first really came to my attention soon after I started working in an office some twenty years ago. It means that some things are worth fighting for but if you turn every argument into a war you'll just get very frustrated and people won't listen when there is something important you want to change.

My housekeeper might now want to consider this after her latest battle, with Tesco. A couple of weeks ago we shopped, they dropped, and as usual there were a couple of substitutions. These are normally okay (perhaps the one where they substituted a video for a different one was a bit strange) but this time our housekeeper went into battle and called the customer service number without first actually checking what had been delivered:

Housekeeper: I want to complain about a substitution in my delivery.

Tesco: What's the problem?

H: Well you've given us Beef and Potato dinners instead of Salmon and Asparagus, they were for my employer who's vegetarian. (My wife is vegetarian.)

T: I'm very sorry, I'll check if we have what you want at a different store... yes, we can send some over later today.

H: Thanks, perhaps you'll be more considerate when thinking about substitutions in future.

T: Yes madam.

A couple of hours later the door bell rings and the delivery man proudly hands over a tray of Salmon and Asparagus dog food, politely requesting a return of the beef version.

Questions:

• Why didn't our housekeeper check what had been delivered? - She may have recognised the six tins as something not for human consumption
• Why didn't the Tesco member of staff mention that the item was dog food?
• Why the hell are we feeding our dog salmon and asparagus?

Do You Know Who I Am?

I have been a customer of Vodafone for over 25 years, their phone and data service in Exeter is lamentable, 3G is rare and until recently 4G unheard of, it has now appeared in various parts but sporadically. As for traditional phone calls they are impossible inside my house without a signal booster and difficult outside, despite living in the centre of the city. Compare this with their service in a number of European cities I visited last year including Marseille, Cadiz, Vigo and Florence, all had a good 4G service, and that was on roaming.

That aside I believe they offer reasonable value for money on my monthly contract and are particularly good when travelling, especially in Europe and as I don't use my phone much in Exeter (I rarely make calls on it and am on wifi at home and down the pub) I put up with the slight inconvenience. However they do have one major failing, their user-facing and support systems are terrible. The web site is painfully slow and their customer support, which is actually good from a personal point of view with their staff always being friendly, is let down by their help desk system.

I use their site each month as I need a bill summary for my work expenses report and for a long time I have been annoyed at the fact that my first name has been Anonymous. So emails are addressed to Dear Anonymous and bills show as being for Anonymous Fawcett. I eventually decided to do something about it, you can't just email in a request, oh no, you have to phone or use live chat (where a chat box appears on the web site) but I dislike the latter as the operators seem to disappear between sentences for minutes at a time. The option to change my name on the web site was not available for reasons best known to a faceless manager at Vodafone. So I phoned up...

1. The first time I entered my phone number and was told all operators were exceptionally busy (as always) and it would be best to try later or use the web site [gnashing of teeth by me]
2. The second time I entered my phone number and was told all operators were exceptionally busy (again) but was offered a call back within a few minutes so I took that option
3. I was called back and then had to go through the usual twenty questions to verify my identity, despite the fact I had set up a password on my account years ago to avoid this
4. I then explained the problem and was told I would need a new account set up and the old one deleted. This seemed like an overkill but I was told it would take 24 hours and I would be notified by email
5. Some time later I received an email but when I tried to login to my new account I was refused access
6. The next day I tried again, same result, I then tried using my old credentials, this worked but I was still Anonymous and it still showed on my next bill
7. I rang again, entered my phone number, and was put through. I was immediately asked for my number, apparently it doesn't pass it on to the operator so why ask for it?
8. I mentioned using my password instead of all the questions but, in spite of having the same one for over ten years was told that the first and last characters that I had been asked for didn't match, so back to address, post code, favourite Dicken's character...
9. My request to change password is refused as the system doesn't allow it
10. I go through the whole reason for call again, for some reason no one ever makes a note of customer's previous requests, have they heard of CRM?
11. I am told it's very easy (!!!). He will delete the anonymous, it will show up after 24 hours
12. I wait
13. I log in to my account, Anonymous is no longer my first name! - but I no longer have a first name. Emails are now addressed as Dear ,
14. I lose the will to live

I am now summoning up the strength for another call.

Happy New Year

The Joys of Support

I don't work in IT support, except unofficially for family and friends, but I still get asked questions at work especially regarding mobile phones as people know I'm a bit of an Android geek.

However, there are always some problems that are just too difficult to solve or that one can't quite believe, as was this one posed recently in the office kitchen at lunchtime:

Do you know why my camera won't work when I use the company wi-fi?

My first reaction was incredulity, why on earth would the camera on a phone, in this case a Galaxy Note, need wi-fi at all, nevermind not work on a particular network?

But I decided to ask a few questions, did she mean photo sharing, perhaps that was blocked (although though our company wi-fi has restrictions such as specific web sites that would be an odd thing to stop)?

No, she said, and vowed to go and retrieve her phone to demonstrate after I further expressed doubts about this claim.

Can you guess the what the problem was? She returned with her phone and promptly showed me - of course her definition of a camera and mine differed somewhat, she showed me an app that gave her a live feed of the security cameras in and around her house!

Of course the whole thing made sense now and I explained that there were a number of reasons why the app wouldn't work* and offered a few suggestions to remedy this.

So there you are, IT support is difficult but as in other areas off life it helps if you are both talking about the same thing :) 

* For the curious it could be that the site that offers the feed was on a blacklist for some reason, or that the specific port the site needed was blocked (most web sites use port 80 by default but other ports are used for services like Skype etc. and these are sometimes barred).

It’s Not About Feminism

I’m not a great fan of the UK honours system. In my opinion recipients should be those who have improved the lot of mankind without regard to their personal benefit.

So a sportsperson would not get an OBE or a knighthood simply for representing their country with success, presumably they enjoy doing that and are well recompensed, so why do they deserve another accolade? Also out are career civil servants, who also presumably get paid and have a good pension scheme. And don’t get me started on donors to political parties who get knighted for services to industry, i.e. making money and then giving some of it to their favourite politician in consideration for future services.

If a famous sportsperson uses their influence to set up a charity or helps people in a different way then their altruism may merit reward.

One person who I believe has earned their reward is Laura Bates - who now holds the British Empire Medal. Laura stared a campaign entitled Everyday Sexism which predominantly fights against mistreatment of women by highlighting day-to-day examples of how they are harassed, assaulted and generally harmed by men.

No right-thinking man could read the Everyday Sexism book, or follow on Twitter, without feeling shame that members of his sex so despise women that they carry out these acts. Neither could they not feel anger towards those responsible.

Women have always been treated as second class citizens, most religions deny them equality. Christianity has made some progress but I won’t believe it has totally repented of its ways until I see the first Catholic female Pope. There was recently coverage in the media regarding a Jewish Orthodox school in North London trying to ban mothers driving their children in, only men should be allowed to do this. The Moslem religion fares even worse with their attitudes. How about killing girls because they want an education?

Then there’s the subject of female genital mutilation, perhaps the worst example of sexism which, although illegal in the UK, is still practiced and has, as yet, not seen a single successful prosecution.

Many times the excuse is that woman should be more modest so as to stop inflaming men’s lusts. It doesn’t seem to occur to the leaders of these religions that men should make any attempt to control their base desires and behave as civilised beings.

But Everyday Sexism also reports on how ingrained sexist attitudes are, when young girls (and we are talking about eleven year olds) are cat-called, subjected to lewd suggestions and groped on buses, their mothers often tell them it’s part of growing-up and to just accept it.

The blaming of the victim comes across time and time again, you must have deserved it, you provoked him, you were asking for it. Rarely is the perpetrator condemned as being responsible for their actions.

On a national scale is the report from Aceh in Indonesia that has seen a rise in the number of sex crimes against women in its casino and entertainment district. Their solution? – Ban women after eleven o’clock in the evening! The idea that perhaps it’s the men who should be banned has probably never occurred to them.

On a less violent note the campaign raises questions such as why you see headlines such as Mother-of-Three Roan Fairhead to Head BBC Trust but no mention of Mark Carney’s family structure when he was appointed Governor of the Bank of England?

The most recent example came when Nobel laureate, Sir Tim Hunt, made comments about how women were unsuitable to work in laboratories, it ended with him resigning.

In fact the main problem I had with this article was deciding which stories to leave out…

And that’s the explanation for the title of this post, it’s NOT about feminism, it’s about treating people fairly and decently regardless of their sex.

Money, Money, Money

I'm normally quite careful with money although I'm happy to spend it on enjoying myself or a new gadget. For example I'll cheerfully blow £50 on a spontaneous drink after work, then complain about having to pay 30p to use the loo in Euston station while I'm waiting for the train back home.

I possess many loyalty cards but one of the best is Bite, which gives 10% off most shops based at railway stations. When I tried using it recently though, at Upper Crust - a sandwich shop - I began to wonder if it was worth it. I ordered a sandwich and two cokes and the assistant told me it was going to cost £5.50, I presented a ten pound note along with the Bite card and she swiped it through the till before announcing that I owed £6.00. She was not phased at all by this turn of events and it was only when I pointed out that usually a discount card meant a reduction in price that she saw the problem.

Then the usual happened, the manager is called, so now two lines of customers are now at a grinding halt whilst the runes are consulted as to what has gone wrong. Eventually it's sorted, who knows what had occurred, and I get my 50p discount.

What struck me most was the lack of financial awareness of the assistant, perhaps working on a till all day just makes you impervious to what's going on?

My second financial anecdote also involved rail travel, I was due to meet a friend at Stoneleigh and I needed to take a train from Waterloo. I already have an Oyster card and wanted to know if Stoneleigh, which is near Sutton, a few of stops after Wimbledon, was within the Oyster service zone. I reached Waterloo with fifteen minutes to spare and the queue for information was snaked around the concourse so I asked a member of staff on the platform barrier, he didn't know and neither did his mate. So I thought I'd better be safe and buy a ticket from the machine. I asked for a return and was shown a price of £11, it then asked if I had a railcard and I admitted that I had a Network Gold card. I was both bemused and annoyed to find the price was now £13, so much for the quoted benefits of reduced price rail travel in the London area! When I got to Stoneleigh of course there were Oyster readers on the station so I could have saved myself about £5 by using my Oyster and paying the excess. I'm still cursing myself for this, although I cheerfully paid for dinner - see what I mean about my selective parsimony?

Why I Might Be Racist

Okay, a bit of a headline grabber, or in today's terminology link bait. The truth is I am sure I am racist by definition but I'm not sure there's much I can do about that, I'm also sure most others are too. Let me try to explain.

The first thing is to define the problem, what is racism? If you take a dictionary definition then I am certainly not racist as I don't believe that any one race is superior to another. However, this is not the common meaning when we are told that something is racially discriminated against, this means that they are treated differently, and usually worse, because of race.

So do I treat people differently because of their race, honestly yes. For example quite recently I went to a pub, not that unusual you may say, and you'd be right, in this case though I did something unusual, I left after a quick one. The reason was that I didn't feel comfortable, I was the only white man in the place and although the piano didn't stop playing as I walked in (it looked like it had stopped playing a good decade ago) in the style of numerous westerns, conversations did halt briefly. I wasn't going to just walk out though, I had one drink and left, arranging to meet my friend elsewhere and let it be said I wasn't threatened in any way - so was I racist, I can't imagine doing that in a normal bar with the standard London mix of nationalities? But there you are, I felt uncomfortable and varied my actions purely because of race. Not that the people in the pub suffered though, they probably never gave my actions a moment's thought.

I think my main point is that you can’t legislate how people think, you can make certain actions illegal (although leaving a pub probably won’t be one of them).

On a different note although I deplore the apparent actions of those Chelsea supporters who refused to let a black man onto the their carriage on the Metro why are they being taken to court in England? As far as I know you can only be prosecuted for breaking the law of the country you are in or if your criminal act affects citizens of that country. So they should be on trial in France, if they broke the law there. After all you wouldn't expect Brits who partake of cannabis in Dutch cafés to be prosecuted in in the UK, would you?

Modern Technology

I lost my phone this week. My constant companion (well, excluding upgrades) of many a year left me in a spectacular fashion. I was hurrying to catch the Tube and negotiated the stairs at Westbourne Park with said phone in hand but there was a bit of jostling and it slipped from my hand, bounced on the platform and slid over the edge landing on the gravel by the tracks.

My first thought, after appropriate cursing of my stupidity was it’s no big deal. I could easily get a new one and a new SIM within days and it doesn’t have any data on it that is not backed up in the cloud. It can also be wiped remotely so those naked pics won’t be appearing all over the gossip sites any moment (just joking…).

So, given that I’ve had a mobile for over 27 years, see photo from about 1986 for proof, what was the one feature of my high-end smart phone that I couldn’t do without? I could live without calls, hardly ever make or take them anyway, email – good riddance, texts would be annoying but no big deal. My calendar is available on line so I could just look at that. The only thing I could not live with was the alarm clock, I had to try and borrow one from a friend who also confessed he didn’t have a proper one as he and his wife just used their phones too. Have the people who make travelling alarm clocks all gone bankrupt?

Anyway the station had no staff on duty but I asked at Moorgate when I alighted and they rang the station master at Westbourne Park. He said to call back later as he would try to get it when he had sufficient staff on duty. He was as good as his word, I rang back in the afternoon and he’d retrieved it. My apologies to all those on the train that was stopped just outside the station whilst someone climbed onto the tracks…

Apart from a few scratches around the edge it was fine and I didn’t have to go through the hassle of setting up a new phone, I’m very fussy (read OCD) so this takes a day or two.

And the other thing I really missed, as I was travelling to pick the phone, that would be my sudoku app, how did I live all those years without it?

Humour is a Funny Thing

We’ve all probably sent and received humorous greeting cards at one time or other. We also probably agree that their humour isn’t great. Some make you smile, some cringe and some leave you just shaking your head and wondering what is supposed to be funny. However the other day I discovered something even less amusing about a jokey card and that’s a jokey card being read out loud down the phone.

Picture the scene, I’m choosing a card when I hear a man behind me talking on his phone. Either he’s the most indecisive person ever or he’s been bitten before buying a card that his better half didn’t approve of. His solution is to describe the cartoon scene on the front and then read out the joke:

So this one is a picture of a couple drinking champagne and she says “I do love you!” He says to her, “Are you sure that’s not just the drink talking?” and she replies, “No, silly, that’s me talking to the drink!”

And so it went on for about half a dozen cards, with me getting more and more irritated, not sure why, it was just very distracting, I just wanted to say “Grow a pair and choose a bloody card!”.

He finally found one she liked, but just as he was going to buy it he saw another, so read that out to, they then had five minutes deciding which to buy…

So, whoever gets a card showing a geek drinking a pint of beer and saying…, well, I don’t want to spoil it but a lot of time and energy went into picking your card.

As to why I was looking for a card, that’s another story for my next post.