Posts by Vimes

I'd suggest sending email to the CEO (possibly using a temporary hotmail account set up for that in order to avoid any spam listing). But then this is just suggesting the obvious...

The only other thing I have to add is that providers seem to be abandoning their phones more quickly these days. Even a number of years ago this was happening with other companies like HTC and their HTC Desire model - after about a year it wasn't being supported any more. From Samsung's point of view the Note 3 is no longer the flagship phone - the Note 4 has taken that place.

Not that any of that excuses the responses of them that could easily be considered rude, but it might explain things at least since they appear to no longer consider it a handset worth supporting (at least if the responses you received are anything to go by).

In any case it might be worth avoiding them in future, especially since there are already rumours that the S7 might be released earlier than originally planned - this sort of planned obsolescence is only going to get worse for them if they increase the rate at which they release them.

Come to think of it: if it's a Note 3 then presumably it was bought within the last 2 years? Legally all such items bought within the EU have to have at least a 2 year warranty period (again IANAL). It might be worth threatening them with reporting them to Trading Standards since they would appear to have an obligation to either fix or replace it.

I would have felt less offended about it all if they'd even offered a loan handset, for the time it was to be away, but they didn't.

IIRC there's a plugin for Skype called Pamela that allows you to record the call.

One possible reaction would be to use it. Give them one last chance by calling them. Record said call, give them a liberal amount of rope to hang themselves with and if - as will probably happen - you don't get what you want you can include the entire conversation with them as an attachment in the email to the CEO (plus you can also use it to publicly shame them on Twitter if you're so inclined).

Of course doing that without telling them that the call has been recorded might be legally dubious. IANAL, so be careful.

I mean, that must be the easiest and most common repair ever, surely?

Not necessarily. If memory serves shortages in screens has been an issue over recent years, so it would only be an easy repair in the sense that it would be in the terms of the process of swapping the broken one with the new one, not the process of obtaining the new one in the first place.

Re: Amazon is spamming customers...

The complaint has already been sent, although I have yet to receive any confirmation.

Another thought: how can any data protection regime be run acceptably when it involves shifting responsibility from one country to another? How many languages are there in the EU, and how viable is it to have a system where those making the complaints might well not be understood by those receiving them?

Re: Amazon is spamming customers...

Yep. And because my main email address is different to any of the aliases used for the accounts their only question boiled down to 'give us your email address first', which suggests to me that they just want to specifically stop sending me the spam rather than stop sending any spam in the first place. No explanation of this apparent abuse of the soft opt-in rule.

Re: Amazon is spamming customers...

Well if more people refused to use them, as I have done ever since the "one-click" patent stupidity, they wouldn't be in a position to conduct themselves in such a way.

Another thought: some of the addresses being spammed are those associated with my Audible & Lovefilm accounts. Both of which have since been bought out by Amazon (and in the case of Lovefilm since renamed).

You can try and avoid them but even then they can still end up with your details...

Re: Amazon is spamming customers...

It might also be worth noting that all other emails I get from Amazon are clearly linked to my usage of their services given the contents of said emails.

I would be happy with those links because unless Amazon itself has been hacked then the chances of other people randomly guessing what I've been looking for is sufficiently low to not worry about it.

Re: Amazon is spamming customers...

But if you DO purchase from them, I don't see why, on a technical level, you would be reluctant to click througb a link in an email that originated from them.

Because we can't be absolutely certain the link is valid or that the email is in fact from them (although they don't seem to have disputed it so far). Remember that such emails are unsolicited.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDN_homograph_attack

Re: Amazon is spamming customers...

That would be option 'b'.

Personally speaking I would see no reason why I should have to unsubscribe from lists that were never subscribed to in the first place. If I see emails I don't expect to see then the last thing I will be doing is clicking on any links.

Amazon of all people should not be encouraging the wrong sort of behaviour.

The ICOs reaction to it is a little worrying too.

PECR != DPA, and their attempt at confusing the two is not exactly very comforting.

Re: Lies, statistics and people who just can't count

Playing the part of the pedant for a moment... from the NSPCC page:

Sex offenders are still being convicted at the rate of 2 a day for possessing child abuse images 2 years after the Prime Minister urged industries to ‘obliterate’ them.

Nothing in that suggests that their study covers the entire 2 year period.

'a rate of 2 a day' could still hold true if the length of the snapshot was 50 days. They never say that their sample covers the entire 2 year period, just what the current rate is during the period of their study, which happens to have been conducted two years after Cameron's statement.

As to whether the filter he came up with had anything to do with it - I still think that's bullshit.

Re: Is Alexander J Martin a professional?

Personally I'd expect to see this level of inaccuracy within the headline in the Daily Mail or Express. Not here of all places...

...or maybe it's just so they can remind the patient when they've been identified as a regular user that the visit is 'funded by the UK tax payer'. Much like they seek to do with medication costing more than £20. They want to instill as much guilt in people as possible when they use the NHS that they never go anywhere near it.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jul/01/nhs-prescriptions-drugs-health-cost-waste-price

It's getting to the point where if I went into hospital I wouldn't be surprised if I was fed alphabetti spaghetti and the words 'just die already' end up appearing multiple times in my bowl. Just by chance of course...

The response to the following FoI request doesn't give me much confidence that they have any sort of clue as to what they're doing - they're going ahead with a scheme without even knowing the benefits, and they probably aren't acting with any more precision or clarity when it comes to appointments either.

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/cost_of_displaying_the_cost#incoming-681133

Show me the part of FoIA that tells the government how long they need to keep emails (or any file for that matter).

I don't agree with it personally (I think they should be in a position to keep things longer than that, at least where it doesn't involve PII) but there is nevertheless a world of difference between 'should keep it' and 'have to keep it', and as somebody who has no experience dealing with this it would be wrong for me to at least not consider the possibility that there might be some reasons for this as badly thought through as they may be (for one thing filtering out personal information would be in itself a large task given the volume of email)

Re: FOI Request: How many emails have come in over the past 12 months?

@Ken Moorhouse

Except that Hansard probably doesn't potentially contain private information that legally can't be stored longer than necessary (and 'in case we need it later' probably wouldn't count since if I recall correctly it has to be for the reasons it was originally collected & used in the first place). The same can't be said of emails, which can contain all sorts of private information not normally part of any government record like Hansard.

Which one is more important? The DPA or FoIA? Letting them think that storing anything remotely private just because it might be useful later on is a very bad idea IMO.

Re: One rule for the rich..... @I Am Spartacus

This is done so that they can go in to court and say, truthfully, that all legal discovery is complete and comprehensive.

Again, playing devil's advocate for a moment: I strongly suspect that the number of court cases involving them is easily dwarfed by the number of FoI requests for any single government department that you'd care to name.

That 'legal discovery' costs time and money neither of which the cash strapped departments have much of. Now imagine having to go through all that every time somebody asks for something.

Re: "It makes it easier if the nonsense emails aren't there"

"It makes it easier if the nonsense emails aren't there

It's true though if 'easier' means 'less incriminating evidence we then have to release' and 'nonsense' means 'anything that goes against what we want you to believe'.

OR somebody posted a photo of me in a private discussion, tagging it with my personal information, and Instagram have then set up an account and spammed me about it as a way of increasing their userbase.

Possible, but very unlikely IMO. Somehow I suspect that even in relatively liberal countries like the US this type of gathering personal information coupled with the subsequent display of said information to the wider public WITHOUT any form of consent would probably end up breaking a number of laws.

Even Facebook - assuming this is true - when they track people that aren't users they don't then make it publicly visible.

You own the fscking email address. Email from that address, ask to have the account removed, and suggest (respectfully) that they respond to your email address to verify that you actually don't want that account to exist anymore. Reply to the response.

If the response from other services that I've received in the past is anything to go by when I've tried something similar then they'll ignore this and demand proof of identity.

Incidentally I'll admit to using Instragram, albeit rarely. I don't recall receiving any email from them when I set up the account with my own email address and when I started the app on my phone I get a message asking me to send a confirmation email to secure the account, but this is entirely optional and there seems to be nothing to stop me from ignoring it.

Try emailing the CEO?

http://www.ceoemail.com/s.php?id=75919&c=Instagram

It'll probably end up getting dealt with by the same people, but sometimes having the additional note 'deal with this' from the CEO attached to the call can sometimes encourage them to get it sorted more quickly and to your satisfaction.

Re: hush you

Almost as interesting as the hack is the lack of official response from other governments, including our own. How, for example, can they be certain that our own systems aren't just as vulnerable to attack as those in the US?

For that matter they seem to have conveniently forgotten that the leak occurred thanks to a US employee and the only reason UK information was compromised in the first place was because the government here were so willing to share it.

Interesting legal shenanigans being deployed by the Sunday Times against those pointing out the problems.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2101948-news-uk-dmca-notification-first-look-productions.html