Privacy Breach

Yet again, today there’s a story about another place revealing a confidential list of customers in emails – and as usual, in what’s known as a Corbett round here (courtesy of a certain Irish marketing person) it’s looking like the leaker sent the email using CC instead of BCC.

In this case, the information is even more sensitive than usual, as it’s people who’ve used a particular STI clinic in London, and may have also revealed their HIV status.  Oh, bloody whoops.

It amazes me how often this seems to happen – and how easy it should be to fix.

The first answer is, obviously, train people.

But after that, it’s about defending against laziness and stupidity.  But even that’s pretty easy.

All it really needs is a block on recipients in CC.  If you’re sending an email and it’s got more than (say) 10 addresses in the CC field, it simply asks if you’re sure you want to send it with those people in CC rather than BCC.  That’s an email-client thing – but is easy to do.

It can’t be that difficult – my own email clients all already ask if I want to send an email with no attachments if the message contains keywords like ‘attached’ or ‘CV’, after all.

A similar thing could be done on the mail-server as well – put in a rule that if there’s more than [defined limit] of addresses in the CC, it doesn’t send without an authorisation, an acknowledgement that this is OK.

There will still be the odd blithering fucktrumpet who manages to send out a whole mailing-list in CC (or even To) – but at least make it harder for them to do so.

Surely that’s not asking too much?

 


Black Friday

According to half the retailers in the UK, today is ‘Black Friday‘. Except, um, it’s not, not really.

Black Friday is the American equivalent of our Boxing Day sales. It’s the day after Thanksgiving, and is traditionally when American stores have all their bargains and super-deals, because it’s usually regarded as the start of the Christmas shopping season.

Obviously, Thanksgiving isn’t something that we in the UK celebrate – and if we did, it would be more about celebrating getting rid of those puritanical shitbags onto the Mayflower in the first place, going off to found the Plymouth Colony.

So Black Friday means the sum total of fuck-all squared, except as a marketing ploy for people to follow and buy yet more shit they don’t really need.


Christmas Parks

ScroogeI don’t know when/why it started, but it now seems that part of the media’s Christmas tradition is to have a report/story about a  “Christmas Park” that opens in November and closes down after one day because of its general shitness, and the resultant litany of customer complaints.

This year, the ‘honour’ has apparently gone to ‘The Magical Journey‘, which was designed/proposed by arch-tossrag Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen

But really, what does anyone expect? These arseholic fucktrumpets are paying up to £20 a head to go and ‘see Santa’ – in November, in unseasonably warm/mild weather – and then get upset that it’s muddy, that they’ve got to queue for ages to see sodding Santa, and that really it’s all – gasp! – a bit shit.

Rather than talking to Trading Standards, I’d suggest probably getting mental health professionals involved, and getting every single one of those paying customers to take a good long hard look at themselves. For fuck’s sake.


The Devil in the Details – Lloyds

Following on from yesterday’s post about Nissan’s dodgy advertising, maths and small-print, the other ad currently incurring my ire is from Lloyds Bank, advertising their new “Club Lloyds” current account.

Now, while I think that clubbing Lloyds would be a fantastic idea, that isn’t the thing with this new account.  Here’s the ad…

And again, here’s that small-print, while they’re bleating on about how great it is to have an account paying 4% interest…

Pay two separate monthly Direct Debits to earn variable tiered monthly interest. 4.0% AER (3.93% Gross) on balances between £4,000 and £5,000. Lower rates apply for lower tiers

So yep – that 4% interest ONLY applies if you keep more than £4,000 in your current account – but below £5,000. And if we look at that Club Lloyds webpage, what do we find? (I’m going to paraphrase, but you can look for yourself)

  • Balances from £1 – £1,999.99 – 1% interest
  • £2,000 to £3,999.99 – 2% interest
  • £4,000 to £5,000 – 4% interest (and note how that band is half the size of the other two)

And right at the bottom of the explanation?

We don’t pay interest on amounts over £5,000.

Yep – no interest at all if you’ve got over the £5,000 in there.

Fuck you, Lloyds.


The Devil in the Details – Nissan

As regular readers will know, I have a really bad habit of reading the small print. (I say ‘really bad’ although it’s not – anyone who doesn’t deserves everything they get. It’s just ‘really bad’ from the advertiser’s perspective)  There’s two ads doing the rounds at the moment that annoy me, so you know what? You get two posts out of it.  Lucky you.

The first (which arrived in my inbox just now, and motivated me to write it) was for a leasing arrangement on a new car – a Nissan Leaf, if anyone cares.

The deal offered is this :

The 100% electric New Nissan LEAF Visia Flex FROM ONLY £199 A MONTH*
WITH A £3,250 ADVANCE RENTAL CONTRIBUTION

OK, so they mention that “Advance Rental Contribution” (which is a deposit, surely?) right at the start, and already it’s skewing the figures. But then we get to the bottom, and the small print…

Finance is available subject to status on eligible new vehicles registered between 01/04/14 and 30/06/14 in the UK to persons aged 18 or over. Rental stated is for Nissan lease. Advance rental of £5,750 (includes £3,250 Advance Rental Contribution) followed by 48 monthly rentals of £199 a month and final rental of £6,201.

Hang on – £5,750 upfront? That’s another £2,500, on top of the “Advance Rental Contribution” – where has it come from, and what’s it for? Even if you take out the first month’s £199, that’s still £2,300 unexplained.  Fucking hell.

All told – with all those amounts listed, that comes to £21,503. For a poxy Nissan Leaf.

But then it gets better…  (Sorry, “better”)

Once you have paid the final rental you can keep using the car by paying an annual rental of £50 + VAT; if you choose Nissan lease then you will never own the car.

As well as entering in to a lease agreement for the vehicle, you will need to enter in to a separate lease agreement for the battery. Monthly price shown includes the on-going monthly battery lease charge of £70.

Now they’re just taking the piss, surely ? So even when you’ve stumped up your £21,503 – sorry, £21,563 including that little final ‘annual rental’ charge, then you will *still* be paying £70 a month for the fucking batteries?

Up yours, Nissan.


It’s a Pie

Another in the occasional series of “adverts that annoy me” – this one is one of the ones from Santander (which I still think are creepy, as I have said before)

Why does it annoy me? Again, because of one line.

At the start, we can see that the guy is making a pie, and putting a pastry lattice over the top. Yet the woman says

“I really like what you’re doing with that cake”

It’s a fucking pie, you idiot.


Valentine

As regular readers know, this is one of my least-favourite days of the year. I waver between which is most loathed between Valentine’s and Christmas – I think Valentine’s generally comes higher, because it really is far more of a marketing event. At least the Festering Season has a basis in something older (even if it is religious and thus still utterly fictional) whereas Valentine’s really is just about making single people feel bad.

I know, it’s originally the official day for St Valentine, and it’s always been related to love – but it does seem to have been appropriated by marketing, chocolate and flowers over the years.

As usual I’m avoiding as much of it as possible.