Security Stupidity
Posted: Thu 24 March, 2016 Filed under: 1BEM, Design, Laziness, Milton Keynes, People, Security, Stupidity, Thoughts Leave a comment »Every so often, I’ll see a scenario that just leaves me utterly gobsmacked. Sadly, they’re usually based around security of some sort – for whatever reason, it’s something I’m generally pretty tuned in to, and aware of.
Yesterday’s one was an absolute blinder – and caused by a complete lack of thought/awareness.
While I was walking at lunchtime, the person in front of me was paying a bill over the phone. Using hands-free, so it was all done out loud. (I don’t quite get why some people use hands-free for conversations on mobiles while walking – particularly when they’re still holding the mouthpiece to their mouths anyway. People be weird)
That wasn’t so bad – he was entering the card details using the keypad, so in that aspect it was fairly secure. Not how I’d have chosen to do it, but hey, I’m not one to judge.
The bit where it all went tits up, though, was that the payment line then reads the numbers back to the user, as a confirmation. “If this is correct, press 1“.
It’s a scenario where the developers etc. have thought about how to confirm the card data, and it makes sense to read it back. They’ve just not seen the real-world situations where people then do these things in public, on hands-free speakers. But it meant that – were I a bad person – I’d have all of that guy’s card information (it even read back the CV2 validation number) which I could have made use of.
And in case anyone’s wondering, I did tap him on the shoulder when he’d finished the call, and explained that he really should get that card changed ASAP. If I could hear it, or if he does that on a regular basis, then the card is compromised, and it’s only fair to make him aware of it.
It’s up to him, of course – but the fact I told him his card number, expiry date, and CV2 (correctly – I really do need to get out more) certainly seemed to focus his mind somewhat…
Missing Letters
Posted: Wed 3 February, 2016 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, Getting Organised, Stupidity, Thoughts Leave a comment »Way back in early December, I posted a couple of letters, both by Royal Mail Special Delivery – a service that tracks the letter, requires a signature on delivery, and is guaranteed to be delivered the next working day by 1pm.
In my case, one letter arrived, and the other didn’t.
After a week, I raised this with Royal Mail through Twitter, and they were… pretty slack, to be fair. The letter had disappeared into the system, they needed to investigate, blah blah. At no point did the words “sorry” pass their (online) lips.
Another week or so passed, and they came back with “we can’t find it, can’t you check with the recipients whether they’ve received it or not“. Which is taking the piss, as that was the entire reason for sending the sodding thing by Special Delivery in the first place. And still, no sorry.
I ended up having to file a compensation claim with Royal Mail – again, the person who paid for the service has to jump through all the hoops, fill in the forms and so on – and wait even more. Still no “sorry”.
I finally got the response today to that compensation claim. They’ve taken six weeks to acknowledge that this “guaranteed service” isn’t, has failed, and I’ve finally got my money back.
The kicker, in my opinion, is that in that letter they say…
“If you need to cover yourself against this in future, I suggest you send items by Special Delivery “Guaranteed”
So the fucking clowns recommend I use the service that lost this letter in the first place – because it’s better. What the fuck?
All told, the customer-service experience of this process has been abysmal.
- It’s taken nearly two months to get this sorted
- Once we were past that ‘guaranteed delivery’ timeline, it should’ve been an automatic process to say “Yep, we fucked up, here’s your money back”
- If you can’t guarantee delivery, don’t guarantee delivery.
- If you don’t trust your own tracking systems and still require ‘proof’ that the item was posted into the system, you’re doing it wrong
Desperate and Gullible
Posted: Tue 26 January, 2016 Filed under: 1BEM, Charm School, Cynicism, Marketing, News, People, Stupidity, Thoughts Leave a comment »It was interesting yesterday to see the BBC’s piece about the growing prevalence of ‘online rental fraud’ – basically, where a fraudster/criminal advertises a rental property for a great price, and people then pay a deposit for it without ever seeing the property – because it’s a great price in a sought-after area.
You can see where this is going, can’t you?
Yep – the fraudster doesn’t own the property, doesn’t represent the agents, and has no real connection to it at all. They’ve just grabbed photos, submitted the ad, and then people pay the ‘deposit’ into an account named by the fraudster.
Now, while I think it’s pretty scummy, I can’t help but also see it as more of an idiot tax. You’ve got to be pretty desperate – and pretty fucking dim – to put down money without seeing the place you’re renting, particularly without ever meeting an agent/agency/landlord etc. I know that these people are good at getting people to believe they’re valid, and that there’s this urgency – but really, it’s still taking advantage of people too dumb to look at a deal and think “what’s wrong with this picture?”
Maybe that’s harsh. Maybe not. For me, it’s hard to feel real sympathy for someone who just leaves themselves open to this sort of shit. Take a look at what one victim says in the article…
[He] said: “I was willing to take the flat without a viewing based on the location, just on the price of it.
[I felt] anger, disgust, I was really disappointed. I was thinking, ‘Wow I’ve spent money I couldn’t afford and what’s happening to me right now? I’m in a nightmare and I can’t wake up’.'”
I think the worst part, probably, is that now it’s been mentioned by BBC and on TV, it’s something that other scammers will look at and thing “Oooh, that’s a good idea”, so it’ll become even more prevalent…
Cinema Seating
Posted: Sun 27 December, 2015 Filed under: Cynicism, Domestic, Films, People, Seeing Films, Stupidity, Weirdness 2 Comments »This year, my local cinema has started a process where people book specified seats, rather than just “first come, first served seated” I don’t mind it at all, it makes sense and should make life easier for everyone.
Except, well, people.
Every film I’ve gone to see, there’s been a noticeable percentage of the people who either don’t sit in their booked seats (for whatever reason) or just seem to be confused by the whole concept of how the seats are organised into rows.
It’s a simple process – or is to me, anyway. If you stand at the front, with your back to the screen, the seats go from row A at the front to row Z (or whatever) at the back, and from 1 on the left to 100 on the right. It’s simple, but it confuses so many people, it’s really quite scary.
Really, is this concept so difficult to comprehend?
Privacy Breach
Posted: Wed 2 September, 2015 Filed under: 1BEM, Agency Idiocy, Business, Corbett, Customer Services, Geeky, Laziness, Marketing, People, Stupidity, Thoughts Leave a comment »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?
Shoe Issues
Posted: Mon 24 August, 2015 Filed under: 1BEM, Charm School, Customer Services, Domestic, Getting Old(er), Health, Milton Keynes, Stupidity Leave a comment »Since doing the 10km walk for Marie Curie, my feet have been having some issues, which have been no fun.
In the preparation for the walk, my feet had gained some hard skin areas, which – like a twat – I’d picked apart. To stop them from hurting or getting worse on the walk, I put on a couple of blister plasters – whose glue melted off during the walk, and actually caused the blisters I ended up with. Oops.
The blisters cleared up and healed quickly, but left some weaker spots of skin, which have then been a bit of an issue.
Basically, the Cat boots I’ve had this year haven’t been anywhere near as good as usual, and the lining had dissolved in places – again, causing blisters in the bits that rubbed, and those weaker spots of skin. Because I’d bought them from Schuh, I was able to take them back to the store, and they’ve exchanged them for a new pair without question – which is pretty stunning customer service, in my opinion. However, because they’d died, I had worn an older pair for the day – and that exacerbated the problem tenfold.
Because I’m an idiot – so I’d walked a lot in those old, old boots, with their worse wear. I didn’t think anything of it ’til the end of the day, when I got home – at which point I had blood-filled blisters on blisters. Pretty skanky, and very sore. As a result, yesterday I spent the day doing amazingly little, and just giving my feet some recovery time. Which seems to have been a fairly good plan, all things considered. I didn’t even do half my normal walking for the day – which I feel bad about, but at least it was for a vaguely good reason.
All this has been within a couple of weeks – it’ll all heal, but it’s been a painful time because of my own stupidity (and some ropy build quality along the way).
So really this post is just a reminder to future me to not be such a fucking idiot, and to take more damn care of my own feet.
And that’s it.
Make Up Your Damn Mind 2
Posted: Thu 30 April, 2015 Filed under: Advertising, Cynicism, Food, Stupidity, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »It seems like a developing theme (although I don’t intend it to be so) but I’ve been noticing dodgy signage/labelling this week.
This one is at a local restaurant…
So – not all day every day then
If you’re advertising a menu as “All day every day”, you can’t then qualify it as “up to 6pm on Friday and Saturday”, can you?
*sigh*