Awareness Test

Obedient children...

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Gloal warming snow

Snow fell as the House of Commons debated global warming yesterday - the first October fall in the London since 1922. That's what I call irony.

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Do you Yahoo?

If you use Yahoo for your email, be sure to use a fairly mysterious password.  A teenager in America found it quite easy to work out what Sarh Palin' s password was (yes, that Sarah Palin).

The son of Tennessee Representative Mike Kernell, David Kernell was indicted Tuesday by a federal grand jury in Knoxville for intentionally accessing Palin's Yahoo email account without authorisation. According to the three-page indictment, David Kernell gained access to gov.palin@yahoo.comon September 16 by exploiting weaknesses in Yahoo's password reset feature.

All he had to know was her postcode and high school, and bingo, he changed her password.

They can catch him - but what about all those spam senders?  Wouldn't it be better if the concentrated on catching them?

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Illusions

If you like illusions, there are a number good ones based on words at marcofolio.net.   Just click on the link.

Here's one good example:

Say aloud the ink colour of each word. How quickly can you do it? Did you slow down?

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The Body Battery Calculator

How many bulbs can you light and can you fire up an iPod with the electricity in your body?

Find out at The Body Battery Calculator

But please don't take it too seriously... it's not the answer to oil prices.

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Hague strikes again

This is one of William Hague's more inspired moments at the despatch box recently.

Click on the arrow in the picture to start it - make sure your speakers are on.

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Carphone Warehouse in trouble

The latest company to fail to look after your details properly is TalkTalk and its parent company Carphone Warehouse, who have been criticised by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO).

An investigation by the ICO showed that the companies were "opening accounts in the wrong names and passing inaccurate information to credit reference agencies and debt collection agencies".

Even though the errors caused "real damage and distress to customers", at the moment this is just a shot across the bows, giving them a chance to sort matters out.  However, if they don't get things right, they'll have committed a criminal offence, so it seems likely that cheerful Charlie Dunstone will be keen to resolve it rather than risk one of his glamorous sailing trips being disrupted by PC Plod.

You can read the Enforcement Notice by clicking here, if you want to gloat.

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Christmas cracker for you

If you are going to put Christmas lights on your house, you might as well do it properly (make sure that your sound is turned on and then click on the arrow).  A Happy Christmas to all readers.

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The Child Benefit records scandal

Darling breaks the newsThe disgraceful mislaying of the discs containing 25m people's personal records by the taxman was announced on 20th November. It was a list of people who have received Child Benefit.

That's bad enough, but at least it was a mess-up, not a deliberate attempt to take advantage of a situation (I hope).

Unlike the full page adverts from LoydsTSB TSB that appeared today - seeming to be sympathetic, but actually trying to flog some credit-rating monitoring product of theirs called PrivacyGuard.

This is just taking advantage of people's fears, and should be exposed as such  Let me be clear:

• If you are the innocent victim of banking fraud you will not have to pay, with or without any insurance. 
• This LloydsTSB product offers no protection or insurance anyway - it simply monitors your credit history from only one of the Credit Reference Agencies

If that's what you want, then buy it, although you can get the same service cheaper elsewhere.  But you are still on your own if there's trouble, despite the impression the LloydsTSB advert gave me

If you think you have been the victim of identity theft, you can read some good some specific advice by clicking here.

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