Posts by Uberior 64 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Feb 2018
Bit out of date with that surely?
Barclays bought the Woolwich, who had a reasonably decent Scottish presence, in the 1990s. They were all rebranded to Barclays in the noughties.
Nat West has a fairly large presence via their RBS brand, as does Lloyds via their BoS brand. It's just HSBC who are a bit limited.
We need a new tax!
Ok, I'm not really a tax, tax, tax person, but there are a couple of things that really annoy me.
- Outrageous linked company interest rates
- Outrageous linked company licensing rates
All designed to reduce profit in one tax regime and boost it in a lower tax regime.
How about a 100% rate on linked company interest rates in excess of the "Official Rate" and a 100% rate on linked company licensing fees?
Working nights, I was regularly troubled by one window company in particular. Through a bit of research I identified the company directors and found that one of them lived fairly close by.
They weren't happy when I doorstepped them at 2am and disturbed their sleep. The Police were called, but it was a "civil matter"...
So after a week of 2am, 3am and 4am doorstepping and his wife and kids in tears at their disturbed sleep - the calls stopped.
Such fun.
We gave a full 12 months warning, that was repeated every month, until the day the plugs were pulled.
Lot's of "what are we going to do?"
The answer was always easy. Migrate over to an email solution or bike the documents to us. Two organisations threatened to sue us for the cost of couriering the documentation, one claiming that it was "illegal" not to have a fax machine. They didn't, and it isn't.
They also advertise on narrower systems such as the Add-X scheme on WileyFox.
You wouldn't believe the number of times I see the scowling face of Deborah Meaden on Peter Jones trying to tell me how much money they've made by investing in Bitcoins on the lockscreen of my WileyFox phone.
Like the phone, but I'll never risk another one.
There's a lot of naughtiness out there.
I have a Wileyfox phone that was sold at a discount due to the Ad-X option. The Ad-X software is run by an organisation outside the UK and is not on the regisrar of Data Controllers.
A post-GDPR update initially required users to consent to the data collection before the adverts were displayed, obviously, I bypassed the consent each time as I was already fed up of seeing Deborah Meaden scowling at me whilst trying to sell me BitCoin investments. That worked for around a month until a futher update went through that forced consent and doesn't allow the withdrawal of consent.
I don't have problems with people working from a script, if you plan the conversation correctly it's great for evidencing poor service or a reluctance to engage with the customer.
Just saying the words "For the benefit of the tape" and repeating back the "bad" version of what they've just said followed by "Is that correct?" is such fun.
Used it a few times in small claims court proceedings now.
I had a sales letter from Barclays a few years back, which asked me to quote my "exclusive" reference number which started:-
BADCUNT
That was a £250 apology cheque. :-)
Along with an explanation that the first three digits was their abbreviation for "Barclaycard", the "C" for existing customer then the following three and more letters then numbers were randomly allocated.
I went into the Sears store at Florida Mall, Orlando last summer.
The very first thing that I saw as I walked into the store was a "One Dollar Knicker Rail". The rest of the store was just a mess.
They missed a trick really. Over in Boston there's a branch of Primark, it's as busy as a UK Primark. If, a few years back, Sears had converted a floor of each of their stores as a concession "Primark at Sears", those stores would be getting plenty of footfall. It would be a win-win, as Primark would have access to US stores at the locked-in long term rental rates of as little as $5 a square foot that Sears currently pay.
How about every single company director, LLP Partner, Charity Trustee and ICO registrant in the UK has to attend an annual 3-hour "Digital Britain" training event managed jointly between Companies House and the ICO?
Formal ID taken at the event to verify...
Hefty fines to Individuals for not attending and risk of winding up of companies too.
Not only might it help remind senior figures of their responsibilities, but it might help "tidy up" the Companies House list of Directors. After all, you couldn't become a Director or Partner if you hadn't attended the course.
Why read the text?
If it was the UK, all they'd have to do was search for images of Deborah Meaden!
Yup, there she is again scowling on my Wileyfox Phone with a Bitcoin advert on the lockscreen. Never mind that I'm constantly unticking the box and withdrawing my consent for Buzzvil (who don't appear to be registered with the ICO) to let me "enjoy" targetted scam adverts.
As the latest batch of spam emails start.
Try writing rules to explain why "FUD" on this page, is probably completely different to the "FUD" shouted by a Glaswegian.
For those who don't know fud is a Scottish synomym for =mid("scunthorpe",2,4).
Then have a quiet smirk every time my local newspaper auto-censors the name of one of the local villages to Horton-****-Studley.
If the data and records are there... Yes!
Careful what you wish for though. When I did mine it ended up as kerbside fork-lift truck drop-off of boxes and boxes of A4 on a pallet.
They were playing silly buggers, so there was boxes full of line-by-line log-on, log-off times, keystroke analysis, security alarm log-in, photocopier and phone "taps" to print or log-in.
I got the last laugh though. Without warning me it was coming, they did the kerbside drop-off in the middle of winter when I was clearly on the holiday schedule system as being away. Which meant that my confidential data was sitting in my front garden in the snow, thaw and rain for 7 days. The ICO were not impressed...
Well Pascal, you are either a fool or a liar if you claim you can't tell the difference between:-
Bank of Scotland - Constituted by an act of Parliament in 1695
The Royal Bank of Scotland - Constituted by an act of Parliament in 1727
Here's another clue, until the 1980s, you were unlikely to be employed by BoS if you were Catholic and unlikely to be employed by RBS is you were Protestant.
They have been relentlessly selling data for years anyway.
I tracked down the alleged consent for a spam marketing (for a high APR Credit card) to a company in Bristol who claimed to have been supplied with data from Dixons-Carphone. This was prior to GDPR so Dixons refused to disclose when I "ticked the box" unless I sent them £10...
This isn't so much as 10,000,000 records "stolen", it's more just 10,000,000 records that Dixons aren't getting commission for.
I've just had a similar demand from a marketing company when I asked for them to provide evidence of consent for a campaign they were involved in.
They demanded:-
Passport
Driver's Licence
Council Tax Bill
Bank Statement
I have refused, so they are refusing to evidence consent. There's absolutely no way that I'm sending that level of detail so they can tell me where I ticked a box to receive spam. I've offered to go round to their head office and allow them to view the documents (but not take copies) - but that is "unacceptable" and they don't meet with "customers".
Off to the regulator with a complaint I go.
Ah hot-desking, sounds so good on paper.
Just add a couple of people into the mix who won't sit near a window in a tall building, those who don't like sitting underneath the air-con vents, the people who have a chair set for their back issues, or tall colleagues with a desk adjusted for height (which might just be four bricks under the legs). The member of staff who is so obese she needs to sit on a wooden bench (trust me, I've worked with one) or the rampant football supporter who wheels the red, blue, green, yellow chair from the other side of the colour co-ordinated office because they won't sit on a red, blue, green, yellow chair.
After all that a rack of Chromebooks sounds easy.
I have a Wileyfox mobile phone, it was discounted by £50 on the basis that I'd accept targetted ads on the lockscreen.
Now, I don't mind *regular* advertising, but the day-in day-out image of Deborah Meaden, Peter Jones or Martin Lewis scam advertising is outrageous for sanctioned targetted marketing. The fake ads for "Ask.com" that are riddled with spelling mistakes are irritating too.
I'm on a data-trail at the moment.
I was sent a marketing email about Company A's product. Upon querying the point of consent:-
Company A blamed Company B
Company B blamed Company C
Company C blamed Companies E, F, G, H & I for providing data under warranty.
Company C claims that their owners, Company D (with whom I have a relationship and hold a "no marketing record) do not share data whereas Company D explicitly state on their data protection statement that they do.
Company E claim to neither hold nor have supplied data to Company C
Company F refuse to engage with me until I post them clear copies of my passport, drivers licence and a bank statement!
Company G, H, I & J have stll to respond.
It's all a bally mess, there's no way any reasonable person is going to send copies of photo ID and financial records to an organisation they are suspicious of poor data handling and there is absolutely no responsibility or ownership.
"Part of INSINIA's BSides London demo showed how home and small office safes could be opened using only a magnet and a sock."
Two items needed to open a small electronic safe?
Who needs such luxury. Most can be opened with a firm slap, or at most with a single strike to the top from a hard-back book.
Isn't that technically there anyway?
There is a bit of law, dating from the 1870s, that is still relevant today. It's called "Agency Law" - it essentially means that a company is responsible for the action of its agents.
The ICO has previously found in my favour when a UK based financial services company has used an opaque marketing company based outside the UK to try and sell me sub-prime credit card.
My little pub-quiz group are all Wileyfox fans and we've come up against a bit of a problem.
It has Truecaller pre-installed. Now, I really don't like Truecaller so have never activated its services as such, but it handles all the call management.
Ahead of GDPR, we had to agree toTruecallers T&Cs or it locked us out of making calls. The "deactivate" function didn't work. Now I started looking into it on the day it kicked off, but as I'd witnessed a nasty accident, I had to agree to the T&Cs before I could dial 999 for an ambulance!
When bloatware limits a phone users access to the emergency services until they agree to new terms and conditions, there's a bit problem.
It was the suicide method of choice for a former colleague.
He blocked the door to the server room from the inside, banged on the windows whilst holding up a sign detailing that our boss was a "fud" (check the Scottish slang).
Then activated the extinguishers. They extinguished.
It was awful. Obviously our boss was promoted out of the department...
At the front end, I recall switching from the legacy NCS to Core Banking System. Whilst CBS wasn't pretty to look at it, I don't recall it ever going "down" during the time it was in use and was amazingly quick to use.
Then we switched from CBS to Lloyds CBS - awful. Glad I left.
(When I started work, we were still keying on a 3604 terminal and had microfiche in the sub-offices.)
I'm wondering if the details of people who have posted on social media are being harvested right now by crooks ready to make the call:-
"Hi, It's Sonia from TSB. I'm really sorry about the trouble you've been having with your account. Can I take you through security and we'll start to get things sorted out..."
Most of the cheques written in the UK are still using the heritage system of shifting bundles of paper around the country. I hate to think about the risks facing TSB right now if they haven't got a clue about the balance of their customer's accounts when the cheques hit. If someone timed it right by banking a large cheque on Thursday to hit on Monday in hope of system issues. The money will have cleared and swiftly moved on by now.
Tomorrow and Friday will be fun. It'll be payday for:-
Anyone who gets paid weekly.
Anyone who gets paid on the last Thursday/Friday of the Month
Anyone who gets paid on the 26, 27, 28 , 29th
It's going to be bloody.
Despite the journalists at El Reg being forced to keep quiet.
There's nothing to stop the Scottish Press from publishing the details in their print edition. Wouldn't be the first time that I've read something in "The Scotsman" that's illegal to be published South of the Border.
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