I’ve blogged about AQA 63336 (leaving our site) before. This afternoon, I’ll be pitting it against 118 118’s new Ask Us Anything service (leaving our site). To ensure complete fairness, the question will be sent to both services at 1415 GMT today exactly.
Right… allons-y…
I’ve just received the most believable phishing scam sent to my inbox to date. It’s still suspicious to ninety nine per cent of users, perhaps, but these things are certainly starting to look more believable.
For those who don’t know what phishing is, you should. It’s when someone purporting to be from a trusted organisation or person (such as, say, a bank) tricks you into giving them your details by contacting you, usually via e-mail. They’ll usually pretend that your account information needs updating, and will usually convey a sense of urgency.
Before clicking on that link, here’s a couple of important things to remember:
With that out of the way, here’s the e-mail:
Note that Mac OS X Mail didn’t render this as HTML, but other e-mail clients may well do, adding to the realism.
The text talks about ‘enhanced security measures’, which are, in fact, real. More and more banks have started giving you the option of having a Chip and PIN machine connected to your PC to add an extra layer of security to online transactions.
However, the website this links to actually looks incredibly realistic by phishing standards: it ties in relatively well with NatWest’s real site (leaving our site) and could certainly fool the novice computer user.
Note: I seriously discourage anyone from following the link in a phishing e-mail. It can do all sorts of things such as fiddle with your browser, and worse. I was going in because I wanted to demonstrate what a phishing site would look like, and because I was using a secure web browser (Safari).
Of course, there are ways to just irritate the phishers using this page.
As soon as our hypothetical gullible computer user has entered his/her account number, he is asked for his PIN and password. Alarm bells should be starting to ring here. Remember that this e-mail has arrived out of the blue, and has sent you to a site that is now asking for your password and PIN number.
If the user was gullible enough to enter his information here, the site next asks him for - wait for it - HIS DEBIT CARD NUMBER. Anyone with half a brain should realise that the bank should have your debit card number. It shouldn’t ask for it if you try to log in.
After this, quite cleverly, the phishing page redirects to NatWest’s real latest offers page (leaving our site) having captured Joe Gullible’s personal information. That information will now be sold on a seedy website somewhere for around £8. (That is around US$15.)
So, the moral of the story? Don’t believe everything you receive in an e-mail. Simple as.
I had planned this evening to post a well-formulated argument against excessive testing of schoolchildren by the government. However, I’m far too tired to create something that’s even legible, let alone a watertight argument.
However, I do have the time to wish anyone who is currently taking exams the absolute best of luck. The Select Committee report into SAT testing is due tomorrow, and it’s expected to reveal that SATs put primary school children under unnecessary stress, and put teachers in a position where they have no choice but to ‘teach by the test’. The way GCSE exams are handled has also come in for criticism. This is all surrounded by ridiculous lies the media pumps out each year, claiming exams are becoming easier and that cheating is a lot easier.
(If you’re not currently taking exams or due to take exams soon, then you may disregard this message. Thank you.)
So, the final result, released at just before midnight tonight, is that Boris Johnson is the new Mayor of London. Boo, hiss. Oh well.
My series of predictions, made some days ago, were correct in some places but wrong in others. (These were mostly in the places where I disagreed with people like Guido and Iain Dale.)
Firstly, the BNP have gained a seat on the London Assembly, and their candidate for Mayor was only around 4,000 votes shy of overtaking the Greens. That is somewhat revolting. Hopefully, though, with only one seat, no-one will listen to them.
I was also wrong about Brian Paddick: he performed nowhere nearly as well as I expected, and there was still an awful lot of support for Ken Livingstone. Speaking of which, Livingstone is blaming the loss on himself (even when it almost certainly isn’t). Both Ken and Boris have behaved like gentlemen towards each other, and it shall be very interesting to see what input Boris gets from Ken, and if Boris actually listens to it.
It’s also worth noting that with this election, the blogosphere has really come into its own. Almost everyone in the political blogging world had something to contribute, and many liveblogged the election, providing minute-by-minute analysis and comment (myself included). The election has really proved the worth bloggers have in the journalistic landscape. True, my own was a bit patchy, but I’ve been handicapped with tonsillitis for most of the week, so that’s my own fault. Perhaps it was a sign that Boris was to win.
Anyway, with that settled, I now need to sleep. I will disintegrate otherwise.
Here’s Jeremy Vine making a fool of himself on Election Night. Last time it was a rapping Ming Campbell, now… he’s wearing a Stetson hat and shooting cans to represent the Lib Dems’ result. Apologies about the solitary (poor quality) capture, this was shot from the News 24 online feed.
It’s a shame Have I Got News for You isn’t recorded on Friday afternoon, not Thursday evening. Bring back Peter Snow.
So, at 2am BST (1am GMT), Twitter has borked. Twadget doesn’t like it, and neither do any of the browsers installed on the Vista box.
The results seem to be roughly in line with my predictions: the Tories are performing very well (and Boris may well win London), the Lib Dems are performing reasonably well, especially considering they are the third major party, and Labour are making many losses. At this point, this result looks to be more decisive: the number of hung councils is down by 5. Ed Millibogger is on Election Night, looking like he’s made out of plastic.
Jeremy Vine has again made a fool of himself with regards to the Lib Dems, this time sounding like a Southern cowboy with some tins and a rather odd Stetson fedora that looks like it’s been made of a pancake. Images will follow later depending on how nice Ubuntu is feeling.
And as I type, Twitter has returned. Yay.
…and recovered somewhat quickly afterwards.
Here’s an image. Sorry, but Swiftfox decided it wasn’t going to let me thumb this.
It’s Election Night, and the banner has transmuted into a ballot paper to reflect that fact. Clever, eh? OK, I admit, not really.
While I won’t be continually liveblogging every single seat that is counted, I will be keeping an eye on the counts after 10pm, and will be making an educated guess using the data available at what’s happened. I’ll be putting up predictions here and using Twitter, so if you’re that bothered (which I doubt you are) please feel free to use the RSS feed for this blog and to follow me on Twitter.
I won’t be able to say anything until the polls close at 10pm, and even then my coverage will be restricted to what I can glean from the Internet and the coverage on the BBC’s Election Night programme. Either way, this is the first major event the Eee PC has had to cover, so it’ll be interesting to see if the keyboard holds out. I think it will.
Surprisingly, this video sums up my thoughts on the ThinkPad perfectly. Full-featured, but overall very inelegant and boring: essentially a 13.3inch lump of computer.
I think, out of the two, I’d rather have the Air.
Edit 1615 BST: Oh dear. Apparently, Fake Steve doesn’t like the video. Heads will roll…
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