Communication Breakdown
Communications from the world of, er, communications. And other stuff.
Wednesday 16 January 2008, 5:06 PM
More on that O2 data-roaming cut
Needless to say, when we learned that O2 was to slash its charges for data-roaming, one of the first organisations we called was the European Commission. After all, they're the ones who've been rattling their sabres - we are merely campaigners.
We wanted to know whether O2 had decided to more than halve those rates just out of the blue, or whether Commissioner Reding's office had been involved. We got a rather apprehensive response that ran along the lines of "looks good, let's see what the others do now".
Belatedly, we got this further reply today: "There are regular meetings between the European Commission and the Telecoms operators. However, on this precise case, the Commission has not discussed with Telefonica/O2 on its announcement to cut data roaming charges."
I wonder what brought on this fit of altruism, then...
Saturday 12 January 2008, 7:21 PM
UPDATE: Facebook closes privacy hole
Well whaddya know. Earlier today I posted about my discovery that users of Facebook's mobile version could see all of their friends' email addresses that had been used to set up their Facebook accounts.
At the end of a long afternoon's West End browsing (is there ever anything decent in the sales?), I killed some time on the bus by logging into Facebook. And guess what? That "contacts" button (option 4 on the bottom menu on the Facebook mobile home page) had vanished!
Now, I have a small confession to make. I actually noticed this interesting feature a month or two ago but, being lazy and flighty, I didn't give it too much thought at the time. It was only this morning, when I tried cross-referencing those email addresses with my friends' profiles, that I discovered some were not meant to be shown, and some were not the email addresses that my friends had opted in to show.
All of which means, this feature has been around for a fair while but no-one's really picked up on its implications until now, or at least they haven't publicised them on a main-stream-non-main-stream-media (Is this right? Ed.) site like this one until now. And I find it incredibly hard to believe that no-one at Facebook thought about it before now.
What I want to know is this: why was the "contacts" feature there at all? It came two options after a "friends" feature, which is more what you would expect it to be, and would therefore appear to be redundant. It presented a major privacy flaw, yet it wasn't exactly buried - it's not like I found some clever hack to find those email addresses.
I'm confuddled. And I will try my hardest to find the explanation when I get back to work on Monday...
Saturday 12 January 2008, 1:58 PM
Facebook email privacy has a hole
This was certainly a surprising discovery! Here's the text of a message I sent out to all my Facebook contacts today:
Just thought I'd share something very important with you all. Some of you show your email addresses on your Facebook profiles, some of you don't. Fair enough: that's called privacy, and that's what Facebook's privacy settings are for.
However, I recently started using Facebook on my mobile phone (it's a Windows Mobile handset if you're interested), and discovered something peculiar. If I go to the "contacts" page on Facebook's cut-down mobile version, it displays every single contact's email address, whether or not you had set this information as public. What is more, in some cases it's not the email address that HAS been set as public. In other words, it's the email address you used to set up your Facebook account, whether or not you want that address to remain private.
The implications of this are obvious. It enhances the stalker potential on Facebook, for one thing. Such things could also be mined - albeit with some effort - for spamming purposes. Worst of all, though, is the fact that it is not what you asked Facebook to do, and is in some cases probably the opposite of what you wanted.
What can be done? Who knows. But in the meantime, please forward this message on, just so everyone is aware that their information is in the public domain even if they thought they'd opted out.
David
I know a few people who will not be pleased to find this out, although some will no doubt not care much. Anyway, this may already be a known security hole, but if so then I'd love to know why Facebook hasn't closed it.
Saturday 12 January 2008, 12:03 PM
Gobsmacked at Amazon delivery fiasco
The Achilles' heel of e-commerce, the industry freely admits, is delivery. It's the number one thing that dissuades the buying public from embracing the Web and its multitude of cut prices even more than they do now.
I myself have, unfortunately, fallen victim to delivery-snafu syndrome again. I have been in a similar position several times, but this really surpasses all previous experiences for sheer incompetence.
I ordered an iPod from Amazon early last week, when I was still on holiday. Stupidly, given the post-Christmas backlog, I gave my home address for delivery purposes, thinking at the time that there was a good chance I might receive the package before returning to work. Needless to say, this did not happen, and I then saw an estimated delivery date of Tuesday this week.
At the end of Wednesday, and despite seeing notice of an attempted delivery on Amazon's package tracking page, I saw I had still not received the standard failed-delivery card from the courier firm, Home Delivery Network. I had actually had a bad experience with this company before - again regarding an Amazon order - so I was well-versed on their inane policies of not changing the delivery address (so I could receive the package at work) and only delivering on weekdays.
So, knowing from experience which depot my address falls under, I rang the depot directly (I had to trawl online forums to find these well-concealed digits) to be told that the courier had not been able to gain access to my block of flats in order to even leave a card. Annoying, but fair enough. So I said, "Hmmm... pity you don't deliver on Saturdays". "Oh, we do," came the reply. "At the moment we're treating it like a full working day."
"Fantastic," I said. "Saturday it shall be then." I then tried ringing HDN's customer services line to see if - seeing as I really fancied having an iPod on the tube in the mornings - I might be able to change the delivery address. Worth a shot. Firstly, when I told them I had arranged a Saturday delivery, they said, "Ooh, we don't deliver on Saturdays". "Yes you do - your depot just told me you do." "Oh, let me check......... ok, a request for a Saturday delivery has been put through."
I mentally blinked a few times then asked them about changing the delivery address to ZDNet's South Bank offices. After a delay, the woman told me that they couldn't deliver there (I thought they couldn't change delivery addresses at all, but never mind...) because it doesn't fall into the depot's catchment area. Right, whatever, I'll hang around home on Saturday for the delivery.
So now it's Saturday. Wondering if there might be any indication of what sort of time I could expect the delivery, I log onto Amazon's tracking page to see...
"Jan 10, 2008 08:24:49 PM CUSTOMER UK Delivered "
Say what? A) It was supposed to be delivered today, not Thursday; B) I am not currently sitting here synching my music to a shiny new iPod; C) Delivered to whom exactly?
Back on the phone to the customer services line. "Yes, it was delivered," the woman beams. "No, it wasn't". "It says it was delivered on Thursday at 8:24pm." "Yes, I can also see that, but I don't have it." "OK, we'll have to get through to the depot and interview the driver."
I then ring the depot again myself, to be told that the package had been delivered to someone in my building - but no idea which flat. The driver can only be interviewed on Monday. Now, I live in The Big Smoke. I don't know my neighbours. But I got a good opportunity to change this by apologetically knocking on doors this morning asking if anyone had signed for a package addressed to me. No-one had, apparently.
Suddenly I get a call from the depot, saying they managed to get hold of the driver, who said the package had been accepted by someone in Flat X. Which was one of the flats at which someone had actually answered my knocks and denied all knowledge. I return to that door, and all the inhabitants of that flat are adamant that they received nothing. They seem like decent folk to me.
This is the thing: most of the people I have spoken to throughout this sorry saga have been very pleasant and helpful (although one of the customer services agents was preternaturally impassive). What's completely out of order is the system.
Amazon should have its own customer services department - I'm talking about conversing with humans - and should at the very least ensure that all its delivery services comply with certain criteria, such as being able to easily change delivery address within a reasonable distance (I think the same city counts as reasonable), and adhering to agreed delivery dates.
The idea of delivering to a different property - without notifying the customer as to which flat or, indeed, asking their permission to do so - goes beyond incompetence, and is particularly egregious seeing as I deliberately gave HDN my mobile number to try ease the way. As to what actually happened, right now I don't know what to think. All I know is that someone is not telling the truth.
A glance at the intarwebs confirms an awful lot of people out there who are furious at Amazon and its subcontractors for their delivery practices. These people will think twice about using the service again, they will tell their friends about it, and the e-commerce industry as a whole is allowing itself to come across like a bunch of cowboys.
A pan-industry agreement to sort out these issues is apparently either being thrashed out or already in place (I'm too exhausted to research this point right now), but the effects of such an agreement cannot come soon enough.
And as for me, back to Amazon's automated system to see about that refund... wish me luck...
Thursday 10 January 2008, 10:12 AM
Nokia's competitors will be...
... Apple and Google. Apparently.
That link there is to a very interesting interview on the Mobile Today website with Nokia's UK MD, Simon Ainslie. From the interview:
As we’re in more of a saturated mobile phone market [certainly in the UK], you need to expand beyond mobile phones.... To maintain our margins and maintain the best experience for users, you’ve got to move out of hardware and into experience. We can’t remain a devices business.
You have been warned...
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