SMS Scammers - Action at last

The Sydney Morning Herald reported today that The Federal Court has granted interim orders against three companies over allegations of setting up false dating profiles and SMS spamming.

(Lonely hearts tricked into paying for spam: watchdog)

Unfortunately there are some companies which have no ethics which are out their to get your money. The scam is simple in that they obtain your mobile number via a false profile then send you an SMS but if you respond you are signed up for an expensive premium SMS service. (See previous posts for more details)

The proceedings began in January when The Australian Communications and Media Authority started proceedings against three companies Mobilegate Limited, Winning Bid Pty Ltd, Jobspy Pty Ltd and individuals associated with these companies.

( see http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/STANDARD/pc=PC_311593 ).

It is good to see some action against these companies and I noticed that the safedivert sites are no longer active.

Of course the telecommunications who were providing the premium SMS service were still making money. 

Watch out for them on places such as facebook - with quizs where the only way to get a result is to put in your mobile number - just don't!

Broadband Plans

Both Australia and New Zealand look set to get substantially improved internet access with annoucnements on both sides of the Tasman of broadband plans.

The Australian Plan

The new fibre-to-the-home network would take eight years to build, cost $43 billion, and give 90 per cent of Australian households download speeds 100 times faster than they currently experience.

In the process Australia will break the Telstra monolopy and stalemate in Internet connectively. 

The New Zealand Plan

Communications and Information Technology Minister Steven Joyce said a new Crown-owned company would work with private sector partners as a key part of its plan to deliver ultra-fast broadband to 75 per cent of New Zealanders' homes, workplaces and places of study within ten years.

The Government has committed up to $1.5 billion of taxpayers' money for the roll-out and expects that to be at least matched by the private sector.

Both plans do mean that both countries might finally get to experience the internet as other countries do.

It will be interesting to see how they develop. Hopefully the plans won't get delayed by politics and by big business politics of Telstra and Telecom.

Not allowed - We control what you can view

Yesterday while in the Virgin Lounge in Brisbane waiting for my flight to Sydney I connected to Virgin's wireless network and connected to various sites.

However when I tried to connect to one of our company sites gaytravel.net.nz I found I was not able to as the site was classified as Adult Content.

I was not even able to continue but presented with a username and password option which of course I wasn't able to access.

As a test I thought I would check out other sites and started moving to gay personals sites which I thought might be picked up but they were okay.

I even tried a couple of lesser known gay porn sites and they were fine.

Of course I actually managed to access our site via another means - in this case the site was aliased to another web address on our server so I could access it - but the alternative of using a proxy server would have worked just as well. 

I have emailed Virgin 24 hours ago but are waiting a reply.

It is interesting this censorship, lack of ability to complain and general removal of legitimate sites from the internet without our knowledge.

As a side note both Virgin Blue and Pacific Blue are both listed on gaytravel.net.nz with direct weblinks to their website. 

This is not the only airline filtering the internet access for lounge members - Air New Zealand's Koru club is filtering the internet as well.

What was even more interesting looking at the filtering software it seemed to be based in the USA. 

My real question is what else is filtered and why is filtering needed at all when the terms and conditions clearly don't put any liability on Virgin Blue.

I will update when I get a response from Virgin but would be interested if anyone has any experiences like this with other airlines.

This filtering is much like the Australian government filtering it is a total waste of money and effort and ultimately causes more frustration with falsely blocked sites, slower services and some big unanswered questions about what is been blocked.

Without your consent

The Australian government is drafting new legislation to allow employers to read an employee's emails without consent.

The government is saying the legislation is required to protect the internet from cyber attack.

Attorney-General, Robert McClelland, said the legislation was needed because:

"It's unquestionable that it's necessary from time to time for network supervisors to open emails addressed to people to identify viruses and the like …

"There needs to be protocols and guidelines developed so companies can protect their own networks.

I have to wonder what planet Mr McClelland lives on. Any good IT department needs no legislation of this sort as they will already have in place good security protocols to isolate suspect emails and any emails with viruses. A good IT department will also have a means to identify suspicious activity on their network without reading everyone's emails.

The reality is that in fact it is home users and small businesses who are more likely to have compromised computers which are used in Cyber attacks.

Thankfully there is some sensible comments from Dale Clapperton.

Dale Clapperton, the chairman of Electronic Frontiers Australia, a non-profit group concerned with the rights of individual internet users, was unimpressed.

"These new powers will facilitate fishing expeditions into employees' emails and computer use rather than being used to protect critical infrastructure," Mr Clapperton said.

"I'm talking about corporate eavesdropping and witch-hunts … If an employer wanted to bone [sack] someone, they could use these powers."

This proposed legislation follows hot on the heels of the proposed filtering of the internet.