Category: SERVICE

USEFUL FOR PRIVATE INFO LIKE PASSWORDS, ACCOUNT NUMBERS, PROOF OF IDENTITY, and such!

https://keybase.io/

If someone clicks that link, they’ll be invited to join an encrypted chat with you. Even if they haven’t installed Keybase yet, it will work. So post it anywhere.

Signed,
https://keybase.io/reinkefj

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http://www.care2.com/greenliving/will-you-help-us-stop-online-bike-theft.html

Will You Help Us Stop Online Bike Theft?
Alex A. Kecskes
September 26, 2014
3:10 pm
12 comments

Will You Help Us Stop Online Bike Theft?
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We’re witnessing the power that a small, but targeted local petition can have over the war against bike theft. Please join our petition: Demand eBay and Craiglist Require Serial Numbers on Bike Listings.

$400 Million in Bicycles Stolen Annually

That’s a lot of bicycles from owners who, in some cases, invested heavily in their two wheels and depend on them to get around. In the U.S., only 18 percent of bicycle thieves are ever arrested. One reason is that victim and thief rarely know each other. Another reason is that bicycle theft is largely a crime of stealth, one that goes unnoticed or unchallenged. Then there’s the problem of proof of ownership — most owners simply can’t provide enough details to help investigators locate a missing bike. Even if the bike is recovered, detained suspects are often released due to the proof-of-ownership problem. This is why so few recovered bicycles are ever returned to their owners. When thieves steal bikes, they often sell them to get rid of the evidence and cash in on the crime.

How Thieves Sell Stolen Bikes

The Internet has been a huge tool for bicycle thieves. Criminals waste no time putting stolen bikes on online eBay and Craigslist to sell them and rarely get caught or punished. Once a bike’s serial numbers are removed, thieves can unload a stolen bike to an unwitting consumer with very low risk. It’s too difficult to identify a bicycle in an online listing (even with a photo) to prove ownership or to get law enforcement to act. Unlike motor vehicles (where standardized VIN numbers, mandatory licensing and required incident reporting can help locate and ID a stolen car, van or truck), bicycle registration is not widespread, making ownership difficult to establish. There is one crucial thing we can do to help stop bicycle theft: no serial number, no sale.

Demand eBay and Craiglist Require Serial Numbers on Bike Listings

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/686/977/588/?TAP=1319

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http://espn.go.com/watchespn/apps

Your Favorite ESPN Networks are Now Available live anytime and anywhere with WatchESPN.

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Doesn’t seem to work on the Mac?

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Official Google Blog
Today’s outage for several Google services
Posted: 24 Jan 2014 04:47 PM PST
Earlier today, most Google users who use logged-in services like Gmail, Google+, Calendar and Documents found they were unable to access those services for approximately 25 minutes. For about 10 percent of users, the problem persisted for as much as 30 minutes longer. Whether the effect was brief or lasted the better part of an hour, please accept our apologies—we strive to make all of Google’s services available and fast for you, all the time, and we missed the mark today.

The issue has been resolved, and we’re now focused on correcting the bug that caused the outage, as well as putting more checks and monitors in place to ensure that this kind of problem doesn’t happen again. If you’re interested in the technical explanation for what occurred and how it was fixed, read on.

At 10:55 a.m. PST this morning, an internal system that generates configurations—essentially, information that tells other systems how to behave—encountered a software bug and generated an incorrect configuration. The incorrect configuration was sent to live services over the next 15 minutes, caused users’ requests for their data to be ignored, and those services, in turn, generated errors. Users began seeing these errors on affected services at 11:02 a.m., and at that time our internal monitoring alerted Google’s Site Reliability Team. Engineers were still debugging 12 minutes later when the same system, having automatically cleared the original error, generated a new correct configuration at 11:14 a.m. and began sending it; errors subsided rapidly starting at this time. By 11:30 a.m. the correct configuration was live everywhere and almost all users’ service was restored.

With services once again working normally, our work is now focused on (a) removing the source of failure that caused today’s outage, and (b) speeding up recovery when a problem does occur. We’ll be taking the following steps in the next few days:
1. Correcting the bug in the configuration generator to prevent recurrence, and auditing all other critical configuration generation systems to ensure they do not contain a similar bug.
2. Adding additional input validation checks for configurations, so that a bad configuration generated in the future will not result in service disruption.
3. Adding additional targeted monitoring to more quickly detect and diagnose the cause of service failure.

Posted by Ben Treynor, VP Engineering

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http://www.fandango.com/

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FANDANGO, the movie site, sell tickets. (No news there!)

Pick them up at the box office (wait on a long line) or at the kiosk (wait on a shorter line).

(The AMC in 22102 makes you used the automated ticket seller. And for certain shows sells specific seating. Dumb idea. Guarantees long lines for everyone! Argh! I won’t be doing that again.)

BUT, now Fandango will text you a link to a QRcode that you display on your iPhone. 

The ticket taker scans it and you’re in. No line. Love it. 

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Dear Ferdinand Your opinion matters. Hearing about what you think will help us improve our products and services. Please take a couple minutes to complete our short online survey about your recent experience with Yahoo Customer Care. Please select the link below to complete the survey: Take the survey now Thank you for sharing your experience. Yahoo Customer Care Team Case number: 131210-081188 Property: Mail Contact date: 12/10/2013 07:01 PM     New from Yahoo Don’t just check the weather, see it. Introducing the Yahoo Weather app. The forecast is beautiful. Download for iPhone. Download for Android. Copyright © 2013 Yahoo Inc. All rights reserved.

My feedback: “I’m exiting Yahoo Mail as soon as possible and urging others to do the same.”

Partial outages, nonexistent support, and “doesn’t play well with others”.

Steer clear!

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And you pay for it in the “resort fee”.

Setup is trivial but the response time varies greatly in the initial authentication. 

Can’t authenticate to their wifi from the Kindle.

Argh!

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Dear Ferdinand:

We want to handle your money the way you want it handled. That’s why you’ll notice some changes the next time you send money.

Tracking Number (MTCN) required
for Receivers to pick up their money:

Already in most countries around the world, and starting November 5, 2013
in the U.S., receivers will be required to provide the Tracking Number
(MTCN) to pick up their money.

If your receiver is picking up the money at an Agent location that uses
a telephone transaction center, they will need to pick up the phone and provide their Tracking Number (MTCN) in order to receive a special PIN
from a Western Union customer service representative. The receiver will
then need to provide this PIN to the Agent location employee to pick up
their money.

What to do:

Senders: When you send money, ALWAYS contact your receiver to
provide them with the Tracking Number (MTCN).

Receivers: When money is sent to you, ALWAYS ensure that you
have the Tracking Number (MTCN) from your sender before going to
pick up your money.

We appreciate you choosing Western Union for your money transfer needs and look forward to continuing to help you move money for better.

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Interesting. Perhaps this to cut off those Nigerian Princes?

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2013-Nov-03

We’ve made changes to your myuhc.com member website that help us further protect your privacy and security. They also make myuhc.com even more easy to use.

What to expect:

Login with higher security
We’ll ask you for new contact information. This improves site security if you forget your user ID or password or log in from a new computer that we don’t know. We have used the most current technology to make sure you are who you say you are.
Register quickly and easily with better privacy protection
We’ve made registration simpler and better, including new security questions to improve site privacy.
If you’ve already registered, you can visit the Account Settings section to change your security questions.
For more information, reference the flyer “New registration steps for myuhc.com.”

Visit myuhc.com today to update your contact information!

Tell us what you think of the enhanced security process by taking a brief survey.

Thank you for helping us keep your health care information safe.

You are receiving this email from UnitedHealthcare because you purchased a product/service from UnitedHealthcare and consented to receive important communications via email. To ensure that you continue to receive emails from us, add the email “from” address to your email address book or safe list.

Please do not reply to this email address, this mailbox is used for outbound email only. Do not include any personal health information as part of any email communication. We cannot guarantee the security of any communication transmitted via the Internet. If you have questions about your account, claims or benefits or would like additional information, please visit myuhc.com or call the toll-free number on the back of your health plan ID card.

To update your preferences for online Explanation of Benefits, Claim Letters or Health Statements to mail, please visit myuhc.com and click on Account settings.

Update your email address, change your member profile page or subscribe to other email publications.
Please note that by opting out of Legal/Regulatory emails, you will receive these notices via mail.

Your privacy is important to us. View our privacy policy.

This email was sent by: UnitedHealthcare, 9700 Health Care Lane, Minnetonka, MN 55343 USA
Insurance coverage provided by or through UnitedHealthcare Insurance Company or its affiliates. Administrative services provided by United HealthCare Services, Inc. or their affiliates.

© 2013 United HealthCare Services, Inc.

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Come on, guys, this is dumb. For one thing, two factor authentication is nice, but a giant pain. Why don’t I get a choice what risks I choose to take. Rather, you should spend your resources making a a better website, so that when I changed employers I didn’t have to create another User id because your systems couldn’t handle it. Or, perhaps, you might allow me to pick the longer passwords that are easily facilitated by LASTPASS. Some folks are further along the curve than you are. Oh, btw, the CHOMEBOOK and CHROME browser I use don’t remember cookies between restarts. So your new method ALWAYS makes it a “new computer”. But I don’t have worry about malware. I’d be amused if anyone responds to this. 

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Don’t you just love when they send from “unattended email” or “outbound only”?

Just call, hang on line, and we’ll maybe get around to you with a slew of dumb questions. 

And, oh by the way, we’re so big, you can just go somewhere else. (Like I have any choice about who my employer does business with!)

This is why “health”, “health care”, “health care insurance”, or something else should have NEVER been connected to employment.

Imagine if I changed jobs and lost my car insurance. My home insurance. My life insurance.

Crony capitalism at it best!

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Dear Twitter User:

As a precautionary security measure, we have reset your Twitter account password. Check your inbox for a separate email from Twitter with instructions on how to reset your password. If you don’t see an email, you can go to this page in our Help Center to request a password reset. More information is below.

We recently detected an attack on our systems in which the attackers may have had access to limited user information – specifically, your username, email address and anencrypted/salted version of your password (not the actual letters and numbers in your password). Further information about the attack can be found in this blog post.

Since your password has been reset, your old password will not work when you try to log into Twitter. We strongly encourage you to take this opportunity to select a strong password – at least 10 (but more is better) characters and a mixture of upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols – that you are not using for any other accounts or sites. Using the same password for multiple online accounts significantly increases your odds of being compromised.

For more information about making your Twitter and other Internet accounts more secure, read our Help Center documentation or the FTC’s guide on passwords.

This attack was not the work of amateurs, and we do not believe it was an isolated incident. The attackers were extremely sophisticated, and we believe other companies and organizations have also been recently similarly attacked. For that reason we felt that it was important to reset your password and publicize this attack while we still gather information. We are also helping government and federal law enforcement in their effort to find and prosecute these attackers to make the Internet safer for all users.

Twitter

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