It's a stupid name: TSB is an acronym for Trustees Savings Bank and then some idiot, years ago, decided to add "Bank" to the acronym, in a move that rivals the equally stupid "ATM machine." But that's not the reason this heavy-duty spam-scam mailout is an obvious fraud. Warning: the content is highly plausible and the mail constructed to avoid even aggressive anti-spam filters.
If the current state of affairs in Italian politics were to be in any other country, it would be a national, even regional and, perhaps even, global crisis. But it's not. In Italy politics is so bizarre that even a Gallic shrug, a Malaysian "it's Malaysia" or a Japanese polite turning away would be over-reactions.
Lessons in taking screenshots. After I wrote about Skype's pricing scheme, I logged onto Skype to see a message saying that my transaction remained outstanding. I clicked on it and was surprised: it had been adjusted to show that I should pay GBP10, not GBP12. OK, I thought, click to buy. How I wish I'd been realistic (some may say sceptical) and taken a screen shot. Previous story: Credit card companies should beware of payments to Skype.
Ben Jayaweera, of Upper Mt Gravatt, has today appeared in the Brisbane Magistrates' Court charged with six counts of fraud involving approximately AUD5.9 million.
It hasn't taken long. The General Data Protection Regulation came into force across the EU only on Friday. By Sunday evening, "Dejan Marinkovic" of "The Resort Group Global" had, apparently, decided that the way around it is simple: just put the name of the company in the body of the e-mail and, thereby, establishing that, as business correspondence, the mail fell outside the GDPR. His premise? That, if the addressee (who, incidentally, is personally identifiable from the e-mail address) clicks on a link, there will be benefits. But then it becomes even more strange.
In general, newspapers have taken the view that if people sit in the pub, read headlines and/or articles and then discuss them that the content of that discussion is entirely outside the responsibility of the newspaper. That has been tempered with laws, rules and regulations that cover inflammatory content of one kind or another but so long as the original article stays within the lines of the permissible (no matter how close it comes), the view has held pretty much intact for generations. But if the article is on the internet and the discussion is not within a handful of people muttering into their beer but is available to the...
A notice from the USA's Office of Business, Industry and Security (BIS) starts "Control of Firearms, Guns, Ammunition and Related Articles the President
Determines No" but the pleasure of reading that is lost when, on scrolling down, the unfortunate spacing in the notice reveals that it's an incomplete sentence and it goes on "Longer Warrant Control under the United States Munitions List (USML)." It's a proposal, published as a "Commerce proposed rule, Control of Firearms, Guns, Ammunition and Related Articles the President Determines No Longer Warrant Control under the United States Munitions List (USML) published in the Federal Register on 24 May, 2018." Far from the idea that Trump might be having second thoughts about gun control, he actually plans to arm the world with the very weapons that American nutcases use to massacre schoolchildren and others. Or does it?
Yesterday, we were supportive of Westpac in a case where adverse social reaction did not take account of the realities of the case. Today, they are getting a well deserved kicking from Beach, J in the Australian High Court. His Honour's language bordered in the intemperate in his obvious anger.
In Australia at present, there is a culture of attacking banks no matter what. Any handy stick can be used to beat them with. A case involving Westpac and a seriously ill disabled woman demonstrates that the craze has gone too far.
As the US bill to roll-back the Dodd-Frank reforms that were designed, amongst other things, to stabilise banks to protect them from failure is sent to the President, who promoted it, for signature, BankingInsuranceSecurities.com points out one statistic that might indicate how successful Dodd-Frank has been and why the changes increase the USA's risk profile.
If a little shop told its customers that they could have a special offer that cost x, then denied them when they arrived, then told them the price was actually 15% more than x, then when the bill arrived it was for a further 20%, credit card companies would be deluged with complaints and chargebacks. But that is exactly what Microsoft's Skype does, as Nigel Morris-Cotterill demonstrates.
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