Tag Archives: email

Swedish surveillance

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Last bastion of progressive liberal democracy, Sweden? Sorry, no.

Not to be outdone by the UK and Germany, the Swedes are also now jumping on the “get as many repressive powers as you like, cos the TWAT justifies everything” Euro- bandwagon. According to the Register the Swedish parliament has just passed a law that will allow bugging of all comms.

Sweden ushers in bugging for all

(one commenter on the Register mistook the fourth word in this headline for a longer, although possibly apt word.)

This story might give you an uncanny sense case of deja vu, if you live in the UK (or pretty well anywhere else )

Under the new law, all communication across Swedish borders will be tapped, and information can also be traded with international security agencies, such as America’s National Security Agency…..Key members of parliament who were likely to vote against the proposition were put under pressure by their parties, according to some reports.

The Register had earlier reported that Parliament had defeated the law. Hiowever, the government got the vote by making a few concessions. It’s setting up an agency to monitor the granting of permissions, though , so these powers will never be misused then…. (*sarcasm*)

Despite receiving copies of George Orwell’s book 1984 from protesters earlier this week, MPs from Sweden’s ruling party believe the law does not constitute the final nail in the coffin of democracy.

Well, duh, 1984 is starting to become a blueprint.

An external group comprising members appointed by the government will monitor privacy and integrity issues

Oh, so impartial oversight is in place then. My bad. (*more pathetic sarcasm*)

Firefox and Gmail

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FirefoxAre there any other Firefox users who have Gmail (Google Mail) accounts? If so, please put me out of my misery. Does your copy of firefox crash every single time you try and do something with your mailbox?

I am using Firefox 2.0.0.14, which as far as I can tell is the most up to date version. I have tried updating it and I have tried updating various other components on my computer. All to no avail.

Without fail, every time I go into Gmail the countdown to a crash begins. I can view all manner of other pages, have twenty tabs open and be downloading huge files. All fine. Try to click on a folder in Gmail and it is game over. I have sort of narrowed it down to something in the scripts on Gmail causing the crash but I am not totally sure (yet).

Recent examples: I tried to create a new filter… crash. I tried to view all starred mail… crash. I tried to view all emails with a given tag… crash. I tried to send an email… crash.

The only saving grace is I can read emails and, despite FF crashing on me it actually manages to send the emails. It is, in a nutshell, a nightmare. Fortunately Internet Explorer is perfectly functional with Gmail, but this makes it all the more annoying. During a given day, I wouldn’t have any reason to open IE if it wasn’t for bloody Gmail.

As far as I can tell, this is recent. I cant remember when it began but it must be less than a month ago.

Is it just my computer? Am I alone with this madness? Do Firefox developers get to see the 30 – 40 error messages my machine sends out each day?

Emailing a Myth

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Quite regularly, well-meaning friends of mine will “pass on” an email that claims to be trying to get people “British again” or some similar bit of nonsense. Normally these are along the lines of a heroic soldier, suffering for God and country and I am sure most people have had exposure to them in some shape or form. This is doubly ironic because, 9.9999 times out of 10, these emails are actually written by and for Americans (clue is often in the spelling or claims the country was founded on Christian principles) and they are invariably tipped towards a religious argument. These supposed friends of mine are more than slightly aware of my position on both the Americanisation of the UK and religious beliefs. Still they send the emails…

Anyway, today I got one which bucked the trend slightly. It weirdly manages to hide the merest kernels of truth in a whole package of myths, but then I suppose that is the goal. I assume that who ever went to the trouble to make up these bits of nonsense are trying to stir jingoistic pride in something which never existed.

The most recent of these is weird because it isn’t about the UK or the US as such. This time Australia is the source of cultural wisdom. Titled “Britain Needs A Leader Like This!,” the email goes on to explain why “Prime Minister John Howard – Australia” is a great national leader. As you can imagine, it is crying out for a point by point dissection…

Muslims who want to live under Islamic Sharia law were told on Wednesday to get out of Australia , as the government targeted radicals in a bid to head off potential terror attacks.

Separately, Howard angered some Australian Muslims on Wednesday by saying he supported spy agencies monitoring the nation’s mosques. Quote: ‘IMMIGRANTS, NOT AUSTRALIANS, MUST ADAPT. Take It Or Leave It. I am tired of this nation worrying about whether we are offending some individual or their culture.. Since the terrorist attacks on Bali , we have experienced a surge in patriotism by the majority of Australians.’

Ok, while not a real quote it hints at a line taken by John Howard. Oddly this pretty much dates the message to February 2006, so we get the first hint that this is just nonsense that has been running round the internet like a ghost in the machine.

‘This culture has been developed over two centuries of struggles, trials and victories by millions of men and women who have sought freedom

Wowser. This is good. Again, I can find no evidence it was actually stated by John Howard, so I now suspect this is the opening line from the emails actual author.

It is nice how this glosses over how the Australians “sought” freedom – I am sure the aboriginal tribes will have a different concept of “victories” and certainly a different idea of what freedom means.

‘We speak mainly ENGLISH, not Spanish, Lebanese, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, or any other language. Therefore, if you wish to become part of our society . Learn the language!’

Again, this seems to be more an American worry than an Australian one. I never realised Spanish and Lebanese were significant languages down under. Even if it is genuine Australian it has two big flaws that are often overlooked by bigots.

First off, “mainly” is an important qualifier. Yes, English may be the language spoken more than any one other language but how does that reflect on the sum totals of other languages? Why, in such a vitriolic hate filled speech would you put a weasel word like “mainly” in? Secondly, but more importantly, what to the actual natives of the island of Australia think about this? What about their language and culture? Oh yeah, they don’t count because this Australia is one nation under God…

‘Most Australians believe in God. This is not some Christian, right wing, political push, but a fact, because Christian men and women, on Christian principles, founded this nation, and this is clearly documented. It is certainly appropriate to display it on the walls of our schools. If God offends you, then I suggest you consider another part of the world as your new home, because God is part of our culture.’

Even more crap with a side order of bad history. Australia was not founded on Christian principles. The founding of Australia is clearly documented. The real history of Australia admits no “founders” to speak of and is a fascinating bit of reading. It really is. Spoiling it with this revisionist nonsense is a shame and a lie. And we all know that not only is lying for Jesus a sin, but lies make baby Jesus cry. So Hermes only knows why the obvious Christian who wrote this nonsense felt the need to lie so much.

‘We will accept your beliefs, and will not question why. All we ask is that you accept ours, and live in harmony and peaceful enjoyment with us.’

Hmm. “We will accept your beliefs” as long as they are the same as ours is what the email is basically saying.

‘This is OUR COUNTRY, OUR LAND, and OUR LIFESTYLE, and we will allow you every opportunity to enjoy all this. But once you are done complaining, whining, and griping about Our Flag, Our Pledge, Our Christian beliefs, or Our Way of Life, I highly encourage you take advantage of one other great Australian freedom,
“THE RIGHT TO LEAVE”.’

Well, this is looking very un-Australian. “Our Flag” and “Our Pledge” scream out American to me, but I might be wrong. Now, if only we could get the aboriginal natives to apply this with precedence as being the real inhabitants of the country. If we assume for one second that this really is a true Australian view point, it becomes interesting how nations which came to be by systematically exterminating the local inhabitants are the most vocal when it comes to claiming rightful ownership of their land. Is it because they are scared others will do unto them as they did to others?

‘If you aren’t happy here then LEAVE. We didn’t force you to come here. You asked to be here. So accept the country YOU accepted.’

More irony about prison colonies…

Maybe if we circulate this amongst ourselves, British citizens will find the backbone to start speaking and voicing the same truths.

Here we go. Does a collection of badly written lies and myths give people backbone? When the original author speaks of “British Citizens” does s/he just mean the white ones? What about the vast diversity of cultures who have CITIZENSHIP in the UK? Don’t they count any more?

If you agree please SEND THIS ON

I don’t so I didn’t send it on. If who ever emailed this to me is reading this – “you are an idiot – learn to spot nonsense.” If you are reading this and you have forwarded this message (or any of the similar bits of crap) on, then you are also an idiot – please stop.

P.S I think this also goes for us when going to other countries as well!

I wonder if this PS was part of the original.

Rant about spam

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It seems a hostage to fortune to say I don’t really care about spam coming to my inbox to advertise shares or pharmaceuticals or just spill out gibberish concrete poetry. One sort of spam that makes me really angry is the “System Admin” stuff that says it’s been returned from email address x@blah.com because there was an undeliverable message from my email account.

It is impossible to know which of these are spoofed from start to finish. Most, I am told. However, some could be legitimate in the sense of actually recording an attempted spam going somehere – in which case my email account has been used to spam other people. Which is obviously much worse than just getting spam yourself because it destroys your credibility.

A man I know had an AOL account that banned him three times because his address was being used as a spam source. He was mortified and out of his depth on each occasion – he had chosen AOL as his service provider, for a start, so, almost by definition, he knew virtually nothing about the Internet.

(On another occasion, this rant will expand into the area of spam comments and how it means that we have to use Akismet, which occasionally deletes real ones as it goes into a destroying frenzy, losing good comments. as well as making us look churlish.

Not that this blog can claim to be innocent of general churlishness, but the comment-deleting churlishness isn’t our fault. The ongoing looney debate shows us bending over backwards – to the point of tying ourselves in infinite knots – to avoid being churlish to soemone who is a looney fundamentalist, by his own admission.)

Misuse of Email Addresses

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Quite some time ago, thanks to the wonder of Magazine Cover Disks, I installed Concept Draw MINDMAP personal edition 4. If you need to make mind maps and the like, this is reasonably good software and certainly worth the price (i.e. free). Part of the installation process required me to register with concept draw, and provide them with an email address.

Being a naturally paranoid fool, who always assumes the worst, I used the services of Gishpuppy to create a one-off email address for this registration, which automatically forwarded emails to my main account. If you haven’t already done so, I cant suggest strongly enough the advantages of going to the site, registering and getting the plugin (if you use FF / IE) to allow you to “Gish It” every time you are asked for an email address.

Basically what happens, is you give gishpuppy some keywords and a domain which you want to use the email address on, then it creates the address for you. As an example, if your key words were whydontyou it may create the email address whydontyou.4ry@gishpuppy.com. You give out this email address and when anything is sent to it, it gets forwarded to your real account. It is a great way of testing the water with some services.

Anyway, as I said I created the GishPuppy address and registered. Everything was fine for a few months, but for the last five or six weeks, I am getting a deluge of spam emails to that address. Now, I know I have never used this address anywhere other than the ConceptDraw registration. Today I got an email from a site admin saying that there had been a massive amount of spam from my email address (the Gish one) and suggesting I check the firewall to see if I have been hacked.

Now, as I see it, one of two things has happened. Gishpuppy has compromised my email address to spammers, or Concept Draw have. If it had been Gishpuppy, why would they only give up one email address? I have dozens registered with Gish (I use them every time I have to register somewhere so I can filter the return emails), and none of the others get spam emails.

Sadly, I can only draw one conclusion from this and it certainly ensures I wont buy anything from Concept Draw in the future. To give them the benefit of the doubt, I have tried email Concept Draw to explain I felt emails were being misused but, oddly, I have had no response.

Blairspam

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This was going to get ignored but, the BBC having beaten us to it by featuring two Downing Street mass spams in a couple of days, it will have to be said. The government response to e-petitions is to fire off a patronising spam telling you that your concern was noted but Tony is now going to explain patronisingly and irritatingly why you are wrong and the government will pay no attention.

The UK government is experimenting with online petitions. Two had massive numbers of people taking part, to express opposition to road-pricing and/or the national ID card. There were over a million against road pricing and around 800,00 against ID. (You can see where people’s priorities lie…)

Now, clearly the only people who sign one of these are those who care strongly enough an issue to sit at at a PC, find the site, find the right petition and send their name, get an email and reply to it. Which requires knowledge of the whole process, plus the will to go through it. You’d imagine that you could multiply these numbers by at least 50 to get a true idea of the strength of feeling.

It’s like cheap MORI poll for the government. It requires an address and postcode. The government can get plenty of very detailed information about which issues people find important and where they live, which could be very useful in an election campaign.

How sane is then, to reply to everyone with emails that set the teeth on edge? I was shown a copy of the ID mail and it basically said

“Thanks for the e-petition. However, the government is not interested. You obviously don’t understand the issues or you wouldn’t have ventured your opinion. ID will fight crime, let you go to America and will hardly cost you anything. in any case it’s inevitable”

Ok, I admit to some exaggeration in the precis here. But it was way too long and boring to read (Yeah, yeah, people who live in glass houses…)

In fact, yesterdays’ blairspam alerted the Opposition to the fact that the ID was to be used as the basis for a national registry of fingerpints. Funny, you didn’t really mention this before, HM Government.

Today’s news item is the road pricing one. This was worded slightly more cagily – over a million opponents, remember – but the impression I got from the BBC was that the government was saying a slight more appeasing version of exactly the same thing “Tough, it’s inevitable but it will be out of our hands and private companies will run it. Nothing we can do mate”

Here’s my response:
**********************
Hi Tony

I welcome your move into the technological world of email spam, Tony. It’s an exciting new contribution to the democratic process.

However, I’m sorry to have to explain to you that there may be some misunderstanding here about the nature of consultation. This is for your own good and it was inevitable that someone would have to do it.

Consultation is not really achieved by hearing contrary views then telling the electorate that they don’t understand the issues and that process x is inevitable and is for our own good really.

It is actually not inevitable that the government carries detailed ID information on those citizens who aren’t engaged in organised crime deeply enough to escape the system.

It’s not inevitable that intrusive technology takes over from competent policework or that the data that we provide the government is dictated by the requirements of the US immigration service or that we even have to stump up our own cash so Big Brother can keep an even closer track of us(probably private sector) These seem a lot like political decisions, Tony.

I will just take this opportunity to explain what a “political decision” is . I have to admit I’m surprised that this is necessary for someone who’s worked his way to the job of Prime Minister, but that’s one of the drawbacks of our tragically underfunded private education sector….
*******************

And what a lucky coincidence that the announcement about partial troop withdrawal from Iraq (for once, slightly better than normal war news) was leaked on ID Emailspam day and released on the Road-price Emailspam day.

Gmail now widely available

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Pointless but confusing news item – Google has now made its gmail/googlemail services open to anyone. Previously you had to have an invitation from someone who had a gmail account.(One implication could be that spammers start using gmail more.)

This is just here because, as far as I’m concerned, it’s a wierd “news” item, as I thought they had opened up gmail to anyone shortly after it was set up.

Gmail is quite good. It’s probably useful if you want an extra account to sign up for things without getting your real email buried in an avalanche of incomprehensible spam. You just have to remember the user name and password, (which is why that anti-spam tactic always works poorly for me.)

Googlemail offers a huge amount of storage space. The user interface is a bit jerky and unpredictable but that’s a feature of all webmail. It also lets you use Google talk, which is a lot like MSN Messenger in terms of its facilities – voice and so on. Last time i used it – which is about a year ago -Google talk lacked some of the Messenger additions – not necessarily a bad thing, IMHO in that it didn’t stick ads in your face, Nor did it give emoticons, unlike Messenger which offers loads, ranging from the unspeakably vile to the generally useful. These aspects may have changed. Now I think about it, maybe I’ll give it another try.

When it was first announced, Google talk was supposed to be about to offer free calls to phones. Hmm. I suspect that never took off, but it would be worth me investigating.