Life in General

Are O2 Giving Out My Phone Number Without Permission?

January 25th 2012, 09:01am

Furious this morning to see that O2 are apparently providing my phone number to every website I visit from my mobile while connected to their network. If you’re connected from your mobile you can see what is being sent out in the header using this website’s tool. When I tried it, while connected to the mobile network (not wifi) it showed my mobile number.

It appears O2 are doing this deliberately, because in response to a concern being raised, they tweeted

@ Hi Lewis. The mobile number in the HTML is linked to how the site determines that your browsing from a mobile device #O2Guru
January 24, 2012 6:06 pm via CoTweetReplyRetweetFavorite
@O2
O2 in the UK

But when I got onto their customer services the representative I spoke to denied it was even happening, refused to address it, and said they were happy I raise it with the Information Commisioner’s Office.

info: Welcome to O2. Someone will be with you soon.
info: You’re through to O2 – Maria.
O2 – Maria: Hi I’m O2 – Maria. How can I help?
Simon Wood: Hi Maria, I have seen that O2 are giving out my phone number in http headers of sites I visit while using my iPhone on O2′s data network – I haven’t authorised this and I’m concerned it’s a breach of data protection. Advice here: suggests I give you a chance to put it righthttp://www.ico.gov.uk/complaints/data_protection/supporting_evidence.aspx#disclosure
O2 – Maria: I’ll check this for you.
Simon Wood: Thanks. There’s some info here http://lew.io/headers.php and your Twitter team appear to have confirmed it’s deliberate:http://twitter.com/#!/O2/status/161872584634408960.
O2 – Maria: Thanks for the info, please give me a minute while I check this for you.
Simon Wood: Okay.
O2 – Maria: Can you please give the website address on which your mobile number is included.
Simon Wood: This is the site: http://lew.io/headers.php but if it is in the header sent to this site, is there any reason to suppose you’d just be doing it for this site in particular?
O2 – Maria: I’ve check this and this is not our website, I request you to please don’t refer this website.
Simon Wood: I know it’s not your website. I don’t understand your request – what do you mean “refer this website”?
O2 – Maria: We don’t share any information about our customers with anyone.
O2 – Maria: I mean please don’t go to this website.
Simon Wood: So you are saying you are not giving out the mobile phone numbers of your customers in HTTP headers?
O2 – Maria: Yes, you are correct.
Simon Wood: Despite the evidence that you are – you won’t put this right?
O2 – Maria: I request you to ignore this site and please be assure that we don’t share our customer’s information on any websites. Our own website is safe and secure to access from a phone or a computer/laptop.
Simon Wood: Yes, but I am paying you to provide me with a mobile internet service – I want to be able to visit websites without you telling them my phone number. I want to give you a chance to put this right before I raise it with the Information Commissioner’s Office.
O2 – Maria: If you want you can contact Information Commissioner’s Office. If you find your number on any website then you need to contact the owner of the website and ask them about this.
Simon Wood: It’s not that the number is *ON* a website, it is that O2 are sending that information *TO* the website when requesting a webpage. I take it from your last reply that you are unwilling to address this, and I will have to go to the ICO?
O2 – Maria: I can just assure that we’re not sending your number or details to any website when you visit a webpage. If you want you can contact Information Commissioner’s Office and let them know about the information that you have got on the website.
Simon Wood: I would hope you are not, and I would like to believe your assurances, but the evidence suggests otherwise. I will certainly bring to the ICO’s attention the demonstration that website provides that this information is being sent by O2 in web page requests. Thank you.
info: We’ll email a copy of your chat transcript to snwood@mac.com.
O2 – Maria: From my end I can assure you about this, yes you can go and contact them about this.
O2 – Maria: Is there anything else I can help you with?
Simon Wood: No, thank you.

I’ve asked followers on other networks to let me know if their network is doing this too – because I’m looking to switch if this is not sorted. So far I’ve heard T-Mobile are in the clear, I’d be pleased to hear about the other networks if anyone’s tried them?

Update (18.14): O2 (almost) fixed the problem and posted an explanation this afternoon. First of all, credit where it’s due. They were quick, and this is an (almost) full explanation. I’ll come back to those almosts. They’ve also been very active on Twitter letting people know what they were doing, which is also to be commended. Indeed I’m inclined to overlook the fact that the “apology” they tweeted wasn’t really an apology at all:

We're sorry about the concern re mobilenumbers and web browsing, which is now fixed. Here's what happened + Q&A. http://t.co/Dm5bb5d5
January 25, 2012 3:32 pm via CoTweetReplyRetweetFavorite
@O2
O2 in the UK

Being “sorry about the concern” is not the same as being sorry for giving out our mobile numbers without permission.

Thanks to @ptr10001, @SphericalN and all the commenters for confirming that T-Mobile, Vodafone and Virgin were not affected, while GiffGaff (which uses O2′s network) was. I’m not sure about Orange, but it transpires that this kind of problem has been known about for a couple of years, and there has been an instance of Orange sharing numbers.

Here’s the outstanding problem: O2 are still sharing my number and I don’t know who with.

When you browse from an O2 mobile, we add the user’s mobile number to this technical information, but only with certain trusted partners. This is standard industry practice.

O2 almost gave a full explanation, but they haven’t said who the “trusted partners” are. It’s almost a fix, but a true fix would allow us to opt out of any sharing. And because it’s only “trusted partners” websites like the one linked above that revealed the problem this morning (being, presumably, untrusted) won’t show it’s happening. How do we tell which other networks are doing this? O2 says it’s “standard industry practice”.

O2 need to publish a list of who they are sharing my phone number with, and explain how I can opt out.

 

4 Comments »

Life in General

Wisteria Ramble

June 24th 2011, 05:06pm

Wisteria
I got very excited about this. This wisteria is considerably older than I am (it is at least 40) and it has never flowered. I remember it when I was tiny. I remember it before I knew what wisteria was. I remember not recognising it was wisteria because it never flowered. I remember finding out how wisteria can sometimes be temperamental, because of its position, or the soil, or whatever, and simply never flower. I remember realising that this was a wisteria that was never going to flower, perhaps it just didn’t like the salty Pembrokeshire air.

I don’t remember a time when it was not there.

This year it flowered.

We don’t know why. We’ve all had a go at pruning it this year, perhaps more harshly than ever and I’ve trained it horizontally above the windows. It could be these things, or something else entirely. But I’m excited because the wisteria that was never going to flower, that so many of us had tried to encourage to flower and had ended up giving up hope on, has flowered. And it looks beautiful.

2 Comments »

Cardiff

Thank You, Guardian Cardiff

May 27th 2011, 01:05pm

I moved to Cardiff in January 2010.

In March that year the Guardian launched a new hyperlocal news site “Guardian Cardiff”. As a newbie to the city (I really had literally only fleetingly visited on a couple of occasions prior to moving here) having such an engaged, relevant and active hub for all things local has been of enormous benefit to me as I settled into and discovered the place. It wasn’t just finding out what was going on (though that was the best place for it) but also who and what I should know about and follow, the blogs, activities, experts and authorities that would have taken me months or years to learn so much about. All this, thanks to the creativity and commitment of @hrwaldram, the journalist behind it. It brought me local news with speed, relevance and authority; laced with rich media and social context. Now, as the Guardian winds down this great service, the knowledge and the network I have gained stayed with me.

Why is it not continuing? Recently it was announced that the ‘experiment’ of these sites (there are others in Edinburgh and Leeds) would be wound down. It seems a terrible shame to me. Others are better placed to comment on the impact and transformation on local journalism.

But for me, if there was going to be a “Guardian Cardiff” for just 15 months it could not have been better timed. So thank you!

, ,

No Comments »

Life in General

What Harm Can It Do?

March 18th 2011, 09:03am

викWhy is reflexology more popular than iridology? In the absence of an evidence-base, what makes one treatment more successful (in terms of uptake) than another? Put another way, if I wanted to create my own alternative remedy, is there anything I could do to promote its chances of gaining popularity?

At the last Cardiff skeptics in the pub we were discussing the “why not try x” question. As in: “Why not try homoeopathy? What harm can it do?” There are lots of reasons why this is tempting, especially with “remedies” that really are harmless, such as homoeopathy (what harm can a sugar pill do anyway)? If evidence based medicine is making you no better, or worse you’ve not been prescribed anything but rest, the urge to find some alternative is understandable. Isn’t the rational choice try anything that might help (unless it’s harmful) even if the chances are so small as to be negligible?

But if you are in such a position, how do you pick just one ineffective “remedy” from so many? The question “what harm can it do?” is fine for one or two, but if you had to try everything that might help it would take all of your time and energy.

And so then this led on to wondering: what is it that makes certain alternative “medicines” catch on while others do not, given that there is no more evidence for their efficacy?

I wondered if there’s a pattern to be found in the way those that appeal are described, or if it’s just due to the lucky chance of a few well-timed anecdotal results. A couple of examples of the latter were related by the speaker that evening, Simon Singh: D. D. Palmer believed he’d cured a janitor’s deafness by manipulating his spine encouraging him to develop chiropractic; and New York Times journalist made acupuncture popular in the west after experiencing pain relief following an emergency appendectomy in China while he was there accompanying a diplomatic visit by Henry Kissinger.

Singh is the co-author of “Trick or Treatment” which surveys many of these alternative “medicines” with whole chapters dedicated to those that have gained most traction, and I’d hoped to ask him whether he’d spotted any pattern – but despite allowing extra time for questions he was so inundated we would probably have kept him there all night if it had been up to us. It was an excellent talk.

So, is there magic ingredient in the “rationale” (for example the like cures like concept and succession ritual of homoeopathy) or are the popular alternative remedies simply the ones that have benefited from a series of fortuitous coincidences?

, ,

1 Comment »

Education, Life in General

Skeptics, Scepticism and the Power of Questions

October 28th 2010, 09:10pm

I was lucky enough to get to hear Stephen Fry speak at one of our graduation ceremonies in the summer.  It was a great speech, strong on kindness, lawnmowers and evidence-based knowledge (Stephen Fry Awarded Cardiff University Honorary Fellowship from Cardiff University on Vimeo).

One thing jumped out at me, and caused an alarm bell to ring in my head:

“You know, and I know, there are more and more people out there in the world questioning the benefits of the enlightenment… that is actually under threat at the moment from all quarters… people are questioning the benefits of evidence-based knowledge.”

Read the rest of this entry »

, ,

3 Comments »

Education, Technology

A Pleasant, Open Face

September 8th 2010, 10:09pm

If we get iTunesU at work there will be many discussions about whether to have a closed and/or open site.  It would be great if the site had a pleasant, open face (apologies for the gratuitous Doctor Who quote there).  But which is most important, pleasant or open? Is it really possible to ensure that what appears openly is perfect, or nearly so?

There are (quite rightly) PR opportunities to having an outward facing presence on the iTunes store, but the real work is centrally hosting all of the material and there are other benefits to providing and encouraging making learning material available to all (engagement, feedback, and if licensed openly too then all the OER jazz).  In the conversations that take place in the many meetings that will now follow, I hope that this is borne alongside the inevitable focus on the PR angle. There’s a worry that if we have lacklustre or out-of-date material showing, we deter potential students.  I wonder if that’s the case, or whether perhaps having nothing at all will be more of a deterrent (obviously up-to-date, professionally produced, cutting edge podcasts and video would be ideal).  If students really are shopping around by trialing resources, or more likely using University resources whilst studying at A-level, will institutions they don’t have this connection with them get less interest from them when it comes to filling in their UCAS form?  Is the best the enemy of the good here?

Obviously we must pay attention to the terms of licences and consent for the material we use, and we don’t want to get sued, but I wonder if we have too strict an approval process (rather than a devolved and lightweight scheme) we will stifle the creativity and immediacy that makes the material appealing.  After all, real learning material can have rough edges, and should change and evolve in response to student feedback and the lessons of experience.  I wonder if not only is it better to have something than nothing, but also if potential applicants are more sophisticated than we give them credit for, and are ready to divine the true value of learning materials that lack that PR polish.

,

3 Comments »

Life in General, Technology

Why I Hate Email

August 27th 2010, 12:08am

A couple of colleagues and friends have been singing the praises of email lately.  I hate it. Largely because of the things that made it so popular with me originally – that it was free, immediate, that you could send as many as you liked and they could be as long as you liked.

This might not be a problem if people didn’t somehow feel they could say things in emails that they would never say in to you in person (ie venting), or say things they would say to you in person (ie informal and inappropriate, given that it’s not a passing comment but a permanent record in writing).

Here are 7 reasons why I hate email

  1. Rudeness.  People write emails when they are angry (and sometimes when they are drunk).  They are sent before the author has time to calm down or reflect on what they’re sending; there’s no limit on length or strength.  They’re not pleasant to read.  Also people rarely bother to work on their email etiquette; those who SHOUT IN ALL CAPS take a lot of persuading to change their ways. These kinds of messages are better suited to face to face or telephone conversations.  Or if they must take place online, instant messaging (or Twitter style short messages) ensure that they are short, to the point, and part of a two-way dialogue.
  2. Being copied in.  It’s really easy for people to add loads of recipients; much easier, in fact, than finding out to whom they should correctly address their message.  Too much email => too little attention to any of it, even the important stuff.  And the email gets ignored by everyone anyway, because each thinks someone else will deal with it.  If you want to send someone a message and let others see it, post it to their profile on a suitable (perhaps enterprise) social network.
  3. The illusion of privacy: forwarding. A teacher sends a note about a student to a personal tutor, foolishly and thoughtlessly saying what they think about the student.  The personal tutor forwards it to the parent, foolishly and thoughtlessly.  The parent is, naturally, furious to see their offspring so described (and there’s no context or tone of voice in print, nor any chance to claim misinterpretation).  People seem to consider emails to be private communications, unlike say a tweet or blog post, and rarely stop to consider the fact that once they’ve pressed send they’ve not control over who with and how far it gets shared.  If you’re going to be frank, instant message, telephone or ideally face to face communication will reduce the chances of your words being shared verbatim.
  4. Not being copied in. Yes, I know this contradicts point 3 but it’s still a failing of email: there may be an important message you miss because both the sender and the recipient do not realise it’s on a subject that may be of great relevance to you.  Had they posted it within a discussion board and tagged it, you could have joined the conversation.
  5. The illusion of privacy: replying. You could blame the idiot who got this wrong (i.e. me) rather than the email, but I’ve been caught out in the past when I’ve forwarded an email with a rather blunt assessment of what I think of the senders’ message to a colleague, only to discover I didn’t forward it because I hit reply.  Too easy to do.  Again, frankness is for face to face.
  6. The politics of copying in.  Once you copy in X and Y you think “I’d better copy in Z” or they’ll feel bypassed.  And you forget all about copying in W…  Then Z, who you did copy in, has also had to read a dozen messages and skimming yours didn’t notice that you said it was only a proposal, and acts on it straight away…  Again, better to post to where anyone who might need to read it can, and make sure that those who need to see it have done.
  7. Organisation.  I don’t want to spend my life doing electronic filing.  Apple Mail has a great search facility which saves me most of the time I need to find a particular message, but when attachments are flying back and forth I never know which is the latest version.  Google Docs or a wiki provide place locate the document and provide versioning and discussion around it.

I will accept there are occasions when email is the most appropriate medium for a task, but the instances where this is the case are far outweighed by the occasions when email is used poorly and inappropriately when there are better tools for the job.  You could try to educate people to use email properly, but has this ever worked?  No.  Therefore I propose email be banned.

,

2 Comments »

Life in General

Great Welsh Beer & Cider Festival

June 11th 2010, 08:06pm

An excellent evening last night sampling welsh beers at the CIA (Cardiff International Arena), a space so huge it made the enormous bar and crowded tables look small and insignificant.

Here’s what I consumed:

  • Brecon County Ale, a gently hoppy balanced ale from Breconshire (3.7%)
  • Holly Hop, a very floral hoppy bitter which grew on me, from Bryncelyn (3.9%)
  • Jacobi Dark, a malty caramel flavour, not my thing (5.0%)
  • Jacobi Light, pleasant but forgettable bitter (3.8%)
  • Old Mariners, a well balanced malty bitter from Preseli Tenby (4.0%)
  • Baggy Wrinkle, a hoppier best bitter, also from Preseli Tenby, delicious (4.5%)
  • Snowdonia, a deliciously hoppy golden bitter perfect for a hot summer day, from Purple Moose (3.6%), more please

I think there was another one not in the catalogue, but I’m struggling to remember!

I joined CAMRA, who gave me the Good Beer Guide 2009 for free.  I looked at the pubs in Lewes and Seaton and found its selection to be somewhat random…

The Great Welsh Beer & Cider Festival continues today and tomorrow.

, , ,

1 Comment »

Life in General, Wordpress

Rearranging the Dust

April 24th 2010, 08:04pm

I’ve made things look a bit different!

This is partly about aesthetics (if you’re on newer versions of Firefox or Safari it should look nice and curvy) but also about clarity and focus: I’ve tried to bring to the fore the latest content in a range of categories – and media!

A few weeks ago I was out with friends, and one said to me (let us call her Alice) “I had a look at your blog and but I don’t get it”.  She’d been recommended to it by a regular reader but “it seems awfully like a round robin”.  This prompted some reflection on my part, since I know a blog should have purpose, focus, and regularity so that readers know what to expect.

The thing is, I don’t want to have to be restricted in what I post, and I know if I start different blogs (one on the experiences of an amateur gardener, one on my views on Doctor Who, one on whichever locale I happen to be residing in) they’ll just end up festering.  Little Storping, after all, goes through fairly lengthy droughts even though I allow myself to post on just about anything.  So I use categories: and you can follow whichever category you’re interested in through its page or its RSS feed.

So I in this redesign, I’m thinking about how I make it easier for people to follow categories (I’m also thinking about my hierarchy of categories, and how to improve it).  Latest posts grouped by “top” level categories now appear on the front page, and I’ll add links for the RSS feeds very soon.  I’m also going to start tagging: I didn’t used to think this was worth investing the time in, and having not used them I felt reticent about starting.  This is an opportunity to do that!

The sidebar is now purely focused on my latest content: but not just the latest posts on the blog, also my latest photographs (from Flickr), my latest bookmarks (from Delicious) and my latest Tweets (although this has been on the sidebar for a few weeks already!)

To achieve this I’ve been using some new plugins:

  • Category Posts Widget provides the latest posts in each category for the front page (I created several instances: one for each category; I intend to write a widget to do this automatically)
  • Alternate Recent Posts Widget shows the latest posts on the sidebar but excludes those displayed on the page already
  • Flickr Photo Album (with extensive customisation to integrate it with the new theme and Lightbox) displays photo galleries and the latest pics in a sidebar widget
  • Del.icio.us for WordPress Widget pulls in my bookmarks
  • Twitter Tools displays my Twitter feed in the sidebar as well as tweeting each time I publish a new post.
, , , , , , , ,

2 Comments »

Life in General

Voters Choose: The Pembrokeshire Coast Path

April 10th 2010, 07:04pm

The Pembrokeshire coast path has been voted the best by Coast magazine readers.

Thanks to gridman for the link!

No Comments »

« Older Entries