The Fox Report
Barry Fox’s technology column
Security issues
O
nline scams are getting
more common and cleverer.
Most involve trying to trick
the recipient into revealing personal
security information.
Date of Birth has little security
value, because many people post it
on social media, and it is there to
read from any driving licence. The
real value is of course in passwords
and also memorable data like mother’s
maiden name, place of birth, first car
and best school friend. Passwords can
always be changed but memorable
data can’t; and it is frequently used
for multiple accounts. So memorable
data are gold dust.
We will never ask for…
Legitimate, security-conscious companies regularly warn that they will
‘never ask for your password’ and
advise against revealing any personal
account security data. So surely the
customer relations department of a
big-name British company would not
be asking for exactly this information
by email from a call centre clearly
based abroad, before answering a
broad question on company policy?
But at least one is.
Hopeless customer support
Cellphone service provider Three requires customers to set up a personal
Three’s 1p per MB PAYG price plan – still up on the web as of 21 June 2021.
account for purchase of credit. The
account is attached to the user’s cellphone number(s) and protected by
password and memorable names.
I recently complained to Three about
Three’s action in increasing pricing for
its 321 Pay As You Go service, with data
charges increased fivefold from 1p per
MB to 5p. Although the increases came
into effect on 16 February 2021, I found
out only when my credit expired five
times faster than expected.
The company was still advertising
the original pricing on its website in
late June, long after I had alerted its
customer relations department: http://
bit.ly/pe-aug21-three
I asked Three’s customer relations
to address the broad issue of failure to
warn well ahead of the increase and
continuing to advertise the outdated
rates. I also asked for compensation
1551V snap-fit vented and plain
miniature plastic enclosures
for purchased credit being used up at
five-times the expected rate. But Three
has repeatedly demanded disclosure
of my password and secret memorable
name security details before dealing
with the matter.
Emails, largely in garbled English,
from no less than eight different Three
customer relations staff who do not
seem to be referring to previous emails
sent by other staff, repeat the same
demand in different ways:
Hello Barry,
Thanks for getting in touch about
your query.
We would need below detail so that
I can look into this query, please reply
to us with your:
• Password (Memorable name or
Memorable place)
Thanks
!
w
ne
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8
Practical Electronics | August | 2021
I have repeatedly tried but failed to
get Three to understand that this is a
serious security issue, writing:
account. So that we can help you get a
better outcome on the account. Three will
do its best to help you with a resolution.
As you are my service provider you
have full access to the accounts under
my name Barry Fox for my Three numbers 07472**** and 07477****, so it is
highly suspicious that you ask for my
password, memorable place and name.
Please now give me a full reply to
my complaint.
In other emails, Three says it has
tried unsuccessfully to phone me,
but without success, which is hardly
surprising because it has been calling
the number which is dead because
credit has expired. In any case, I do
not wish to discuss the issue by phone
because I then have no written record
of demands that compromise security.
It is also impossible for me to log
into my Three account online and
‘chat’ in writing because this involves
Three sending an account unlock code
to the phone which is dead.
As the old saw says, you could not
make it up.
What I get back is more of the same
(also in dreadful English):
Thanks for getting in touch with us.
So that I can look into this query,
please reply to us with your:
• Password that you have Set on the
Account as memorable place and
memorable name.
As you can verify your account with
the password only, For security of your
Ofcom, ICO and ASA
I put the issue to Ofcom, the body which
licences UK telecoms providers such as
The CD – Compact Disc audio
Inside an early British CD factory run by
Nimbus in the Herefordshire countryside.
T
he basic idea of a small
phonograph record read by a
light beam that could play for
more than an hour, with studio sound
quality and never wear out, originated
during the intensive development of
home video discs by many companies
during the mid-1970s. Eventually, almost all manufacturers accepted that the
best video system was the laser optical
videodisc – and this spun off the laser
optical audio Compact Disc, the CD.
The first demonstration of a prototype
CD was given by Philips at their headquarters in Eindhoven, Holland in the
spring of 1979. But Philips could not
go it alone. Support from the Japanese
giants Sony and Panasonic was essential.
Practical Electronics | August | 2021
The fundamental principle of CD is
simple – but devilishly hard to put into
practice. A disc pressed from plastics
has a spiral of very small pits and bumps
in the surface, instead of a groove. The
surface pattern is read by a finely focussed laser beam which reflects back
into a light-sensitive cell. The light beam
flickers and the light cell produces an
on/off electric signal (digital ‘words’)
which is decoded to make music.
Each pit or bump is only around
one micron in size; by comparison,
the groove of a vinyl LP is around 50
microns wide, which is the same width
as an average human hair. Specks of
dusts are huge by comparison. The discs
have to be made in surgically clean air
conditions. Philips liked to remind us
that if a CD were enlarged to the size of
the Roman Colosseum, the pits would
be the size of match tips.
Philips was lucky that Akio Morita,
the Western-thinking founder and thenboss of Sony, liked the idea of Compact
Disc. Sony and Philips signed a deal in
1980 and Japanese and Dutch engineers
worked together to improve the system.
Most importantly, they increased the
Hi-Fi resolution from 14-bit words to
16 bits. They also agreed on a standard
which would be the same all round
the world, with none of the confusion
caused by the different analogue TV
systems then used (PAL for Europe,
NTSC for the US and Japan and SECAM
for Russia and France).
Three, and Ofcom suggested I contact
the ICO (Information Commissioner’s
Office). This is, ‘the UK’s independent
authority set up to uphold information
rights in the public interest, promoting
openness by public bodies and data
privacy for individuals.’
I have asked the ICO to investigate
Three’s policy and will report back on
how easy it is to get useful help from
the ICO. For what it’s worth – and being
a glutton for punishment – I have also
complained to the ASA (Advertising
Standards Authority).
Try EE?
Meanwhile, it may help readers to
know that a new(ish) service – 1pmobile – (which rides on the EE network)
offers very similar rates to the 321
PAYG service that Three has withdrawn. I have been using 1pmobile
for over a month now and not found
any downside, yet.
CD went on sale in Japan in October
1982, the next year in Europe and after
that in the US.
Resistance to CD is as old as CD. In
February 1983, British magazine Hi-Fi
News published the thoughts of Ivor
Tiefenbrun, founder of Linn (then famous for its turntables, later famous for
CD players and now famous for digital
streaming): ‘CDs very, very substantially
distort, degrade and compress the range
of pitch relationships characteristic of
virtually all music…if people listen to
music reproduced on a compact disc
player or on a digitally mastered disc…
no real emotion whatsoever is experienced, other than irritation’.
Defence of CD is equally old. Soon
after its launch, Oscar and Grammywinning audio engineer and musician
John Eargle came up with the neverbettered quote: ‘If you have heard just
one CD that sounds good to your ears,
then that proves the system technology
works; everything else you hear and
don’t like is a fault in the recording,
the pressing or the reproduction – not
the basic technology’.
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