The Art of the Steal
01/10/2022 10:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
izmeinaI was supposed to slink upstairs to do some squiggling for the last day of September but once again the lure of the serpent snooze sack was greater.
Truth be told, I have had several dramas with a stupid online course that I was conscripted into by the job mobsters (also known as WorkFarce Australia)
In the first week of August I spent until 2am trying to submit stuff which the site would not accept. Some dim witted assessor had failed me on some questions of an assignment because I had answered in my own words rather than cutting and pasting from the lessons. I ended up sending an email explaining my situation. The next day a woman rang me about the whole drama. She looked at my answers and even on the phone I could hear her eyes rolling in her head as she said that it was utterly ridiculous to mark most of my answers as wrong. Because by using my own words I had demonstrated that I actually understood the material.
But in spite of her giving me the green light, that did not give me back the hours of frustration and the feeling of banging my head against a brick wall on account of the copy paste Nazi who signed himself off as Tim.
But springtime is a time of hope and optimism and I managed to overcome my new allergy to the Big Mac in order to post for the bright shiny new month of October.
Which maybe I should rename OPTober.
About 6 weeks ago I peeked in my backpack for my little phone battery back up. It was not there. I simply assumed that I had taken it out and forgot to put it back during an occasional bag blitz.
I thought no more of it even though my phone which I bought in October 2020 has gone from one and a half days on a full charge to about 7pm the same day.
Back in January last year the recharge port started acting wonky. The cable kept falling out so I could no longer recharge. While the phone was still under warranty, the shop told me it would take SIX weeks to be repaired. There was no way I could be offline for that long. Least of all I would lose my giant Duolingo streak. So I ended up buying another phone as a back up while the original was out of action. Once I got my old Moto back, I kept the spare in the same backpack pocket as the powerbank.
The last time I put any credit on it was back in May. Of course I used the prepaid plan and picked the longest period possible.
I did not give it a second thought until the news broke last week about the giant Optus hack.
I figured I better check to get the gossip and the battery probably needed a bit of juice even though it is off most of the time.
So I went to plug it in only to discover that it was not there. No point in ringing to find where it is because it was off anyway. But there is no way I would have taken the phone out and not put it back because the whole point is that it is there as a backup. Add to that, both the places where I work do not have proper lockers with keys so it would be easy for someone to just steal stuff.
Lucky for me I did not use my driver's licence as ID because it was stolen back in January 2020 and I never bothered to replace it. Also my credit card expired after May this year so that is no good to any thieves or hackers either. I am sure that I used my medicare card as ID. Not sure what they can do with that. Spam me with Viagra and ED adverts?
But if the thieves aren't scared off by an Optus phone and if they can get past the 4 digit pass code, they could get access to my email accounts because I stayed signed in on those.
I did get an Optus Oppo phone in a half price clearance last April. It has been sitting on a book shelf for the last year unwrapped and untouched. (Plan A and Plan B are not good enough for me. I like to have at least Plan C) But now I am very wary.
Optus have not only been a bunch of slackers in letting the hack happen (they had one job...) but their response is simply appalling. It's pity parties and Kleenex all the way. Especially when it came out that insider geeks had been complaining for ages about risks to the customer data bases and the need to protect them better only to be told that data protection is a COST centre issue and does not bring in revenue. In other words, the goblins told the geeks to piss off.
I so so hope that this whole stuff up costs the Optus cheapskates a fortune. Not just reputational damage but cold hard cash. I bet if they were based in the EU they would have been a lot less slack about data security since the fines for such breaches of privacy are a LOT more than a slap on the screen with a wet lettuce leaf.
I was already pissed off about one job outsourcing their police clearance business to Equifax who had been hacked in March 2017 and were complete weasels in dealing with it. I found a work around to bypass them.
Optus have turned out to be just as careless and incompetent.
I have no idea how many fake or real messages I have got from them because the phone they were sent to has gone missing in action.
I could activate the new one by buying vouchers assuming that is still possible. No way are they getting my credit card details ever again.
I am just so so peeved that I used to choose a phone based on being able to replace the battery but now the default setting is that they are built in. Once they die you basically have to get a brand new phone.
It has become almost impossible to get by without some sort of Portkey to Cyberia. I'm an old fashioned Luddite who gets used to a particular tech toy and wants to use it until it dies of old age. That used to be about 5 years now you are lucky to get 2.
Truth be told, I have had several dramas with a stupid online course that I was conscripted into by the job mobsters (also known as WorkFarce Australia)
In the first week of August I spent until 2am trying to submit stuff which the site would not accept. Some dim witted assessor had failed me on some questions of an assignment because I had answered in my own words rather than cutting and pasting from the lessons. I ended up sending an email explaining my situation. The next day a woman rang me about the whole drama. She looked at my answers and even on the phone I could hear her eyes rolling in her head as she said that it was utterly ridiculous to mark most of my answers as wrong. Because by using my own words I had demonstrated that I actually understood the material.
But in spite of her giving me the green light, that did not give me back the hours of frustration and the feeling of banging my head against a brick wall on account of the copy paste Nazi who signed himself off as Tim.
But springtime is a time of hope and optimism and I managed to overcome my new allergy to the Big Mac in order to post for the bright shiny new month of October.
Which maybe I should rename OPTober.
About 6 weeks ago I peeked in my backpack for my little phone battery back up. It was not there. I simply assumed that I had taken it out and forgot to put it back during an occasional bag blitz.
I thought no more of it even though my phone which I bought in October 2020 has gone from one and a half days on a full charge to about 7pm the same day.
Back in January last year the recharge port started acting wonky. The cable kept falling out so I could no longer recharge. While the phone was still under warranty, the shop told me it would take SIX weeks to be repaired. There was no way I could be offline for that long. Least of all I would lose my giant Duolingo streak. So I ended up buying another phone as a back up while the original was out of action. Once I got my old Moto back, I kept the spare in the same backpack pocket as the powerbank.
The last time I put any credit on it was back in May. Of course I used the prepaid plan and picked the longest period possible.
I did not give it a second thought until the news broke last week about the giant Optus hack.
I figured I better check to get the gossip and the battery probably needed a bit of juice even though it is off most of the time.
So I went to plug it in only to discover that it was not there. No point in ringing to find where it is because it was off anyway. But there is no way I would have taken the phone out and not put it back because the whole point is that it is there as a backup. Add to that, both the places where I work do not have proper lockers with keys so it would be easy for someone to just steal stuff.
Lucky for me I did not use my driver's licence as ID because it was stolen back in January 2020 and I never bothered to replace it. Also my credit card expired after May this year so that is no good to any thieves or hackers either. I am sure that I used my medicare card as ID. Not sure what they can do with that. Spam me with Viagra and ED adverts?
But if the thieves aren't scared off by an Optus phone and if they can get past the 4 digit pass code, they could get access to my email accounts because I stayed signed in on those.
I did get an Optus Oppo phone in a half price clearance last April. It has been sitting on a book shelf for the last year unwrapped and untouched. (Plan A and Plan B are not good enough for me. I like to have at least Plan C) But now I am very wary.
Optus have not only been a bunch of slackers in letting the hack happen (they had one job...) but their response is simply appalling. It's pity parties and Kleenex all the way. Especially when it came out that insider geeks had been complaining for ages about risks to the customer data bases and the need to protect them better only to be told that data protection is a COST centre issue and does not bring in revenue. In other words, the goblins told the geeks to piss off.
I so so hope that this whole stuff up costs the Optus cheapskates a fortune. Not just reputational damage but cold hard cash. I bet if they were based in the EU they would have been a lot less slack about data security since the fines for such breaches of privacy are a LOT more than a slap on the screen with a wet lettuce leaf.
I was already pissed off about one job outsourcing their police clearance business to Equifax who had been hacked in March 2017 and were complete weasels in dealing with it. I found a work around to bypass them.
Optus have turned out to be just as careless and incompetent.
I have no idea how many fake or real messages I have got from them because the phone they were sent to has gone missing in action.
I could activate the new one by buying vouchers assuming that is still possible. No way are they getting my credit card details ever again.
I am just so so peeved that I used to choose a phone based on being able to replace the battery but now the default setting is that they are built in. Once they die you basically have to get a brand new phone.
It has become almost impossible to get by without some sort of Portkey to Cyberia. I'm an old fashioned Luddite who gets used to a particular tech toy and wants to use it until it dies of old age. That used to be about 5 years now you are lucky to get 2.
no subject
Date: 2022-10-03 04:55 pm (UTC)I also miss the times when phones came with replaceable batteries. We used to have three LG G3, and a couple of spare batteries, and it was so convenient. And indeed, the charging port is quite a vulnerability.
At least Google doesn't purposefully release updates to slow down the old phones like Apple did... Not yet anyway.
Sneaks and thieves
Date: 2022-10-06 01:08 pm (UTC)Since the phone itself was stolen, I have no way of knowing if the telco has sent me messages to say that any of my data has been compromised.
I have just been to the telco website and have had no luck finding if my number was among those that were leaked.
Some of the newer phones have some weird set up where you can put the phone on some sort of plate and it recharges wirelessly. No idea how it works but at least it is an alternative if the charging port dies.
I still have my Plan Z phone that has been sitting in its box since April 2021. It still has the plastic wrapping. Unlike my usual Tweet Stone which was not locked to any network when I bought it and has 2 SIM cards, the spare phone is locked to Optus which is the Telco that was hacked.
Most phones here are locked for a year. I assume that starts from date of activation not date of purchase.
The Moto Tweet Stone now runs low on juice around 6pm each day. My powerbank also got stolen along with the phone so that well and truly nuked my Plan B.
I am now only 40 days away from a 2,000 day Duolingo streak so I definitely do not want to lose that.
I am still in Zombie mode over there.
no subject
Date: 2022-10-05 04:50 am (UTC)Wishing you an absolutely marvellous, enlightening October <3