John Topley's Weblog

April 2005 Article Archive

Please Release Me, Let Me Go

Saturday, 16 April 2005

A few weeks ago I finally got around to getting broadband Internet access at home after procrastinating for a few years in the face of a bewildering amount of choice and uncertainty over technical options. Anyway, I phoned my previous ISP to cancel my subscription and was pleasantly surprised to get through to their call centre straightaway. I was politely guided through the cancellation process which included being asked why I wasn't opting for their broadband offering, a question that I was happy to answer. There was no hard sell or pressure to reconsider and I was told that my account would be cancelled after that month's subscription had been paid. All was well and good.

A few days ago I was telephoned in the evening by the same people and asked to confirm the first line of my address—I wouldn't have minded, but they called me! Then I was asked to confirm that I really did want my account to be cancelled and would I mind telling them the reasons why. No, I haven't changed my mind and yes, I do mind actually because I've already told you the reasons and I'd prefer not to waste my time going through them again. Why don't you just look at my account details on the screen in front of you and you'll see all the details there? I know that working in a call centre probably isn't the most intellectually stimulating job in the world, but the man on the end of the line really didn't sound like the brightest sparkler in the box—in fact he sounded patronising—which made me even less inclined to spend a lot of time on the phone telling him information he already had.

After having gone to the trouble of setting up broadband and changing ISP and all that involves, why would I have suddenly changed my mind about the whole thing and not wanted my account cancelled? If I tell you to do something then I want it done unless you hear otherwise from me. I've never actually had any complaints about their service, but Wanadoo's reputation had actually increased in my eyes following that first cancellation call I made and the efficient way it was dealt with. Now all that good work has been undone and I've had to write about the experience on here!

In light of this, I fully expect them to make a complete hash of ceasing to deduct the money from my bank account each month and they'll have to be phone calls and letters and in the end I'll probably have to go around to their headquarters with a big gun, all just to cancel my account. Why can't I do the whole thing online?

On a positive note, ADSL broadband is fantastic—having an always-on high speed Internet connection really does make a big difference to the way you use the Internet. I took the opportunity to go wireless too and bought the superb Netgear DG834GT to handle ADSL, firewall, routing and Wi-Fi duties. The whole thing works brilliantly and the Mac picked up my new 802.11g network completely automatically. If only organisations worked as well.

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No Pal Of Mine

Tuesday, 05 April 2005

This morning. 7:15 a.m. Bleary-eyed and reading my e-mails. An e-mail from PayPal asking me to verify my account:

“We recently have determined that different computers have logged onto your PayPal account, and multiple password failures were present before the login. One of our Customer Service employees has already tryed to telephonically reach you. As our employee did not manage to reach you, this email has been sent to your notice. Therefore your account has been temporarily suspended. We need you to confirm your identity in order to regain full privileges of your account. If this is not completed by April 13, 2005, we reserve the right to terminate all privileges of your account indefinitly, as it may have been used for fraudulent purposes. We thank you for your cooperation in this manner. To confirm your identity please follow the link below:

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_login-run

Thank you for your patience in this matter.

PayPal - Customer Service

Please do not reply to this e-mail as this is only a notification. Mail sent to this address cannot be answered.”

—Different computers have logged into my PayPal account? I think about the fact that I've just bought another computer and the complicated steps I had to go through before to verify myself to PayPal, so I click the hyperlink in the e-mail and get taken to the PayPal login screen. And then I pause in my tracks and read the e-mail properly.

“One of our Customer Service employees has already tryed [sic] to telephonically [sic] reach you.” I hover the mouse over the hyperlink in the e-mail and look at the Thunderbird status bar. It tells me that the hyperlink actually goes to:

http://www.paypal.com.login-user43.info/webscr.php?cmd=LogIn

…which when clicked on, takes you to a passable clone of the genuine PayPal login screen.

Another giveaway: I actually received two of these e-mails, one sent to the editor address for my domain and the other to the webmaster address. Neither of which are the e-mail address that I use for PayPal.

Finally, I view the message source. The Return-Path is set to an account at lil.univ-littoral.fr, which turns out to be a French university. If this is the genuine account from which the e-mails were sent, then the sender was extremely naïve, or else some poor student has been set up to appear as the sender. I fire off an e-mail to abuse@lil.univ-littoral.fr and postmaster@lil.univ-littoral.fr so that they can investigate.

I'm horrified that I came quite close to divulving my PayPal credentials, but in the end the worse that happened was that I clicked on a dodgy hyperlink and maybe verified that the e-mail had got through to me. If there's a moral to this story then it's that in an Internet age when everybody seems to be out to get you, you have to make sure you're fully awake when you read your e-mail.

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