Seems Verizon has been the target of NYT Personal Tech columnist David Pogue for some time now. Aside from not heeding Pogue’s call to eliminate unnecessary voicemail instructions, the operator seems hellbent on charging its customers for data usage—to the point that one of its employees has actually blown the whistle.
First, Verizon redesigns the phone’s interfaces to make it easier for users to accidentally access the operator’s data services:
Here’s how it works. They configure the phones to have multiple easily hit keystrokes to launch ‘Get it now’ or ‘Mobile Web’—usually a single key like an arrow key. Often we have …read more

I did recommend that Hotmail users switch to Gmail ASAP, while reporting on 10,000 Hotmail passwords being made available online, but that’s because Gmail’s functionality is a lot better. That doesn’t change the fact that 20,000 more passwords were also made public. It’s not only Hotmail that’s been affected: Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL web mail users were hurt too.
Seems there’s an “industry-wide” attempt to phish passwords from unsuspecting web mail users. As you many know, online email account access is gold for phishers, because they (to paraphrase what I wrote yesterday) the foundation for the online existence of a lot …read more

It’s obvious that How to steer clear of money scams on the Official Google Blog is meant to promote Google’s services, with liberal linking. But at least the advice is sensible (more like common sense actually), and the services linked to really are useful. That is all.