Weather Watch

Those of you in and around Mainz today will have no doubt noticed that the weather's been behaving a bit strange. Strong wind and rain early this morning, followed by a bit of sunshine and blue sky at lunchtime, with an extra dose of a horizontal snowstorm from 2pm !! Seems like a scene out of Notting Hill (the film, not the place).

With so much news, I don't know where to start, so let's get on with something serious.
A Durham boy of 13 has been given life for raping a teacher after a lesson. Taking place at the age of 12, it just doesn't bear thinking what the youngsters of today are capable of (trying not to sound like an old man...).

For the sixth time in three months, a gang of bank robbers have got off with a cash machine, this time using a tractor to smash through the bank's wall. What happened to those horse raids like in the movies, I don't know.

Again a repeated event. For the third time in four months, a brazilian football star's mother has been kidnapped, probably hoping for a large ransom from her famous son. So I suppose one has to be careful what type of trade to go into nowadays.

In another major success against drugs, the colombian government has extradited the former leader of the Cali Cartel to the US to stand trial, after it was persuaded by the evidence collected by the DEA, that he continued his leadership from within prison after his capture (and thus negating his immunity from extradition). This comes soon after a similar case, whereby the Farc rebel 'Sonia' has also been extradited to the US to face drugs charges.

Police in Colombia have now freed (after three days in captivity) Pacho the donkey. He was arrested after apparently causing a traffic accident (not for aiding and abetting his friend 'danny the donkey' who strapped explosives to himself in an attempt to blow up the police, apparently).

How would you feel if whilst reading the morning paper one morning you were to find that the US had performed nuclear tests in your area? Well, that's what the sudanese government had to wake up to, when they saw that on the US Congress website. Fortunately, it was just a typing error. But Sudan is still conducting tests just to make sure.

A chemistry student from the US has managed to defeat the plethora of Microsoft lawyers that went after him when they saw him selling one copy of Windows XP and one copy of Office XP on eBay. Apparently, he bought the software with a large student discount, and when he decided he didn't want it, and Microsoft refused a refund, he put them up for auction on the site. When MS filed a suit against him for this act, he filed a counter-suit, involving the ineptitude of it's staff and decptive practices. Eventually they settled out of court.

If you judge how much people hate a program, by how many viruses have been written to infect it, Internet Explorer has to be one of the most hated out there. And so it would be of no surprise then, that even users of alternative browsers (such as the very good Mozilla Firefox) can now visit a malware site that infects IE. Yes that's right, you don't even have to be using it to get riddled with malware. Whatever next.

Forget all those researchers that found cows feel emotions, and sheep remember faces. This one takes the biscuit. A scientist from the Netherlands has found a duck who likes to get it on with another male duck. Fine, you might say, we've already found homosexual sheep, that's not new. The fact that the duck was already dead though, adds a new twist. Yes, we have a necrophilic gay duck.

Well, I'm sure you have enough to talk about now, whilst entertaining some friends at dinner, so I'll leave it there then.

Wrap up well

Stop Sending Me Unsolicited Messages

I am not one known for his emotional outbursts, nor do I normally detest something so much that I feel I have to write about it here. However, recent events have caused me to change my ways, which is what I wanted to talk about now.

It all started about a month ago when out of nowhere I received an invitation from a "friend" to join a mobile friends network. I thought nothing much of it, I had previously seen so-called "friends networks" and read reviews on them (which were generally positive, I might add).
However, I was sceptical about letting my details be published in a big database that other people could search, especially with the huge rise in identity theft (apparently 1 in 4 people know someone who has had their identity stolen - either for financial purposes, or for other criminal activities where the only lead goes back to you).

So I left it initially, deciding to deal with it at a later date. Well, a week later I received another email purporting to come from the same person, telling me to sign up. Suddenly I got bombarded by these emails, this time coming from different people I knew to varying degrees (some I hadn't seen for years). So before wanting to reply to any of these (and to tell the people to stop sending me them), I decided to do a bit of online investigation (which I find myself doing way too often).

So, I went to google (go on, try it yourself, read the customers views) and searched for the company sms.ac (where the emails were coming from) and it came up with over 102,000 sites. The first one naturally being for the official site itself, but ALL the others being negative reports of people having signed up, giving in their hotmail details (including passwords!!!) and then, without their knowledge, everybody in their address books gets sent an invitation email to join up to this "mobile friends network". And if the recipients don't reply, or even if they click on the link to reject further participation, they keep on receiving the invitations.

And that's not all. In giving your mobile number to them, "premium" SMSs can be sent to you, the cost of which being added to your phone bill. I have found reports from people in the UK, France, USA, South Africa in the googled sites, and I wouldn't be surprised if there are lots more countries to add to this list (I didn't want to spend the whole weekend reading the complaints from people who had signed up - depression isn't my thing).

So, what should you do? Firstly, I would send an email to the person who "invited" you (to their proper email address, not the one where the invitation comes from) asking them if they wanted to send you the invitation. Tell them what's happening, how many emails from them you have in your inbox, and let them decide if that's how they want to treat their friends (because everyone in their address book will have received the same).

If you have signed up, check your mobile bill straight away. Any premium texts on there? How much? Take this up with your network provider - I'm sure they'll be interested to know about companies that are using their networks to send unsolicitated messages, and charging for them.

Terminate your SMS.ac account. Make sure you delete any login information you have saved in your account area, and then close down the online service linked to your mobile number.

There are plenty of organisations around the world that are there to protect the consumer. Find out which one is relevant in your country and take the matter up with them. There are also many laws that protect you (European, US SPAM email and SMS laws). Use them.

As for me, I've now set my SPAM filter to block any more of these "invitations" to at least have some piece and quiet in my inbox again. I just hope my friends take this advice, because otherwise they will be going "mobile" somewhere else.

Surf Safe