The Weekly Round-Up: 24.06.05

Of course the British author wasn't talking about sophisticated modern phishing scams but computer users are being warned to be on the look out for scams which will draw upon a number of factors to make themselves look increasingly convincing.

Perhaps the most notable factor is the timeliness of a major credit card breach at a third party payment processing company which led to the theft of up to 40 million credit card account details.

The situation this creates is 40 million customers worrying whether they may have been a victim of fraud.

This makes easy pickings for phishers.

Fortunately most of us nowadays are aware of the threat posed by phishing but as Charles Caleb Cotton would point out, if he were alive today (which would admittedly make him a none-too-sprightly 225-years-old) there will be those who will fall into the trap - so beware.

And that isn't the only worrying data breach this week as readers of The Sun - and those who have seen the story plastered elsewhere - may well be aware.

The red top rag claims one of its undercover journalists was able to obtain a list detailing 1,000 British bank account details, with names, passwords and account numbers, from a call centre worker in Delhi.

The affected banks are Barclays, HSBC and NatWest, according to the paper.

In fact, so serious a breach was this that The Sun stopped short of asking Danni, 18, from Coventry - yesterday's 'page fwee stunnah' - to provide the usual one line of trite commentary the topless models often offer up on the day's breaking news... or so the Round-Up has been told.

Of course before the sparks fly the Round-Up thinks it is important to point out that if The Sun had hung around outside a call centre in the UK and made an equivalent cash offer - the best part of a year’s wages - they could probably have gained the same kind of list.

But that wouldn't be as newsworthy would it? Doubtless a Sun reader suspicious of 'sending our jobs to India' would far rather read about dishonest Indians than dishonest Brits but unfortunately there is good and bad in both countries.

This doesn't prove our data isn't safe with Indian call centres, it proves there are individuals out there who in return for almost a year's wages will commit a crime - and that is clearly true of all walks of life in all countries.

Yes it's worrying, of course it is. But we have to make sure we maintain the realisation that it is crime and data theft which is worrying, not the emotive and amorphous threat of 'foreigners'.

The Round-Up heard stories a while ago from one large UK bank - perhaps understandably unaffected by this scandal - about the lengths some will go to in order to prevent issues such as this.

The bank in question makes all new recruits go through a rigorous initiation process which even includes being confronted with graphic pictures of the inside of an Indian prison and a clear explanation of the fact that is where anybody will end up who attempts to compromise the data integrity of the organisation.

Apparently it is very effective. Employees are also forbidden from entering the organisation with any kind of removable media or storage devices - a rule which is apparently well-enforced.

So clearly there is more the banks could be doing and that should be the angle here - the whereabouts of the call centre and the nationality of the operative are irrelevant.

In fact, with the banks making considerable savings due to offshoring, they should have a little more cash knocking about to ensure they do it responsibly and efficiently. (Would you change your bank if they lost important private data? Take our one click poll and let us know.

The case is now being investigated by Interpol.

Also landing in trouble with the law this week is 14-year-old Emily Price, allegedly a serial file-sharer of copyrighted music.

But due to her age, Emily is safeguarded from prosecution and instead it is her mother being lined up to take the heat.

Sylvia Price has been hit with a £2,500 fine and given until 1 July to pay thanks to her daughter who may possibly be seeing her pocket-money stopped until some time around the year 2035.

Price claims she is unable to pay before the 1 July deadline but if she defaults on the fine she will see it rise to £4,000 - which makes absolutely no sense at all. If somebody cannot pay £2,500 by next week the likelihood they will be able to pay £4,000 the week after is pretty slight.

However, the BPI - the record industry’s trade association - has little sympathy in this case and nor does it believe any dispensation should be made on the grounds of the offender's age.

In fact, 90 per cent of the people the organisation is going after are under the age of 18, according to the BPI, which must be glowing with pride at that fact.

A spokesman for the BPI said: "We don't do any screening for political correctness. Whether it's a 12-year-old or a 50-year-old man stealing a CD from a shop, you wouldn't expect them to be treated any differently."

Actually, we would.

Moving on but still on legal matters, over the past week you would have had to be living on the moon to not have heard about the email leaked out of City law firm Baker & McKenzie detailing a particularly petty row over a £4 dry cleaning bill.

At the heart of the issue is a ketchup stain - which isn't everybody's idea of a 'saucy' email but it is certainly controversial.

Secretary Jenny Amner returned from some time off work after her mother's funeral to find an email from senior associate Richard Phillips requesting £4 and claiming the secretary had accidentally splashed some ketchup on his trousers prior to heading off for "the more pressing issue" of attending her mother’s funeral.

Well done him for requesting the £4 and not just demanding her resignation - the level-headed humanitarian.

Amner was particularly unimpressed, not just because of the perceived insensitivity but also because of the differences between their salaries in light of such petty squabbling, and cc’d many of her colleagues in on her biting reply.

"With reference to the email below, I must apologise for not getting back to you straight away but due to my mother's sudden illness, death and funeral I have had more pressing issues than your £4," she wrote.

Ouch. (Though it doesn't make his trousers any cleaner, does it.)

"I apologise again for accidentally getting a few splashes of ketchup on your trousers," she added, remaining far more polite than many others would have done in the face of such a ridiculous request.

"Obviously your financial need as a senior associate is greater than mine as a mere secretary."

Amner informed Phillips, who earned £150,000 per year, that she had declined an offer from colleagues to start a collection to raise the £4 (The Round-Up hopes they would have called it Ketchup Aid - and perhaps laid on a concert) but told him there would be £4 on her desk which he was welcome to come and collect.

It is unclear whether he had the bare-faced cheek to make the walk of shame through an office of colleagues alerted to the pettiness afoot but what is clear is that life for Phillips was about to get a lot worse as his embarrassment went global.

The email spread from Amner's colleagues, to their peers and then through the worldwide legal community and beyond, like wildfire. By last weekend the story was already on national news programmes.

Baker & McKenzie told the BBC it was looking into ways of resolving the issue amicably.

But Phillips had apparently already tendered his resignation. The law firm told the BBC his resignation had nothing to do with the ketchup stain squabble hitting the headlines and said Phillips will leave in September and will be taking time off "to study".

Amner, who reportedly did pay the bill eventually, is currently on paid leave and is said to be considering her options.

So all very amicable then. One is leaving and the other is currently on gardening leave, claiming she has been made to feel isolated by her colleagues, according to reports.

The Round-Up is sure Phillips made a very compelling argument for it being the principle and not the cash which was important but it sounds like it may have been an accident and the Round-Up would seriously encourage everybody to realise life is too short and too important to spend hours worrying about such things.

It is likely Phillips used email as his medium of choice because of the 'fire and forget' idea of it enabling you to say something you might not be able to say face to face.

Perhaps he even regretted sending the email, maybe even shortly after hearing that Amner had lost her mother. However, does that make it right or does it not in fact illustrate to us quite neatly the fact we should possibly keep some things unsaid.

And if you can't say it to somebody's face then perhaps it's something you shouldn't even type.

Let's not become a generation of small-minded digital cowards.

Certainly speaking his mind this week was Dr Jim Goodnight, CEO of business intelligence software company SAS, who was in Lisbon for his company's annual European shindig.

Goodnight took the chance to lay into Business Objects, Cognos, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP during an outspoken keynote. Given a bit more time he'd probably have taken on the rest of the IT industry but it was only a three-day event (not in the equestrian sense).

Of SAP he said: "Germany is the poor man of Europe right now and we've done some studies which show there is a high correlation between [countries with struggling economies] and those with a high penetration of SAP."

Turning his double-barrelled wit gun on Oracle, he said: "Oracle doesn't mind shipping with hundreds of thousands of bugs. They cut their R&D costs by letting their customers find those bugs."

If his company wasn't on the receiving end, you'd have to suspect Larry Ellison himself would be proud of such pointed wit. Don't forget Larry gave the world a famous slight on IBM, writing them off as little more than "guys with glue". Ellison also savaged the benevolent efforts of other software company owning billionaires (whoever could he mean?).

"I don't issue a press release every time I donate money. I have no PR department around my medical foundation," said the Oracle boss some time ago in the dim and distant.

Another famous polemic pugilist is Sun boss Scott McNealy who might suspect Goodnight's gaze is on his own crown of outspokenness. McNealy's finest hour was doubtless describing Microsoft's bosses as "Ballmer and Butthead" - so Goodnight still has some way to go.

But unlike lone guns Ellison and McNealy, the SAS boss has a partner in crime.

Art Cooke, president international at SAS, also took to the stage and warmed to the theme of knocking other firms, adding that BW, the SAP (Business Warehouse) brand, actually stands for 'Bitte Warten' - or 'please wait' in its native German due to the time it takes to produce the reports its customers need.

Cooke also managed the most rapid contradiction ever in public speaking.

SAS celebrates it 25th anniversary in Europe this year and this was a subject Cooke addressed during a keynote session.

"We set up in England in 1980," began the affable giant. "And then we moved our European headquarters to Heidelberg in 1982 and we haven't looked back since."

Fair enough, that's good to hear but he probably should have thought twice about beginning his next sentence: "I was looking back the other day and... "

See what you've done there? You said you'd not done that since 1982.

But to give SAS their due, despite some criticism from a silicon.com staffer of a 'press conference' during which the company's own senior VP of marketing asked three times more questions than the four questions allowed of around 100 international press, they did rather sportingly agree to make a sizeable contribution to CARE International, the charity silicon.com is raising money for with our Three Peaks challenge next month.

So thanks SAS, and a big thank you to everybody else who responded to last week's appeal in the Round-Up. If you haven't donated yet and would like to, don't worry there's still time. Just visit: http://www.justgiving.com/silicon3peaks

And finally, somebody has found a use for an Mac Mini (The Round-Up was tempted briefly to just put a full-stop there but didn't... ) which will doubtless draw more fire from the frothing-mouthed Mac faithful who we have already angered once this week.

One blasphemer has taken out the guts of his machine and turned it into a toilet roll dispenser.

To those who think each and every Mac should ship with its own temple in which to rest it upon a silken cushion and pray to it daily, such loo-based heresy may be enough to force a seizure.

The site which reports the find claims some may consider it "the first genuinely constructive use of Apple hardware in years"... but the Round-Up couldn't possibly comment.

But this is far from rocket science, the French brains behind the repurposing simply opened the case, threw the innards 'dans la poubelle' and then put the case back together with a toilet roll inside, cascading out the hole in the front previously occupied by the CD drive.

(Far be it from the Round-Up to comment on the beauty of cultural diversity but if the French really want to innovate in the smallest room they might like to start by thinking about installing proper toilets, rather than relying upon a random hole in the floor which the rest of the world considers a bizarre and frankly unnecessary horror.)

Until next week the Round-Up is now off to weigh-up the pros and cons of the English being good again at cricket and still rubbish at tennis... before deciding that it's definitely a reason to be cheerful because tennis is a beach game, not a proper sport.