So this should be my last post here :-)
2009-06-23
2009-06-12
Has facebook accessed MSN API without permission?
My wife was confused recently. Facebook suggested we might know a certain person. We did know her, but how did FB know? She had no friends in common with this person.
Then today it showed her someone else she might know. This time a guy we used to talk to on MSN years ago, again no common friends. Then soon after yet another person we haven't spoken to in years, again no common friends.
So what was the pattern? We looked at her MSN account and all of these people had previously been contacts but had since been removed - they were however all still in the "allow" list. So how has FB come up with this list of people? My suspicion is that it has used the MSN API to access my wife's account without permission. For non vital web stuff such as MSN and FB she uses the same password, so it would have been possible to access her MSN details because the email/password are the same as her FB credentials.
I can see no other way that these people could have been suggested.
Person 1:
We have stayed on a farm in Cornwall a few times now. The couple who own the farm were having problems with their computer and I agreed to use MSN to view thier screen and help them to install a virus killer etc. We used their daughter's MSN account to connect up because they didn't have one.
Person 2:
A programmer from the #Delphi channel on Undernet. Haven't spoken to this guy in years. I added him on MSN at some point to arrange a visit to his house in Surrey about 8 years ago.
Person 3:
A guy we got chatting to on NetMeeting when we first got access to the Internet back in about 1994/1995 - we spoke to him on and off for a few months.
None of these people are in my wife's MSN contact list any more, but they are in an "Allow" list.
This leaves me suspecting 2 things
1: FaceBook stores your password in a format that can be reversed and they can read what it is.
2: FaceBook have accessed my wife's MSN account for contacts without her permission.
2009-06-10
A conversation about race
I just watched this video (60 minutes long) and I really enjoyed it. It sums up some of my feelings about racism.
2009-06-05
Embarcadero should revive Bold for Delphi
I've recently been doing some work on a Bold for Delphi application. I am really quite surprised how much I am still impressed with this framework, it really was (and still is) so much ahead of its time.
Embarcadero really should revive this product and put it back into Delphi. They could make it a free addition to Delphi, or maybe even ship it with Delphi as an open source project.
Embarcadero! You have a great tool here, don't hide it away, use it!
2009-06-03
Free: One year TechNet Plus subscription
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/06/free-one-year-technet-plus-subscription.ars
Update: The UK link from this site has been taken down :-)
2009-06-02
Bing
I searched for "mrpmorris" on bing.com recently. Now on Google it would show the address of my blog as the first result, which is very relevant. On Bing it showed a page from a web chat from over 3 years ago, not very impressive.
Not sure how long this photo will remain on the web for, but I found it quite interesting...
2009-05-31
MOZY backup - update
Someone higher up in MOZY support contacted me and put me in touch with a different support person. Here is a summary of how things went
01: He agreed that 50GB was a lot to download.
Not only did he agree to allow me to receive a DVD restore but also sent it free of charge to help compensate for the trouble I had experienced with their first line support. Very kind I thought!
02: My DVDs turned up.
Being the sceptic I am I decided I would restore them to an alternate path on my hard disc. I decided I would allow the download restore to complete and then do a directory comparison to see if both directories matched.
03: My restore failed.
I went to bed one night with an estimated time to completion of something like 2 weeks. The next morning I awoke to the following status
"Complete. Restored 3.3GB"
3.3GB?
I reported this, but had decided not to persue it because I was now more interested in getting updates to my data backed up instead.
04: My next backup was big.
I started a backup only to be told that the estimated time until completion was about a month. It appeared that MOZY wanted to backup all the files it should already have.
05: Backup only took a couple of days.
MOZY for some reason did upload some files that haven't changed (a video from 2005 for example). In the end it took a few days to back everything up. It was acceptible, but still wrong in my opinion as I had only altered a few text files so the backup at most should have only taken a few minutes.
What have I learned?
I have learned not to depend on a single backup strategy!
LogMeInBackup
I decided to give LogMeInBackup a try. LogMeInBackup copies my files to another computer of my choice, either on the LAN or the Internet, but a second computer I own or have control of. I was very disapointed with this app.
I chose to backup to a laptop on my wireless LAN, the backup estimated 1 day (which is about right) but failed multiple times (probably about 8-10). Once it finally completed I tested the restore only to be told it failed, testing it a second time told me it succeeded. I'd expect a client/server app to work much better than this on a wireless LAN where both computers are in the same room and the router is only in the next room. I am guessing that it failed each time my ISP went down (which has been quite a lot recently), although why I need access to the Internet to backup between two machines on a LAN I don't know.
External drive
I decided to buy a 500GB external drive for £50. It took 11 minutes to copy my 50GB of data across. I can do this any time I add a significant amount of data (new family videos). The plan is that if I have a complete system failure again I can copy the files back from the external hard disc and then use MOZY to restore the minor changes.
In closing
Once I got through to someone with knowledge of their product my problem was solved very quickly (although not totally painlessly). These are the steps I think MOZY need to take.
01: Train your support staff!
Better still, stop using Indian labour just because it is cheap. I'd rather pay double and get better support. Double $4.95 isn't much to pay!
02: Test your software properly!
I don't think MOZY has been tested in a "total failure" scenario for some time, or at least not properly. You only need to install MOZY on a new Windows installation and try to restore to immediately find prominent problems
A: No restore button unless you first do a backup, even though you have nothing to backup.
B: Even after executing a redundant backup there is no backup history in the tab, which is very unnerving.
I have no idea why restoring my data when from 50GB at 1 month down to a few days at 3.3GB, and I expect it would be a much more difficult bug to reproduce, but this needs looking into.
03: Support the DVD option to non US addresses *on your website*!
I would only need this option now if my whole computer system was stolen and I had no external HD to restore from. I do think though that the MOZY website should allow non US residents to order DVD restores.
I was told that this is an option available to non US residents if you talk to support, but that was not my experience. I was told quite categorically that it is available only to US residents. Also, if it isn't on the website then it isn't "officially" supported, so just because you were able to get DVDs last week doesn't mean you can still get them this week.
"Oh no, person X shouldn't have done that. We only ship DVDs to the US due to ........"
I will continue to use MOZY, but only rely on them for minor restores or in a disaster (computer + external HD both dead, or stolen). Mostly I will depend on my external HD.
I would like to thank MOZY for making the extra effort to put things right. My data is understandably very important to me!
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