radiac.net

Up until last night, I managed to resist social networking sites. I have always considered them to websites as World of Warcraft is to games - once you start, you can never escape. And so I treated them as I did WoW - although I may have looked at it longingly from time to time, and even held the install CD in my hand, I knew that should I ever give in, I would never be able to work again.

With that in mind I resisted Friends Reunited, orkut, then held out against newer sites like flikr, 43 things and twitter. I did give Second Life a look because everyone was talking about it, and I quickly became addicted - but freaked out when I was hit on by a 50 year old Japanese man sitting in his room in his underpants using a teenage girl avatar, so I reformatted my computer and haven't logged back in since.

Although I gave in to Linked In a little while back, I did manage to ignore the invitations that people have been sending me from Facebook for the past year. But, since Leela joined up a couple of weeks ago, I have found myself increasingly tempted by the prospect of getting back in touch with friends who I haven't seen for years. So, last night I dug out an invitation, joined up, and it appears that everyone I know is on there. 12 hours later I now have 17 friends, each of whom I now feel compelled to say hello to. This is before the rest of the million or so other people I know and requested as a friend log on and confirm me.

If you're a friend who hasn't received an add request from me, don't be sad, I just haven't been able to find you yet. So go find me.

Oh dear. There goes my productivity.

Yes, I am still here. Contrary to popular belief, I haven't spent the past two weeks on Facebook - in fact, I haven't spent the past two weeks doing anything much on the computer other than work. Instead, I've been getting up to quite a bit away in the real world (yes yes, the graphics are amazing, blah blah).

Leela and I have spent a couple of weekends at our homes; we went to Cornwall to see her mum and had a very nice barbeque, and last weekend we went to Kent to see my dad and my gran. This weekend, however, Leela is on call, so not much fun today. The weeks have been busy too - late nights getting back from London, had some friends over for food, and with all the little things that need doing, it's surprising just how fast time flies.

In other news, work is going well, and in general life is good. Makes a change!

I'm also finding quite a bit of time for my out-of-hours projects - my framework is now running 5 live sites, and I've got 3 or 4 small things nearly ready for release. See, I do get stuff finished!

Imminent miscellanea: I have pre-ordered the orange box and am looking forward to playing TF2 beta after work on Monday (and will have spare HL2 and HL2 ep1 keys if anyone wants them); I am gradually working my way through the messages on my facebook wall and replying to them, sorry if you're still waiting; and I need a new mobile phone by the end of the month, am looking at the Nokia N73 and N95, suggestions welcome.

I think that's caught up with everything. Hopefully, normal service shall now resume.

I have just been rung by an automated phone system that said it was from Lloyds TSB, and that it wanted to check some suspect activity on my credit card with me. Fine. But then it asked me for my date of birth.

Purely for the next time one of Google's spiders passes by, the number was 0845 6306967 - and to catch other search variants, that could also be written as 08456306967, 08456 306967, or perhaps even 0845 630 69 67. I'm such a keyword whore.

Anyway, I hung up and rang the customer services number on the back of my credit card. I checked with them that the phone number is valid - and if anybody googling after a call is worried, it is legitimate, it is not a phishing attempt. It is actually First Alert, who seem to run fraud prevention services for a range of credit card companies. They ring you when they spot something dodgy happening on your account, so equally, don't ignore it.

In my case it turned out that they had put a block on my account after somebody tried to spend £10 with a German telephone company at 2am GMT, five times. They got the security code wrong the first time, got the expiry date wrong the second time, and although the third, fourth and fifth attempts were correct, they were refused because they were all within a couple of minutes of the other two fraudulent transactions.

"Ah," I said. "That would have been me." Well, that's what happens when you try to rush setting up an Asterisk server to forward incoming calls to your mobile, and your favourite catchphrase starts with "If at first you don't succeed"...

So that's all fine - nice they picked up on the dodgy transactions. However, the thing that I can't get over is that they asked for my personal information.

Fair enough that they need to confirm who I am for data protection reasons. That's good, protect my data, little bank minions. But surely they should be training customers to not give out details on demand?

Instead of advocating giving out personal details to anyone who rings, they should be telling me to ring them back with the number on the back of my card. It's no wonder so many people fall victim to phishers.