I happen to use Talktalk because they are cheap especially for some of the things I want to do, primarily make international calls for very little money.
I was never under any illusions as to the overall competency of the business for a variety of reasons that I won't go in to here but this latest cyber-attack shambles takes some beating!
They appear to be admitting that they don't know whether the illegally harvested customer details were encrypted or not.
I've translated that to mean they know some customer data were not encrypted which is shocking.
I've had the apology email. It's probably telling that my e-mail client - Thunderbird - flagged it with a large red banner with the warning "This email might be a scam"!
Clearly they will be in deep doggy do with the Information Commissioner and others (I note that their FCA authorisation for consumer credit is only an interim authorisation.)
Meanwhile, the CEO, who despite really being called Diana seems to want to be called Dido although she could too be called Baroness Harding of Winscombe must surely find her position somewhat precarious.
I'm thinking she may have to resign her position as a non-exec member of The Court of the Bank of England (for personal reasons no doubt) but I don't suppose she'll give up her recently acquired title or the Conservative whip in the House of Lords.
Now I wonder how much compensation they will be offering me.......
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On the phone note, I got an email from my son just now whose birthday it is in 3 weeks and who has been angling for an upgrade. Email has the subject Problem:
....my phone was in my pocket , which isn't very big, so it flew out and hit the floor. After realising that it had hit the floor, I looked at it and it had smashed and also the touch screen only works in the top left corner. Once I was at home, I took the sim card out to see if it would fit my old phone. It didn't. So now I cant log in to the sim card and therefore cant get texts.
I went to carphone warehouse and they said without insurance it could cost up to £170 but about £30 with insurance.
Have I got insurance?
Should we use the insurance or go to a shop to get it fixed?
Sorry!
Separate mobile phone insurance is a huge rip-off. I just bumped up the figure in the "All Risks" section of a household contents policy and would claim off that. The only reason to get separate mobile insurance is if you want to slap in a claim saying it was mis-sold so you can get the compo as it could well have been if you've All Risks on a house contents policy. (That's why phone companies started to include other almost pointless elements to the mobile insurance, like covering calls made after your phone got nicked so they could claim they were selling a product with a different element to it.) Bastards: they could just not charge for the calls it would cost them next to nothing.
Read this and weep. (It's quite short)
fca.org.uk/static/pubs/final/carphone_warehouse.pdf
How manny times is this sort of thing going to happen before the government and other bodies see this as a major threat
to the business world.! All companies \ Government bodies should be assessed to see that they have robust security policies in place with data, especially with financial and personnel material.
"Hello, is that TalkTalk? Yes, it's us again. Just to let you know we're doing everyone whose name begins with T this week, and we'll be taking £50 out of each person's bank account and cashing in £100 worth of Nectar points. Oh, and Mr Thompson, who lives on the High Street: we'll be cloning his passport too. Oh, and while we're on the phone, can we just quickly top up the Pay As You Go with £20? Thanks, bye".
Obviously you should still be concerned if a Talk Talk customer but they also mentioned all Credit Card details where stared out as it is sensitive.
Let alone, if you want a wholesale line rental and you're with BT give me a shout and I'll can always reduce your line rental, call charges and broadband for the same service on that Openreach network.