A secret no more

So much for keeping my marathon training a secret: I let it slip after Amber caught me jogging, just in time to come along. “Come on Cringe, its only five miles. That is easy,” Amber said. True, but five very hilly San Francisco miles is enough to make me feel old.

Registry stumpers

One of my spies has a bunch of domain names scattered around, including one at Register.com. He wanted to switch the DNS, but it failed cryptically a few times. So he eventually called and talked to an apparently competent person in tech support who explained that there is serious breakage following the transfer of the .org registry — to the extent that Register.com can’t do any transfers for the time being. What’s worse is that my spy asked for an ETA on the fix and they couldn’t even give him one.

That is not to say that Register.com is the only domain registrar with issues. Yet another gumshoe was trying to buy a new domain name through Network Solutions, and when he opened his user account, he found the credit card information for another company. When he went to reset information, he found the other company’s contact’s e-mail information and the last four digits of his social security number. “My question to Network Solutions is, if his credit card info is in my account, where’s my credit card info?” the gumshoe wondered.

eBaygive-aways 

eBay security chief Andrew Sullivan recently gave a speech at the CyberCrime 2003 conference, and said that eBay’s policy is to give all the information eBay has on any user to any law enforcement individual who asks for it. Name, address, credit card number, everything they’ve bought, sold, or browsed on eBay. What about privacy? 

Dude, you’re getting a used Dell

Another spy of mine ordered some “new” computers in December of last year. When he went to set up one of them, the spy found an Asset Tag proving that particular PC had been leased to a major medical corporation in 2002. A simple mix-up that one might figure Dell would correct immediately? Not so fast.

My spy contacted his sales rep via a number of channels, but to no avail — not one return call or e-mail. “When you tell the reps you are recording their answers, like the way they record you, they just hang up on you,” sir spy said.

To boost my marathon morale, Amber came over with a juicer. “This will give you a solid dose of vitamins every day,” she said, while pouring me a mixture of berries and oranges. Geez, what am I getting myself into?