This morning I sat down to answer some comments on the site and ended up having quite an amusing conversation with my friend Nick. To give you some background he was tossing a coin at his end of MSN a while ago and saying heads or tails, needless to say I whipped him at a game of Scissors, Paper, Stone… Check it out:
the fox says: rock paper scissors
the fox says: ready
the fox says: paper
Alan says: i won the coin toss so you sure you want to play me
the fox says: yes
the fox says: that was one test of skill
the fox says: there are many
the fox says: you say go
Alan says:go
the fox says: or 3 2 1?
the fox says: rock
Alan says: paper
the fox says: see
Alan says: I win
Alan says: go
the fox says: that’s why the internet
the fox says: go
Alan says: go
the fox says: scissors
Alan says: stone
Alan says: I win
the fox says: this proves my argument
Alan says: go
the fox says: life/time/any delay in communication involves an answer and a reply
Alan says: go ffs or are you scared
the fox says: you have to beat me, if I let you
the fox says: scared? I could kill you with an axe, IM not scared
So, I got an email from a client today shitting themselves because Fasthosts have had a serious security breach, low and behold I just got one too…
We are writing to inform you that we have recently discovered evidence of a network intrusion involving a Fasthosts server. We have reason to believe that the intruder has gained access to our internal systems, and that this may have in turn given them access to your username and some service passwords.
We have since closed the vulnerability through which access was gained, and have taken steps to ensure that this cannot happen again.
We therefore recommend, as a precaution, that you now change the control panel login password on your account.
I have tried to avoid Fasthosts for hosting for about 4 years as they were really bad for hammering bandwidth costs on you etc, I used to run a dedicated server from them and to be honest I was never that happy with the way they dealt with me let alone the extra charges. Some might say it was my own fault for not picking a larger package but there you go, we live and learn but did I really?
Maybe I have been negligent in my activities but somehow they slipped back into my life in the form of UKreg and domain registration, today I too am having to deal with the fact that my details have been compromised on the servers of who claim to be the number 1 hosting company in the UK and what can I do? I am going to have to dig into the coffers and move my domains to someone else to deal with because apparently my data is not safe (I doubt it is truely safe anywhere) and now someone potentially has potentially had access to sensitive info.
I feel sorry for those of you out there that have Fasthost reseller accounts, make sure you bill Fasthosts for any time you spend cleaning up their mistake. They claim in their email to me that they have cleaned up and that it will never happen again… it shouldn’t have happened in the first place!
So how safe is your data? I hope this little wake up call for me can in some way help you avoid getting into a similar situation which brings me to another point… Beta trial accounts.
How many of you out there have been sucked into the Web 2.0 phenomena? How many of you have a beta account for 1 new wizz bang web application? How many of you have 2? I’m going to put my money on you all having more than 2 and that you only ever use a handful of passwords for them or heaven forbid even just one, and I would pose the question how many of those do you actually use?
Scary to think of your identity being sprinkled across the web in many shapes and forms for some nefarious character to tamper with or even worse steal, I know I am going to set aside some time and cull my inactive accounts and take a close look at what I use on a day to day basis and what I really need to be using.
Boom is over… time to get sensible… I kinda stopped reading Tech Crunch a while ago as buzzwords piss me off and thr wr too many app names ending in “r”.
Oh well, rant over, I hope Fasthosts really do lose a good market share and that some smaller better web hosting companies get a look in and I hope you guys get a fright from my fright and take an introspective look at what you do with your data and who holds onto it.
Take care and don’t sign up to anything I wouldn’t
I am probably late with this one but I thought I should share it seeing as it just rocked my socks about half an hr ago, I would have posted it sooner but I was watching people do amazing things and restoring my faith in the human race. More on that in my next post but until then, feast your eyes on this…
I know this animal / robot thing has been done before and possibly over used but for some reason this kinda leapt out at me, I especially like the bit where the rear wheels turn into legs.
Hi lovely readers of Az, Caz & Co, I am Alan’s beloved photoshoped monkey and I am sorry that you are all missing me. I have been working on standing in the corner of Az, Caz & Co for over a year now and Alan decided to give me a rest and paid for me to go on a little holiday whilst he lays down the dust sheets, cracks open the paints and does a little work around the place.
Don’t worry, I really like working for Alan and I will be back… Until then I will try and send you some postcards.
Just a quick post to explain the drastic change of appearance, I have decided to whip things into shape and live dev this site into a new format using Dereks beautiful Grid Focus as a starting point.
You’ll have to excuse the non styled basics and redundant linkage for about 8 hrs till I am done with work etc then I am going to give it a quick lick of paint and see where it takes me.
Hat tip to Gnorb for pointing me in the direction of a nice starting point.
Am looking forward to this
This is a test
Contrary to popular belief, Lorem Ipsum is not simply random text. It has roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC, making it over 2000 years old. Richard McClintock, a Latin professor at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, looked up one of the more obscure Latin words, consectetur,
