---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message-ID: <20191003161304.GA2207@telecom.csail.mit.edu> Date: Thu, 3 Oct 2019 16:13:04 +0000 From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net> Subject: Hidden Fees Mean US Cable & Broadband Bills Can Be 45% Higher Than Advertised from the ill-communication dept By Karl Bode For years we've talked about how the broadband and cable industry has perfected the use of utterly bogus fees to jack up subscriber bills, a dash of financial creativity it adopted from the banking and airline industries. Countless cable and broadband companies tack on a myriad of completely bogus fees below the line, letting them advertise one rate -- then sock you with a higher rate once your bill actually arrives. These companies will then brag repeatedly about how they haven't raised rates yet this year, when that's almost never actually the case. Despite this gamesmanship occurring for the better part of two decades, nobody ever seems particularly interested in doing much about it. The government tends to see this as little more than creative marketing, and when efforts to rein in this bad behavior (which is really false advertising) do pop up, they tend to go nowhere, given this industry's immense lobbying power. And given the US broadband sector remains painfully uncompetitive in most markets, actually voting with your wallet is often impossible. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190930/08220643099/hidden-fees-mean-us-cable-broadband-bills-can-be-45-higher-than-advertised.shtml -- Bill Horne (Remove QRM from my email address to write to me directly) ------------------------------ Message-ID: <barmar-53BF1D.12214902102019@reader.eternal-september.org> Date: 2 Oct 2019 12:21:49 -0400 From: "Barry Margolin" <barmar@alum.mit.edu> Subject: Re: Australia uses new technology to catch drivers on phones In article <dc99535c-f82e-472c-b3db-6b293c46e858@googlegroups.com>, "Tom Horne" <hornetd.remove-this@and-this-too.gmail.com> wrote: > For those of you who say it doesn't effect you, then you are part > of the 0.5% of the population for which that is actually true. I'll bet far more than 0.5% claim it doesn't affect them, I wouldn't be surprised if it's even a majority. Most of them are demonstrating the Dunning-Kruger effect. Just because you *think* it doesn't affect you, it doesn't mean that's true. -- Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu Arlington, MA *** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me *** ------------------------------ Message-ID: <qn2f86$2urm$1@gal.iecc.com> Date: 2 Oct 2019 15:20:38 -0000 From: "John Levine" <johnl@taugh.com> Subject: Re: Australia uses new technology to catch drivers on phones In article <dc99535c-f82e-472c-b3db-6b293c46e858@googlegroups.com>, Tom Horne <hornetd.remove-this@and-this-too.gmail.com> wrote: > Cameras are not the answer. Forcing the cellular carriers to deny > service except for 911/999 calls when in motion at greater than a > walking pace on a roadway is! ... > For those of you who say it doesn't effect you, then you are part of > the 0.5% of the population for which that is actually true. I make phone calls from the car quite safely all the time, WHILE SOMEONE ELSE IS DRIVING. My guess is that considerably more than 0.5% of the population can do that. Apropos the comment that you can get distracted while talking to people who are in the car, it's true, but the difference is that since they're in the car, they can see what's going on and will generally stop talking if they see you need to pay attention and drive. The person on the other end of the phone call has no idea, whether he's on speaker or handheld. -- Regards, John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly ------------------------------ Message-ID: <748F2D38-01B6-45B1-9CC6-63D46902B615@roscom.com> Date: 2 Oct 2019 07:22:23 -0400 From: "Monty Solomon" <monty@roscom.com> Subject: Former Yahoo engineer pleads guilty to hacking user emails in search for porn Former Yahoo engineer accessed about 6,000 email accounts, primarily belonging to young women. By Catalin Cimpanu for Zero Day A former Yahoo software engineer pleaded guilty yesterday to hacking into the personal accounts of over 6,000 Yahoo users, in search of sexual images and videos. Reyes Daniel Ruiz, 34, of Tracy, California, worked for more than ten years for Yahoo!, where he served as a reliability engineer for the company's Yahoo! Mail service, among other roles. https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-yahoo-engineer-pleads-guilty-to-hacking-user-emails-in-search-for-porn/ ------------------------------ ********************************************* End of telecom Digest Fri, 04 Oct 2019