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The Telecom Digest for May 17, 2012
Volume 31 : Issue 118 : "text" Format
Messages in this Issue:
Facebook & your privacy (Monty Solomon)
BillPay Down, Online Banking Customers Crippled, Held Hostage (Monty Solomon)
Re: BillPay Down, Online Banking Customers Crippled, Held Hostage (John Levine)
Re: BillPay Down, Online Banking Customers Crippled, Held Hostage (John David Galt)
Cox, Verizon challenge AT&T, CenturyLink in Oklahoma (Bill Horne)
Verizon Wireless to scrap unlimited plans for 4G users (Bill Horne)
Verizon in $63 Billion Faceoff With AT&T Over Family Plans (Bill Horne)

====== 30 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ======

Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Bill Horne and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using any name or email address included herein for any reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to that person, or email address owner.
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We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime.  - Geoffrey Welsh

See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer, and other stuff of interest. 




Date: Wed, 16 May 2012 09:57:18 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Facebook & your privacy 
Message-ID: <p0624082dcbd9621f4cc6@[10.0.1.5]>

Facebook & your privacy

Who sees the data you share on the biggest social network?

Consumer Reports, June 2012 

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2012/06/facebook-your-privacy/index.htm




Date: Wed, 16 May 2012 10:32:08 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: BillPay Down, Online Banking Customers Crippled, Held Hostage
Message-ID: <p06240830cbd96aab4dbb@[10.0.1.5]>

BillPay Down, Online Banking Customers Crippled, Held Hostage
by Matthew Chan

It seems not a single major news media source has written about the 
very serious and extended outage of the BillPay service provided by 
major U.S. Banks. Bank customers throughout the U.S. are complaining 
and being held hostage for nearly two days now. Evidence of this can 
be seen in Twitter.

This began with my own unhappy experience of not being able to log 
into my Suntrust BillPay on Monday night around 8pm. I tried a couple 
more times with no success.  On Tuesday morning, there was no error 
message. Only the inability to log in to my BillPay from my Suntrust 
Online Banking Account.

As I stayed in my home office working patiently waiting for an 
opportunity to input some urgent payments in addition to checking on 
what payments should be coming out tomorrow, I finally called the 
toll-free number customer service number and was politely informed 
that BillPay was down since 3pm on Monday afternoon. Tuesday has come 
and nearly gone. We are headed into Wednesday with no indication when 
the BillPay service will be available again.

Because there seems to be zero coverage of this extensive and 
widespread BillPay outage, I took to Twitter to do my own research 
and write this update. Hopefully, Google will pick this up and 
disseminate to BillPay victims being held hostage.

It appears many people are blaming their bank for the BillPay problem 
when in reality the BillPay problem is actually larger than any one 
ban

...

http://matthewchan.com/2012/05/15/billpay-down-online-banking-customers-crippled-held-hostage/

***** Moderator's Note *****

I don't know if "Billpay" is a Paypal service, or something else. I
didn't see any mention of the "Billpay" service being down when I
looked at the Paypal site.

Bill Horne
Moderator




Date: 17 May 2012 00:38:57 -0000
From: "John Levine" <johnl@iecc.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re:  BillPay Down, Online Banking Customers Crippled, Held  Hostage
Message-ID: <20120517003857.59795.qmail@joyce.lan>

>I don't know if "Billpay" is a Paypal service, or something else.

It has nothing to do with Paypal, it's a kind of service many banks
offer in which you can tell them to pay a list of bills and they will
do an electronic transfer if they know the recipient's account info,
or mail a check otherwise.  There are a couple of large providers like
Checkfree who do this for a lot of banks.

Paying bills from my account at HSBC who I think do it themselves
works, from my community bank doesn't, which suggests that one of the
outsourced providers is broken.

On the other hand, they, you know, mail a check.  Surely it is not
beyond the ability of Americans in 2012 to blow the dust off the
checkbook and do it themselves.

R's,
John




Date: Wed, 16 May 2012 19:26:58 -0700
From: John David Galt <jdg@diogenes.sacramento.ca.us>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re:  BillPay Down, Online Banking Customers Crippled,  Held Hostage
Message-ID: <jp1nll$5ic$1@blue-new.rahul.net>

> Bill Horne wrote:
>> I don't know if "Billpay" is a Paypal service, or something else.

On 2012-05-16 17:38, John Levine wrote:
> It has nothing to do with Paypal, it's a kind of service many banks
> offer in which you can tell them to pay a list of bills and they will
> do an electronic transfer if they know the recipient's account info,
> or mail a check otherwise.  There are a couple of large providers like
> Checkfree who do this for a lot of banks.

Most of the places I spend money will take debit cards or (in the case
of utilities) generate an auto-ACH each month.  So these services by
banks are redundant (and they tend to cost money while the
alternatives don't).  The only check I still write each month is the
rent.




Date: Wed, 16 May 2012 23:34:14 -0400
From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Cox, Verizon challenge AT&T, CenturyLink in Oklahoma 
Message-ID: <jp1rjt$ndb$1@dont-email.me>

Cox Communications and Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) kicked off a joint 
promotion to subscribers in Oklahoma, offering new customers that order 
digital video and wireless phone and data bundles prepaid Visa debit 
cards ranging from $100 to $400.

http://www.fiercecable.com/story/cox-verizon-challenge-att-centurylink-oklahoma/2012-05-15

-or-

http://goo.gl/n29NH

-- 
Bill Horne
(Remove QRM from my address to write to me directly)




Date: Wed, 16 May 2012 23:17:36 -0400
From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Verizon Wireless to scrap unlimited plans for 4G users 
Message-ID: <jp1qkm$jch$1@dont-email.me>

(Reuters) - Verizon Wireless is planning to force customers to give up 
their unlimited data plans when they move to its high-speed wireless 
service, a top executive for parent company Verizon Communications Inc 
said on Wednesday.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/16/us-verizon-wireless-idUSBRE84F15S20120516

-or-

http://goo.gl/eQSLT

-- 
Bill Horne
(Remove QRM from my address to write to me directly)




Date: Wed, 16 May 2012 23:38:44 -0400
From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Verizon in $63 Billion Faceoff With AT&T Over Family Plans 
Message-ID: <jp1rs9$ok1$1@dont-email.me>

Olga Kharif and Scott Moritz, ©2012 Bloomberg News

May 16 (Bloomberg) -- Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc. are both preparing 
to roll out shared-data pricing plans this year. Whoever makes the first 
move will transform the way the industry charges for wireless service.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/05/16/bloomberg_articlesM3TGGT0UQVI901-M44WD.DTL

-or-

http://tinyurl.com/6unsjok

-- 
Bill Horne
(Remove QRM from my address to write to me directly)






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