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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 ======

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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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