Google complicit in UK premium rate phone number scams?

So you need a phone number fast right, and you know that if you call directory enquiries from your mobile or land line you are going to get charged for the call, so you Google the service you need,..

As an example let’s use the UK National Health Service direct health advice line, NHS Direct. This line is an 0845 number that’s free to call from a land line. You Google it and the first result is this site :

http://www.medhelpline.co.uk/nhsdirect.html

which offers to connect you to NHS Direct through an 0906 number which is actually PREMIUM RATED! (Only the words ‘premium rated’ do not appear anywhere near the number itself, Well you’d think that most people would not fall for this scam, but at 4am in the morning, perhaps your having palpitations? taken too much of your medication? or are having other symptoms that have you in a panic?)

Looking closer at the Google search we can see that the legitimate website entry NHS Direct, has been pre-empted by a paid avert which is barely distinguishable from the genuine search results. The scammers have used Google Adwords advertising to gazump the real service, and the spoof website even uses the same style as the legitimate one. This is just one example among many.

Now the question is , is Google aware that its adsense program is being exploited in this way or are they quite happy to continue making revenues from such scam advertising? The advertising that appears in your search results is clearly being deliberately disguised as a legitimate search result, google itself exploiting the tendency for users to take the first result in the list. And the next question to ask google is , what if any checking are they doing on sites advertised in this way?

If you have been scammed into calling a premium rate number you can report the scam to Actionfraud.org.uk

General Increase in benefits : UK Government Claw backs

From 12th April 2012 there is scheduled to be an increase in the General Level of Benefits, this will mean that for example the basic rate of Incapacity benefit, long term will become £99.15 per week. The incapacity age addition will be £5.90 making to total weekly benefit for a single sick and disabled claimant over the age of 45 to be £105.05 per week, from a previous figure of £99.85

However those who are also in receipt of housing benefit, possibly the majority of such claimants face a considerable government claw back which will come into effect on 13th August 2012 when protection ends against the governments reduction in LHA to £80.77 This will be the second such reduction in LHA which will impact the sick and disabled during this government. Housing benefit is an essential form of income for benefit claimants and is being systematically targeted by this government for cuts. Housing benefit is calculated using a figure determined by government of how much the law says a sick and disabled person needs to live on, this figure is £67.50 plus £28.85 for sickness or disability. £96.35 in all.  If this figure is not increased on 12th April, or by 13th August sick and disabled people face a considerable reduction in the total amount of benefit awarded.

Housing benefit awarded prior to 12 April :         £84.02

Housing benefit projected after 12 April if the amount the law says a sick and disabled person need to live on remains the same :  £80.64

Housing benefit projected after 13th August :      £75.11

The net effect of all this is that the general increase in benefits for all those on incapacity benefit of £5.20 per week stands to be offset by a reduction of housing benefit of £8.91 per week, leaving them on average £3.71 per week worse off DESPITE the general increase in benefit. And that sick and disabled people will now have to pay on average £12 per week towards their rent to make up the housing benefits shortfall. Where prior to the incumbency of this UK government LHA in most cases covered all of their rent at its previous level.

This is simply the final straw in this governments’ scapegoating of the sick and disabled, the amounts seem tiny until you look at them as a percentage of weekly income, in this case a reduction of 11% during the course of this government.

The Great Mobile Broadband Rip-off

Are you a mobile broadband user? If you are a heavy user of mobile broadband and this is your only form of connection you are doubtless quite happy paying £10-£15 per month for your 3-5 GB data allowance, after all wherever you are the connection is perfect and and the data allowance you get for the money is more than enough, isn’t it? No? Surely you jest, surely mobile broadband is just as good as fibre optic in terms of connectivity and price and even better because you can use it at any time and place? No? so are you trying to say that Mobile Broadband suppliers have been Bullshitting us and ripping us off? Well who would believe it!

Of course if you are a light or occasional user of Mobile Broadband you well know that you are being ripped off. If Mobile Broadband is something that you only really need when you are not at home or in the office, something that you would only need to use two or 3 times a year because you have wireless broadband at home or in the office then you like me have experienced having to top up every time you want to connect using your dongle, usually £10 at a time for a data allowance that will expire in 30 days. But to be fair most carriers are now offering a pay-per-day option, usually £2 for 250MB that expires in 24 hrs. That sounds fair doesn’t it? after all that’s £60 per month for daily use and a data allowance of 7GB. Humm well maybe not so fair when you put it like that! When you put it like that it sounds like blatant usury.

Here’s an example of what recently happened to me : My Cable connection went out at peak time on Saturday afternoon, so I phoned them and they said it was an area fault and it should be fixed within 24 hours. Ok so that’s 24 with no TV and no broadband ,. so I got my mobile broadband dongle out (3 mobile) and of course  I had no data allowance left cause it had expired, it being some months since I had needed to use it. So what are my options? well I can pay £10 for a month of pay as you go, or £3 for one days allowance of 500MB. Fine they said my broadband will be back in 24 hrs so I paid my £3 and got connected. THEN my TV came back online, THEN my cable broadband came back online,..

IN 24 hours my data allowance will have EXPIRED and I wont have actually used more than a few bytes ,. To say I am unhappy with 3 Mobile Broadband is the understatement of the century!

Mobile Broadband data allowance expiry is the biggest rip off thought up by the mobile communications industry, these people need to be sent to jail for fraud and usury. And what is OFCOM doing about it ? well looking on their website there is NOT EVEN AN OPTION to complain about this. Thanks bunches OFCOM, you were no help at all.

Windows live writer – test post

This is a test post , the idea is to verify that I have configured Windows Live Writer correctly to access and post to my blog.

You too can do this if you have Windows Live installed on your PC, I have been using it for some time however when my old laptop blew up , died a death and became defunct I  lost this functionality until now that is. Unfortunately all my drafts etc are now on the old laptop,..  anyone know how to get the hard drive out of a busted lappie and recover the data ? LOL

Some advice for amateur website developers

I recently heard about another website that has been stolen from under the noses of its developers, which happens more often than you might think these days. Good ideas are at a premium and if your idea takes off online you are at considerable risk from unscrupulous internet 'persons'.

When a 'lay' person gets an idea for a website they usually go to a 'friend' who knows about these things to get it going, often that 'friend' is not a real life friend at all but rather an 'online' acquaintance with expertise and possibly contacts that the lay person lacks. This is a really good way to get ripped off!

The first thing to remember when developing a website is that without control of the Domain Name you have or own nothing! Register the domain name you intend to use with an independent registrar, DO NOT register your domain name with the hosting company or 'person' as this will leave them in control of it. The second most important thing you need to do is to keep an up to date copy of all code and data that the site consists of. You must have FTP access to the hosting server and update your backup every time a major change is made to the site, any reputable host will have staff that can help you with this. You should also choose a hosting company that is In Your Country of Residence because as a last resort you may need to go to court to establish your ownership of the site.

Be careful who you grant access to! how well do you know the person or persons who are working on your website? If you meet them socially in real life you retain the option to smack them on the nose but if you grant access to an online acquaintance you have no real proof as to who or where they are, and hence NO recourse if they screw you over. The sort of things that they can do to you are possibly; insertion of 'phishing' holes in your site and other unauthorised code. Theft of your data including credit card info, email addresses and IP addresses of your members and visitors. Note that any website is valued depending on the number of members it has and the number of page hits it gets, if your website takes off you could be sitting on a membership/email list some company's will pay a fortune for! And ultimately they could steal the entire site and deny you any further access to it. You are particularly at risk from this type of theft if your host is an online 'friend' and they control the host server, which is why it is always best to go with reputable hosting company in your own country even if this means that you have to comply with restrictive laws and legislation.

Finally: A 'Gentleman's Agreement' is worth only the paper its printed on, i.e. nothing at all. Get written contracts for expensive development work, transfers of ownership of sites and or domain names and know that the most important page on your website is the 'Terms of service' page, get this wrong and you could loose your shirt.

Get your rotten eggs ready for Ian,..

Ian Duncan Smith (Tory) has been put in charge of sorting out the benefits fiasco which affects an estimated 5.9 Million people in the UK including me, I suggest we all get our rotten eggs ready in case Mr Smith gets it wrong!

The important thing to realise here is that people on benefits are living on a knife edge, one miscalculation can ruin the family budget and leave you eating mush and smoking ‘dimps’ for a couple of weeks, or worse in hoc to a loan shark. Most people on benefits would like to work if it were financially practical to do so, unfortunately in most cases it’s simply NOT practical and taking what work is available would leave them even worse off. For example a person on Job seeker's allowance cannot take part time work for the simple reason that they are only allowed to keep £5 per week of earned income while claiming, this in most cases will not even pay their bus fares to their job. So its full time permanent employment for them or nothing.

A similar situation exists for those of us on Incapacity Benefit, we are allowed to keep £12 per week of what we can earn part time. However for the vast majority of Incapacity Benefit claimants full time permanent employment is physically impossible.

Clearly New Labours approach, i.e. bullying claimants into taking whatever work is offered even if it makes their situation worse rather than better is not acceptable, but considering the huge deficit which is New Labours legacy to the UK what can Mr Smith do that will not hurt claimants, the sick, disabled and impoverished?

UK Election : No Overall Control WINS !!!

So we have a hung parliament here in the UK as a result of Thursdays general election. Its now been 5 days and negotiations between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats are still underway however talks between Labour and the Liberals have clearly failed.

Personally I have been waiting for this particular circumstance to come about for over 20 years, in fact ever since I became old enough to vote. As a life long Liberal I have always know that this is THE chance for liberals to make a lasting impact in British politics. I am keeping my fingers crossed right now in the sincere hope that this chance is NOT wasted. It has to be the case that Proportional Representation has to be the price for Liberal cooperation in any coalition government, anything less would be a betrayal of the 23% of our population who voted Liberal.

Gordon Brown must go! Mr Brown was not elected to be the British PM, he got in by default when Tony Blair left, and in this General Election the British people have decidedly NOT voted for Gordon Brown to continue running this country. In my view there is no circumstance where Gordon Brown remaining PM could be acceptable to the British People. Even if talk between the conservative and liberal parties should fail Gordon Brown personally has lost the mandate to govern, in fact he never had any such mandate from the people of this country.

So we are living in interesting times, the Conservatives look set to lead the next government, whether in a full coalition with the Liberal Democrats  or as a minority government remains to be seen. At present there is still much horse trading being done behind closed doors and hopefully the long term result will not only be electoral reform but also long term stable consensus government of this country.