Ryanair: a website and telephone support FAIL

This morning, I booked some flights with Ryanair on behalf of my parents, who don’t feel confident enough with computers and the internet to do this sort of thing themselves. This is something I’ve done many, many times for them (and I’ve occasionally booked flights for myself with Ryanair, as well) so I’ve been using their website for donkey’s years. I’ve seen it change from time to time, and I’ve often cursed at it (and the company themselves) for making it so damned annoying, insisting that I say at the…

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Potential security issue on Amazon’s website (updated 11/4/2011 – twice)

An example payment method still on my 'old' Amazon account

Over the course of the last few days I’ve discovered what appears to be – or possibly to have been – a fairly notable potential security hole in the Amazon UK website (and possibly others, but I only use the UK site on a regular basis). I will go into detail below about the nature of the security hole and how I discovered it – but first I want to point out that I’ve been trying to cause the problem to manifest itself again today, and failing. This might mean…

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Barclaycard: The story ends… for now?

After discovering there had been fraudulent activity on one of my credit cards held with Barclaycard on the 16th September, and my subsequent contact with them that didn’t get anywhere on the 17th, I had a missed call on the morning of Sunday 19th September from a withheld number, which I assume was from Barclaycard’s fraud department, but they made no further attempts to contact me that day. I finally received a call from them on Monday 20th.

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Barclaycard and the illusion of security

A couple of days ago, I posted about the call I received from Barclaycard concerning fraudulent activity on one of my accounts, and from which I concluded that Barclaycard themselves have become a victim of social engineering (which I am now able to confirm, and will be updating that post to explain after finishing this one), allowing the fraudster to set up new online access to my accounts – and I dropped in a comment about the security questions that they ask, and would have asked the fraudster, pointing out…

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Have Barclaycard fallen victim to social engineering? (Updated 19/9/10)

I received a partially automated telephone call from Barclaycard today – their systems had been alerted to possible fraudulent activity on one of my credit card accounts. When I initially answered the call and their robot explained this, my first thoughts were that it probably wasn’t fraudulent activity, and that I’d have to confirm a transaction I initiated a few days ago – I booked some holiday accommodation, and the last couple of times I’ve booked with the same company I’ve received a similar phone call and had to confirm…

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Barclaycard expects customers to ignore sensible practices

I forgot to pay my Barclaycard bill this month. The amount I forgot to pay was massive. Absolutely huge. Yes, the balance from my statement last month was a staggering £21.28. Okay, that small amount of sarcasm aside (almost as small as the amount in question), at the end of the day the payment was due and I forgot to make it. It was my mistake, so let’s just get on to the point of this:

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