Steve Wozniak has quit Facebook, and apparently was surprised at the advertising preferences that the company had built up on him. Like me, Woz had been deleting the ad preferences and advertisers one at a time. Now, if Woz is surprised, then it shows you how serious it is. As I noted in my last post, Facebook even lies about those: on the public ad preferences page it might show none, in the big Facebook data dump it shows some. I believe it might even lie to advertisers about our activity.
Hereâs something else I can tell you first-hand. When you see ads on Instagram, a Facebook subsidiary, they claim that the preferences are controlled within Facebook.
Inside the ad preferences, all alcohol ads are turned off. Guess what appeared in my Instagram? An ad for Heineken.
Unless Heineken has launched a non-alcoholic beer under that brand, then Facebook has lied once again.
Facebook’s ad preferences mean nothing. I saw a beer ad in Instagram, then checked my Facebook ad preferences, which Instagram claims control what ads I see. That’s a load of old bollocks (i.e. business as usual at Facebook Inc.).
And remember, throughout all of this, I had already opted out of ad customization on another Facebook page, so thereâs no reason for Facebook to compile anything on me. Yet, regardless of that setting, it will compile and compile. It will even repopulate, with thousands of preferences, freshly deleted pages.
Now we know that thereâs a possibility, if you werenât clued up about your privacy settings, that these preferences were sold to others. The latest revelation is that CubeYou had sold user data also gathered under the guise of âacademic researchâ. Remember, Facebook knew about the Cambridge Analytica leak in 2015 and sought to bury the story. The new CubeYou story proves that that was not isolated. But then, if you go back through what I have been writing in this blog for a good part of this decade, you really wouldnât be surprised about any of this. In fact, you can probably make an educated guess and say that this was normal practice at Facebook: have money, will sell. Even President Duterte of the Philippines benefited from these practices, with 1¡2 million Filipinos’ data harvested, and the list goes on. In New Zealand, Facebook has said that up to 63,714 Kiwis’ profiles were harvested. And now, it appears there’s even a link with US businessman Peter Thiel, who gained New Zealand residency after spending less than 1 per cent of the time required here, and whose companies, as defence contractors, have received millions of dollars of New Zealand taxpayer funds.
Thanks to Facebook, governments have a lot on us, something Edward Snowden has been saying for years. The difference in the 2000s and 2010s is, thanks to digital narcissism, we’re the ones willingly providing this information, while Facebook milks it for all it’s worth, before its enriched CEO pretends to play victim, and his people try to use legal means to shut down the negative media stories.
PS., April 14: If you thought the above was isolated, you’d be quite wrong:
@Instagram@Facebook What part of 'hide permanently' all alcohol ads do you not understand? Oh, thatâs right, you donât give a toss about user preferences and opt-outs. Hope you get done badly by your government. pic.twitter.com/58OVLd1Veo
Boris Johnson: usually a talented delivery, but with conflicting substance.
I spotted The Death of Expertise at Unity Books, but I wonder if the subject is as simple as the review of the book suggests.
Thereâs a lot out there about anti-intellectualism, and we know itâs not an exclusively American phenomenon. Tom Nichols, the bookâs author, writes, as quoted in The New York Times, âAmericans have reached a point where ignorance, especially of anything related to public policy, is an actual virtue. To reject the advice of experts is to assert autonomy, a way for Americans to insulate their increasingly fragile egos from ever being told theyâre wrong about anything. It is a new Declaration of Independence: No longer do we hold these truths to be self-evident, we hold all truths to be self-evident, even the ones that arenât true. All things are knowable and every opinion on any subject is as good as any other.â
I venture to say that the “death of expertise” is an Anglophone phenomenon. Head into Wikipedia, for instance, and youâll find proof that the masses are not a good way to ensure accuracy, at least not in the English version. Head into the German or Japanese editions and you find fewer errors, and begin to trust the pages more.
Given that many of âthe peopleâ cannot discern what is âfake newsâ and what is not, or who is a bot and who is not, then itâs absolutely foolhardy to propose that they also be the ones who determine the trustworthiness of a news source, as Facebook is wont to do.
I canât comment as much on countries I have spent less time in, but certainly in the Anglosphere, Iâve seen people advance, with confidence and self-authority, completely wrong positions, ones not backed up by real knowledge. You only need to visit some software support forums to see online examples of this phenomenon.
When I visit Sweden, for instance, thereâs a real care from individuals not to advance wrongful positions, although I admit I am limited by my own circles and the brief time I have spent there.
Itâs not so much that we donât value expertise, itâs that the bar for what constitutes an expert is set exceptionally low. Weâre often too trusting of sources or authorities who donât deserve our reverence. And I wonder if it comes with our language.
Iâll go so far as to say that the standing of certain individuals I had in my own mind was shattered when we were all going for the mayoralty in my two campaigns in 2010 and 2013. There certainly was, among some of my opponents, no correlation between knowledge and the position they already held in society. It didnât mean I disliked them. It just meant I wondered how they got as far as they did without getting found out.
Fortunately, the victor, whether you agreed with her policies or not, possessed real intelligence. The fact she may have political views at odds with yours is nothing to do with intelligence, but her own observations and beliefs. I can respect that (which is why I follow people on social media whose political views I disagree with).
In turn Iâm sure many of them disliked what I stood for, even if they liked me personally. Certainly it is tempting to conclude that some quarters in the media, appealing to the same anti-intellectualism that some of my rivals represented, didnât like a candidate asserting that we should increase our intellectual capital and pursue a knowledge economy. No hard feelings, mind. As an exercise, it served to confirm that, in my opinion, certain powers donât have peopleâs best interests at heart, and there is a distinct lack of professionalism (and, for that matter, diversity) in some industries. In other words, a mismatch between what one says one does, and what one actually does. Language as doublespeak.
So is it speaking English that makes us more careless? Maybe it is: as a lingua franca in some areas, merely speaking it might put a person up a few notches in othersâ estimation. Sandeep Deva Misra, in his blog post in 2013, believes thatâs the case, and that we shouldnât prejudge Anglophones so favourably if the quality of their thought isnât up to snuff.
Maybe thatâs what we need to do more of: look at the quality of thought, not the expression or make a judgement based on which language itâs come in. As English speakers, we enjoy a privilege. We can demand that others meet us on our terms and think poorly when someone speaks with an accent or confuses your and youâre. It gives us an immediate advantage because we have a command of the lingua franca of business and science. It gives us the impunity to write fictions in Wikipedia or make an argument sound appealing through sound bites, hoping to have made a quick getaway before weâre found out. Political debate has descended into style over substance for many, although this is nothing new. I was saying, although not blogging, things like this 20 years ago, and my students from 1999â2000 might remember my thoughts on Tony Blair’s 1997 campaign as being high on rhetoric and light on substance. Our willingness to accept things on face value without deeper analysis, lands us into trouble. We’re fooled by delivery and the authority that is attached with the English language.
Youâll next see this in action in a high-profile way when Facebook comes forth with more comment about Cambridge Analytica. I can almost promise you now that it wonât hold water.
Above:Autocade can be hard workâand sometimes you have to put up less exciting vehicles, like the 2001â7 Chrysler Town & Country, for it to be a useful resource.
March 8, 2018 marks 10 years of Autocade.
Iâve told the story before on this blog and elsewhere, about how the site came to beâannoyed by the inaccuracies and fictions of Wikipedia (who said the masses would be smart enough to get rid of the mistakes?), I took a leaf out of the late Michael Sedgwickâs book and created a wiki that had brief summaries of each model, the same way Sedgwick had structured his guides. I received an emailed threat from a well known British publisher (Iâm looking at you, Haymarket, and as predicted in my reply, your thoughts proved to be totally baseless) when we started, and 12½ million page views later, weâre on 3,628 models (I think we finished the first day on 12), with our page on the Ford Fiesta Mk VII leading the count (other than the home page). Autocade began as a wiki but with so many bots trying to sign up, I closed off those registrations. There have really been about six contributors to the site, all told: myself and Keith Adams for the entries, Peter Jobes and Nigel Dunn for the tech, and two members of the public who offered copy; one fed it in directly back in the day when we were still allowing wiki modifications. I thank everyone for their contributions.
A few years ago, I began running into people online who used Autocade but didnât know I was behind it; it was very pleasing to see that it had become helpful to others. It also pleased me tremendously to see it referenced in Wikipedia, not always 100 per cent correctly, but as Autocade is the more accurate site on cars, this is the right way round.
When a New Zealand magazine reviewed us, the editor noted that there were omissions, including his own car, a Mitsubishi Galant. Back then we were probably on 1,000 models, maybe fewer. All the Galants are now up, but Autocade remains a work in progress. The pace of adding pages has declined as life gets busierâeach one takes, on average, 20 minutes to research and write. You wouldnât think so from the brevity, but I want it to be accurate. Iâm not perfect, which is why the pages get changed and updated: the stats say weâre running on 3¡1 edits per page.
But it looks like weâre covering enough for Autocade to be a reasonably useful resource for the internet public, especially some of the more obscure side notes in motoring history. China has proved a challenge because of the need to translate a lot of texts, and donât think that my ethnicity is a great help. The US, believe it or not, has been difficult, because of the need to calculate cubic capacities accurately in metric (I opted to get it right to the cubic centimetre, not litres). However, it is an exciting time to be charting the course of automotive history, and because there are still so many gaps from the past that need to be filled, I have the chance to compare old and new and see how things have moved on even in my four-and-a-half decades on Earth.
Since Sedgwick had done guides up to 1970, and paper references have been excellent taking us through the modern motor carâs history, I arbitrarily decided that Autocade would focus on 1970 and on. There are some exceptions, especially when model lines go back before 1970 and it would be a disservice to omit the earlier marks. But I wanted it to coincide roughly with my lifetime, so I could at least provide some commentary about how the vehicle was perceived at the time of launch. And the â70s were a fascinating time to be watching the motor industry: those nations that were confident through most of the 20th century with the largest players (the US and UK) found themselves struggling, wondering how the Japanese, making scooters and motorcycles just decades before, were beating them with better quality and reliability. That decadeâs Japanese cars are fascinating to study, and in Japan itself there is plenty of nostalgia for them now; you can see their evolution into more internationally styled product, rather than pastiches of othersâ, come the 1980s and on. The rise of Korea, Spain, China, India, Turkey, México and other countries as car-exporting nations has also been fascinating to watch. When Autocade started, Australia still had a domestic mass-produced car industry, Chrysler was still owned by Americans, and GM still had a portfolio of brands that included Pontiac and Saturn.
I even used to go to one of the image galleries and, as many cars are listed by year, let the mouse scroll down the page. You can see periods grouped by certain colours, a sign of how cars both follow and establish fashion. There are stylistic trends: the garishness of smog-era US cars and the more logical efficiency of European ones at the same time; smoother designs of the 1980s and 1990s; a creeping fussiness and a concentration on showing the brandâs identity in the 2000s and 2010s. As some of the most noticeable consumer goods on the planet, cars make up a big part of the marketing profession.
The site is large enough that I wouldnât mind seeing an academic look at industry using the data gathered there; and I always thought it could be a useful book as well, bearing in mind that the images would need to be replaced with much higher-resolution fare.
For now, Iâm going to keep on plodding as we commence Autocadeâs second decade. The Salon de Genève has brought forth some exciting débutantes, but then I should get more of the Chrysler Town & Country vans up âŚ
You have to wonder if the online census this year has been intentionally bad so that the powers that be can call it a flop and use it as an excuse to delay online voting, thereby disenfranchising younger voters.
Itâs the Sunday before the census and I await my access code: none was delivered, and I have three addresses at which this could be received (two entries to one dwelling, and a PO box). If itâs not at any of these, then thatâs pretty poor. I have been giving them a chance on the expectation it would arrive, but now this is highly unlikely.
And when you go to the website, they claim my browserâs incompatible. I disagree, since Iâm within the parameters they state.
This screen shot was taken after I filled out a request for the access code yesterday. Statistics NZ tells me the code will now take a week to arrive, four days after census night. Frankly, thatâs not good enough.
While Iâve seen some TV commercials for the census, Iâve seen no online advertising for it, and nothing in social media. My other half has seen no TVCs for it.
Going up to the census people at the Newtown Fair today, I was handed a card with their telephone number and asked to call them tomorrow.
Youâd think theyâd have people there at the weekend when weâre thinking about these things. Letâs hope I remember tomorrow.
And I’m someone who cares about my civic duty here. What about all those who don’t? Are we going to see a record population drop?
I’m not alone in this.
Same friends feeling disenfranchised for not having a computer. I understand reasons for online census but I think organisation and comms around it leave somewhat to be desired.
So how many people on NZ Twitter have or haven't received their letter yet for Tuesday's Census?
— Sarah Hendrica Bickerton 👩🏻💻 (@sarahhbickerton) March 3, 2018
and there are a lot of people among her circles, myself included, who donât have the access code. Kat’s story is particularly interesting (edited for brevity):
Third call to Census NZ about getting a form for another dwelling on the property. This is specifically a question they talk about on the letter we got with our code, but operators are unable to issue extra codes. The request goes up to the supervisor.
When a field officer called around to give you a form, they sorted out issues like a second dwelling at the time, right there. They had authority to do so. They answered questions, and made sure you knew what you needed to do.
And I can't help but surmise that low socioeconomic communities are going to be the ones who: a) most likely won't have the time or inclination to fill in another bloody form for the government, let alone proactively pursue it b) need to be represented in the stats for funding
Online systems are robust and can be successful.
Itâs just that they need to be backed up by people with a will to make things succeed, not people who are so intent on making them fail.
I don’t know if Instagram does this on all phones, but when I make multi-photo posts, it often leaves behind a very interesting image. Sometimes, the result is very artistic, such as this one of a LotusâFord Cortina Mk II.
You can see the rear three-quarter shot just peer in through the centre. I’ve a few others on my Tumblr, but this is the best one. Sometimes technology accidentally makes decent art. I’m still claiming copyright given it’s derived directly from my work.
With how widespread Facebook’s false malware accusations wereâFacebook itself claims millions were “helped” by them in a three-month periodâit was surprising how no one in the tech press covered the story. I never understood why not, since it was one of many misdeeds that made Facebook such a basket case of a website. You’d think that after doing everything from experimenting on its users to intruding on users’ privacy with tracking preferences even after opting out, this would have been a story that followed suit. Peak Facebook has been and gone, so it amazed me that no journalist had ever covered this. Until now. Like Sarah Lacy at Pando, who took the principled stand to write about Ăber’s problems when no one else in the tech media was willing to, it appears to be a case of ‘You can trust a woman to get it right when no man has the guts,’ in this case social media and security writer for Wired, Louise Matsakis. I did provide Louise with a couple of quotes in her story, as did respondents in the US and Germany; she interviewed people on four continents. Facebook’s official responses read like the usual lies we’ve all heard before, going on the record with Louise with such straw-people arguments. Thank goodness for Louise’s and Wiredâs reputations for getting past the usual wall of silence, and it demonstrates again how dishonest Facebook is.
I highly recommend Louise’s article hereâand please do check it out as she is the first journalist to write about something that has been deceiving Facebook users for four years.
As some of you know, the latest development with Facebook’s fake malware warnings, and the accompanying forced downloads, is that Mac users were getting hit in a big way over the last fortnight. Except the downloads were Windows-only. Basically, Mac users were locked out of their Facebook accounts. We also know that these warnings have nothing to do with malware, as other people can sign on to the same “infected” machines without any issue (and I had asked a few of these Mac users to do just thatâthey confirmed I was right).
Facebook has been blocking the means by which we can get around the forced downloads. Till April 2016, you could delete your cookies and get back in. You could also go and use a Linux or Mac PC. But steadily, Facebook has closed each avenue, leaving users with fewer and fewer options but to download their software. Louise notes, ‘Facebook tells users when they agree to conduct the scan that the data collected in the process will be used “to improve security on and off Facebook,” which is vague. The company did not immediately respond to a followup request for comment about how exactly it uses the data it collects from conducting malware checks.’ But we know data are being sent to Facebook without our consent.
Facebook also told Louise that a Mac user might have been prompted to download a Windows program because of how malware spoofs different devicesânow, since we all know these computers aren’t infected, we know that that’s a lie. Then a spokesman told Louise that Facebook didn’t collect enough information to know whether you really were infected. But, as she rightly asks, if they didn’t collect that info, why would they force you to download their software? And just what precedent is that setting, since scammers use the very same phishing techniques? Facebook seems to be normalizing this behaviour. I think they got themselves even deeper in the shit by their attempts at obfuscation.
Facebook also doesn’t answer why many users can simply wait three days for their account to come right instead of downloading their software. Which brings me back to the database issues I discovered in 2014.
Louise even interviewed ESET, which is one of the providers of the software, only to get a hackneyed responseâwhich is better than what the rest of us managed, because the antivirus companies all are chatty on Twitter till you bring this topic up. Then they clam up. Again, thank goodness for the fourth estate and a journalist with an instinct for a great story.
So please do give Louise some thanks for writing such an excellent piece by visiting her article, or send her a note via Twitter, to @lmatsakis. To think this all began one night in January 2016 âŚ
How much has TPPA changed? Not a lot, according to this petition. The full content is below, and if you agree, click through to dontdoit.nz and add your signature. Point (e) is the one that most of us understand, and according to the petition, it’s still there.
While all trade agreements have some form of investorâstate dispute settlement process, what has leaked out (since the process remains secret) about TPPA, and TPPA-11, is that the process remains unfair. ISDSs have morphed into something where corporations can get far more than a fair go against governments that might, for example, nationalize their assets, which were their original intent, one that I think is fair. But here are some examples of where things can go terribly wrong, and there’s nothing in TPPA-11 that (apparently) prevents these sorts of things happening.
We, the undersigned, express our grave concern that:
(a) The Labour Party, New Zealand First and the Green Party all said in the Select Committee report on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) that they would not support its ratification;
(b) The text agreed by eleven countries after the US pulled out, the TPPA-11, remains the same as the original TPPA, with a small number of items in the original text being suspended, not removed;
(c) The government has promised a new inclusive and progressive approach to trade and investment agreements, but there is nothing new and progressive to justify the renaming of the TPPA-11 as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement on Trans-Pacific Partnership;
(d) There are many provisions in the TPPA-11 that restrict the regulatory sovereignty of the current and future Parliaments;
(e) The Government has instructed officials not to include investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) in future agreements, yet the TPPA-11 still contains the core investor protection rules that can be enforced through ISDS;
(f) The secrecy that the governing parties criticised in the original negotiations continues and that the text will apparently not be released until after the agreement is signed;
(g) There has been no analysis of the economic costs and benefits of the TPPA-11, including the impact on employment and income distribution, as the governing parties called for in the select committee report;
(h) There has been no health impact assessment of the revised agreement as called for by the current Government in the select committee report, nor any assessment of environmental impact or constraints on climate action;
(i) The Crown has not discussed ways to improve the Treaty of Waitangi exception and strengthen protections for Māori as the Waitangi Tribunal advised;
(j) Despite these facts, the Government has announced its intention to sign the TPPA-11 on 8 March 2018;
and urge the House to call upon the Government:
(k) not to sign the TPPA or the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement on Trans-Pacific Partnership;
(l) to conduct a principles-based review of New Zealandâs approach to free trade, investment and economic integration agreements that involves broad-based consultation;
(m) to engage with Māori to reach agreement on effective protection of their rights and interests consistent with te Tiriti o Waitangi and suspend negotiations for similar agreements until that review is concluded;
and further, urge the House to pass new legislation that
(n) establishes the principles and protections identified through the principles-based review under paragraph (l) as the standing general mandate for New Zealandâs future negotiations, including;
i. excluding ISDS from all agreements New Zealand enters into, and renegotiating existing agreements with ISDS;
ii. a requirement for the government to commission and release in advance of signing an agreement independent analyses of the net costs and benefits of any proposed agreement for the economy, including jobs and distribution, and of the impact on health, other human rights, the environment and the ability to take climate action;
iii. a legislative requirement to refer the agreement to the Waitangi Tribunal for review prior to any decision to sign the treaty; and
(o) makes the signing of any agreement conditional on a majority vote of the Parliament following the tabling in the House of the reports referred to in paragraph (n) (ii) and (iii);
and for the House to amend its Standing Orders to
(p) establish a specialist parliamentary select committee on treaties with membership that has the necessary expertise to scrutinise free trade, investment and economic integration agreements;
(q) require the tabling of the governmentâs full mandate for any negotiation prior to the commencement of negotiations, and any amendment to that mandate, as well as periodic reports to the standing committee on treaties on compliance with that mandate;
(r) require the tabling of any final text of any free trade, investment and economic integration agreement at least 90 days prior to it being signed;
(s) require the standing committee on treaties call for and hear submissions on the mandate, the periodic reports, and pre-signing version of the text and the final text and report on those hearings to Parliament;
(t) require a two-third majority support for the adoption of any free trade, investment or economic integration agreement that constrains the sovereignty of future Parliaments that is binding and enforceable through external dispute settlement processes.
Given New Zealand First’s vehement opposition to it while outside of government, it’s hard to believe that the minor changes would have satisfied the party so easily.
If you have the same concerns as the petition writers, and believe our government should do (k) through (t), then the petition’s at dontdoit.nz.
As many of you know, between around December 8 and February 2âdates during which I had Microsoft Windows 10âs fall Creators update without the January 31 cumulative patchâmy computer suffered roughly three to six BSODs per day. Going on to Bleeping Computer was helpful, but Microsoftâs wisdom tended to be hackneyed and predictable.
While I was lucky at Microsoft Answers and got a tech who wasnât rehashing remarks from other threads, eventually he gave up and suggested I download the old spring Creators update, if that was the last version that was OK.
I never had the time, and on February 2, I got the cumulative patch and everything has been fine since.
It means, of course, that Microsoft had released a lemon at the end of 2017 and needed a big patch to deal with the problems it had caused. No word to their people on the forum though, who were usually left scratching their heads and concluding that the only option was a clean installation.
I had bet one of the techs, however, that there was nothing wrong with my set-up, and everything to do with the OS. We know Windows is no longer robust because of the QC processes Microsoft uses, with each team checking its own code. Thatâs like proofreading your own work. You donât always spot the errors.
I said I could walk into any computer store and find that the display models were crashing as well.
Last weekend, I did just that.
Here are the Reliability Monitors of two Dell laptops running factory settings picked at random at JB Hi-fi in Lower Hutt.
Above: The Reliability Monitors of two display Dell laptops at JB Hi-fi in Lower Hutt, picked at random.
Above: My Reliability Monitor doesn’t look too bad by comparisonâand suggests that it’s Microsoft, not my set-up, that was responsible for the multiple BSODs.
The Monitors look rather like my own, not scoring above 2 out of 10.
They are crashing on combase.dll for the most part, whereas mineâs crashing on ntdll.dll. Nevertheless, these are crashes that shouldnât be happening, and a new machine shouldnât have a reliability score that low.
For those of you who suspect you have done nothing wrong, that your computer has always worked till recently, and you practise pretty good computer maintenance, your gutâs probably right. The bugs arenât your fault, but that of slapdash, unchecked programming. I doubt you need full reinstallations. You may, however, have to put up with the bugs till a patch is released. It is the folly of getting an update too earlyâa lesson that was very tough to relearn this summer.
It’s easy to dismiss comedians as, well, comedians, there to tell a joke and to get a laugh out of us. But what if the comedianâsuch as Frankie Boyleâis one of those who sees the state of the world we’re in, and “tells it as it is”? His opinion for The Guardian makes for sobering reading.
Initially, you think this was going to be a laugh-a-minute piece, when he writes, of US president Donald Trump:
You kind of wish heâd get therapy, but at this stage itâs like hiring a window cleaner for a burning building.
But there are some uncomfortable truths, and it is certainly not slanted against the right, despite the medium:
I donât really understand commentators who say itâs vital not to normalise any of Trumpâs actions. They have been normalised for eight years by Barack Obama while many of the same people looked the other way. Banks and corporations writing their own legislation; war by executive order; mass deportations; kill lists: itâs all now as normal and American as earthquakes caused by fracked gases being ignited by burning abortion clinics. Of course, there is a moral difference in whether such actions are performed by a Harvard-educated constitutional law professor or a gibbering moron, and the distinction goes in Trumpâs favour. Thatâs not to say Trump wonât plumb profound new depths of awfulness, like the disbanding of the environmental protection agency set up by hippy, libtard snowflake Richard Nixon.
When confronted with that, it becomes much clearer why many peopleâand I include American friends of mine who are neither racists nor hicks (sorry to go against the mainstream narrative)âvoted for Trump. If the country’s making some very un-American moves, then why not have someone who claims he can make a clean sweep? Never mind that he had no intention of doing soâit’s a case of swapping one bunch for another while satiating his own egoâbut people cling to hope in their own ways. I am no supporter of the main alternative they hadâHillary Clintonâand only wish that Americans had the confidence to support a third party as we do, rather than be told ‘A vote for [Jill or Gary] is a vote for [Donald or Hillary].’ I heard this from both supporters of the right (Clinton) and further right (Trump) there, and it didn’t matter which third-party candidate’s name they inserted.
It’s a reminder that we need to continue forging our own path, and do what is right by usâand it appears our new coalition government has received this message on so many policy fronts in its first 100 days, though with the revised TPPA I wonder sometimes. As Britain is finding out, it’s not that good for your own people to be a vassal of the United States in times like this.
The solution? Focus on your own doorstep and do what you can with your own government. I won’t quote Boyle’s words here since I’d rather you click through and The Guardian can earn some money from ad revenue (at least from those of us who aren’t using ad blockers), but it’s a good a solution as any.
P.P.P.PS.: Lumino’s head office has taken this case very, very seriously, and has been following up on Ezidebit and Goody. I’m actually really impressedâenough to add the two words to the title. They get that I’ve never put my cellphone number on an any app in the past, and they, too, know that the timing of the scam calls is suspicious. I’ve had a promise that they’ll follow up.âJY
I signed up to the Lumino Dental Plan yesterday (Friday). Big mistake. Lesson worth repeating: listen to your gut.
Some days, the pleasant side of me kicks in and I give people the benefit of the doubt. I read the T&Cs while I was still there but it started getting unreasonable with my standing at the counter while they’re trying to deal with their other patients. ‘Don’t be such a wanker, Jack,’ I thought. ‘So their agreement wasn’t drafted by a professional lawyer. You’ve used Lumino before and the dentist last year was great, and this hygienist was excellent. Let the office manager’s sales’ technique win the day, it’s no big deal.’
Naturally, she really wanted me to sign and made it quite clear that that was the result she wanted.
But it was a big deal. I spent an hour last night writing the below to the companies involved. They gave five different emails so I contacted them all.
Ladies and Gentlemen:
After due consideration, I do not wish to enter into this Dental Plan, and exercise my right under the Consumer Guarantees Act to cancel it. I have been advised by Lumino the Dentists the Terrace that the cooling-off period for this sale is the standard five (working) days and I will be refunded in full.
I was asked by the practice this afternoon to email you with my reasons should I cancel. As all the above addresses have been given to me in one communication alone, I am taking the liberty of writing to you all.
First, I do not feel I had sufficient time to absorb the Ezidebit agreement today (Friday the 26th), especially on a tiny tablet screen, under what I felt was an expectation that I would sign before I departed.
If I recall correctly, the tablet app links to Luminoâs terms and conditions and these are different to the ones in the DLE brochure introducing the plan. I was not made aware of the DLE’s terms and conditions initially and was led to believe that the only ones were on the tablet.
As I advised Lumino while at the practice today, I had serious concerns about the Ezidebit agreementâs poor drafting and its reference to non-existent legislation. I was assured that should I sign, I would not suffer any loss because (a) that the cooling-off period for direct sales applied; and (b) that all Lumino customers who have cancelled to date have been refunded in full.
Among my concerns: I have never heard of the Contracts Privacy Act (neither has my partner, who has legal training), and there is confusion about whether I will be charged administration and transaction fees (Lumino says I wonât, Ezidebitâs T&Cs say I will). I also see there are SMS fees, although I was told at the practice that my cellphone would not be used and was led to believe that its request in the app was a formality. There is no specificity on any of these fees, other than for a failed payment. Generally, the Ezidebit agreement appears to be a copy-and-paste job, its constituent parts drafted by two lawyers who hated each other, and assembled by a third who hated them both.
Neither party has come forth with information about the handling of my private information.
Going to Ezidebitâs parent company, Global Payments, didn’t help, since the US firm’s website says there would be information on its cookie usage on its terms of use pageâbut there isnât. I never went further.
Now that I have had a chance to sit down and review the documentation in your email, I have to conclude that with two businesses telling me different thingsâand the American one not even sure of what it has on its own website, let alone what laws exist in New ZealandâI have no trust in this arrangement.
The principle might be sound enough but the execution leaves much to be desired.
I will be happy to meet the full cost of my hygienistâs session today once I am satisfied that the refund has taken place. I respectfully request that I be refunded in full as soon as practicable, including any fees that may or may not have applied. As no privacy policy was given, I must also request that all personal details held by Ezidebit (in New Zealand and Australia, since both companies are named in the agreement) or its parent Global Payments on me, including my name, email, Visa account information and cellphone number, be deleted immediately after the refund is made. I trust that any intermediaries or contractors who got them during today’s transactions will remove them as well.
Thank you,
Yours sincerely,
Jack Yan
A company called Goody was involved, and sent me the email asking for programme confirmation. I wrote to them separately. I’m not sure what their relationship is since the only T&Cs ever presented to me were for Lumino and Ezidebit. Goody could be an innocent third-party service provider, who also now has my personal information. I’ve asked them to delete it and take me off any programme of theirs, too. I had a peek through their terms and conditions and privacy policy, and both appeared up to snuff.
Tonight, Lumino sent me a survey form asking me what I thought of their service. Read on if you want to find out what happened earlier today (Iâll italicize it).
The care was excellent and I do not want that mixed up with the very harsh words I have for the Lumino Dental Plan. You have already been emailed about my choice to end my participation forthwith and to pay full price for my visit once I get confirmation that I have been refunded in full including any unspecified charges. In summary, US-owned Ezidebit whom you have partnered with looks like the dodgiest company around. I do not share my private cellphone number as a matter of practice but felt compelled to do so on your app on the assurance of your staffer that it would actually not be used. I put it into your tablet and within 24 hours I have a scam callerâyours is the only âunknownâ company that has this numberânot any more, it seems! The American company had no privacy policy and, as I pointed out at the time of signing, cited non-existent legislation in the T&Cs you gave me. You evidently have no idea how seriously I take my privacy and I feel disappointed, distressed and let down by this whole experience. I really should have listened to my gut and walked away at the practice, instead of spending an hour writing last nightâs email and even more time to update you on the scam calls I now get. I have heard of loyalty programmes but your Dental Plan is the first time I have come across a disloyalty programme.
I feel very let down, and it’s been a lesson for meâbut also for any business that decides to lend its good reputation to something highly questionable. It pays to do your due diligence, and that includes going through the customer sign-up process yourself to spot what holes there are. It’s become pretty obvious that this didn’t happen.
PS.: The scam caller on my cell came from +64 4 488-7021. Feel free to look it up for yourselves.âJY
P.PS.: The Lumino practice sent me an invoice for the hygienist’s session for another $153. No apology at all. Instead, ‘once this account is settled we will process your dental plan cancellation.’ Really?
Good morning:
I am deeply disappointed you have chosen to do it this way when I asked for the Plan to be cancelled first, as is my rightâand which is something you plainly stated I could do. I don’t even get an apology or explanation for all the shortcomings in the Plan or the inconvenience caused, which is indeed surprising, or some assurance that my personal details were not sold. Given the scam calls on both my cell and land lines since providing you with my number on your app, I am sadly forced to conclude that they were.
Let me clarify our respective positions under New Zealand law.
Here’s where I stand:
I have a right to cancel this Plan. You’ve said so and I know so. I’ve exercised this right as of Friday night.
You do not have a right to make the refund of the Plan conditional on my settling the account.
I have an obligation to settle your account independent of the Plan’s cancellation.
Here’s where you stand:
You’ve done dental work on me which you should rightly be paid for.
You’ve had a written offer from me to settle this account already.
You’re in an extremely strong position to make sure I settle the account without making settlement conditional on the Plan’s cancellation.
Your doing so violates New Zealand consumer law.
Unlike you, I can make this conditional on your cancelling the Plan, in part because I have no way of finding out whether you’ve taken my $299 or not.
It appears from your email that you already have.
Logically you could refund the difference between $299 and the invoice amount, which would be taking some responsibility for this mess.
I cannot see why I need to be out of pocket for $452 at any time. I am sure you can see how this is grossly unfair.
This seems like a delaying tactic to make sure the five days go by.
I now respectfully ask you cancel the Plan immediately and refund the difference, which seems the easiest solution.
Sincerely,
Jack
The matter is now before the support team in Auckland. Hopefully they can sort this without my contacting their CEO (which seems like the next logical step).âJY
P.P.PS.: The practice manager on the Terrace has received the above and responded far more professionally, asking me to leave it with her and she’ll sort it out. She assures me my details have not been soldânot that I doubted Lumino but I still have very massive doubts about Ezidebit and Global Payments. She’s also offered me 5 per cent off on future treatments out of goodwill, which is a very promising solution. Lumino’s support line in Auckland was also very friendly and logged it into their system.âJY
P.P.P.PS.: Lumino has remained on the case and tracked down Ezidebit’s privacy policy, which I had never seen till today. And I believe we have our smoking gun. Ezidebit’s claims that they have not heard of this happening before suddenly fall flat. In cl. 3.1:
When we share your information with third parties whom we partner with to provide our services (for example, providers of software or any other electronic applications which have been integrated with Ezidebit to enable us to process payments for users of that software or application), those third parties may use that personal information to provide marketing communications and targeted advertising to you.
In cl. 3.2:
We may disclose your personal information to our related companies or to third parties located outside of New Zealand, including:
⢠The United States;
⢠Australia;
⢠Philippines;
⢠The United Kingdom; and
⢠Hong Kong.
That latter clause explains the scam call on Monday, January 29 then, which was on my cell and asked for me by name. The caller had a Philippine accent and claimed she was calling from Hong Kong.âJY
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