So Google Buzz is opt-out and not opt-in. So you have to turn it off, but that’s only after it starts sharing crap with everyone you’ve ever exchanged an email with. Mainly, it announces to the world who you chat and email with the most (link, link and link). That’s PRIVATE information. At a minimum, you have to go into your settings and adjust your privacy settings. But you’re probably better off scrolling down to the bottom of your screen and turning the whole damned thing off.

And that doesn’t even bring up that Buzz doesn’t work with Firefox, and breaks all sorts of other functionality in Gmail. Gee, THANKS GOOGLE!

I guess Steve Jobs had a point when he said that Google’s slogan, “Don’t Be Evil” was bullshit. It most certainly is.

Go here and here for background.

So the supervisor from Verizon called me back. I explained to her that the sign-up system said it wanted to verify my identity, not run a credit check. So I was confused as to why they were attempting to run a credit check on me, particularly for such small dollar amounts. She told me that they do it to verify my identity. I told her that I wasn’t applying for credit, and she claimed that on the sign-up form online it says you are applying for credit, which if it’s true I missed it. I told her that I didn’t need credit, that I was willing to pre-pay for the account. I explained to her I was willing to go into a Verizon store and show my identification to prove that I’m me. None of this was acceptable to her. She said that everyone needs to go through this process, even if they are pre-paying!!!

I’d like to diverge here and tell you about Hassey Landscaping. I hire Hassey to mow my lawn during the summer months. He charges me $35/week for this service. That’s twice as much per month as Verizon wants for their mid-tier Fios service. When Hassey started doing my lawn, he did so on a handshake, no contract or anything. I asked him how he’d like to get paid and he shrugged, telling me he’d bill me. Which he did, once, at the end of the summer. And guess what? I paid him.

Hassey was able to extend me twice as much credit as Verizon not because Hassey knows me or anything. Not because Hassey ran credit checks on me. Or because I paid him a deposit. But because Hassey knows where I live, because he could stop cutting my lawn if I didn’t pay up, and because even if I didn’t pay up, the risk to his operation is minimal. If only Verizon knew how to think that way.

Back to my call with the supervisor, I told her that she lost the opportunity to gain a new customer. It’s too bad really, I was really looking forward to the service.

Oh, and just in case you think I’m being a little nuts here, I want to let you know that giving your credit report to your ISP is an extraordinary thing. Your ISP knows every website you go to, sees every bit that passes in and out of your home. Matched up to your credit report, your ISP likely knows more about you than anybody on the planet. Moreover, Verizon and Yahoo are refusing to disclose the number of requests that are made through the Patriot Act for information on their customers.

One can only assume that the correlation of one’s credit report to one’s internet usage is required for nefarious purposes, especially since the credit risk to Verizon is so low, especially since they declined my offer to prepay my account and show them a government issued ID. I suppose I’m better off without the service. OTOH, who knows what Comcast has on me. They probably ran a credit report on me before I signed up for Debix. Seems like there’s no winning out there…

Go here for background.

So I received an email from Verizon telling me I needed to call in to verify my identity. I called in and got a woman on the phone in short order. She explained to me that they needed to verify my identity, and that I was under no obligation to give them my SS#. That was good, so she asked me permission to look at some Experian database to verify my identity. I told her to go ahead. This is where things get interesting.

She told me that I had a fraud alert put on my account, which I do. It’s from the company Debix. It’s a service I pay for to make sure that unauthorized people do not have access to my credit report. So Verizon wasn’t verifying my identity. They wanted to see my credit report. But they wouldn’t acknowledge this. I told her that she didn’t need my credit report to verify my identity, and that that wasn’t the proper way to verify my identity in the first place. I explained to her that I own the property, and that can be easily verified online with the register of deeds by visiting www.masslandrecords.com.

She responded by saying she didn’t have Internet access.

I tried to ask her why my credit card number and billing address, which match the location where service is to be installed, is not enough. She didn’t have an answer, other than to repeat that I hadn’t verified my identity. I asked her why she needed to verify my identity. I tried to explain to her that I spent more at Amazon this Christmas season than I will spend with Verizon in a whole year, and with Amazon I shipped goods all over the country. Yet Amazon doesn’t require my SS# or run credit checks on me. After all, I gave them a valid credit card number, and am able to verify the billing address. She didn’t seem to get my point, but she offered to have a supervisor call me back, which I accepted.

In any event, I recorded the conversation on my iPhone while having her on speakerphone. I’ll post it later. But my guess is I’m not going to wind up getting Fios.

Some time ago, I wrote about how I am one of millions of Americans with no choice in Broadband service provider. That has just changed, as Verizon now offers FIOS. This is excellent news, as I intend to ditch Comcast as they are nothing less than evil incarnate (post to come later on them).

Nevertheless, FIOS doesn’t make it easy to switch, for reasons that absolutely baffle me. First off, their online sign-up process requires you give them your social security number. They provide a button saying “Why do we need this” but when you click on it, they assure you it’s for your protection, so that nobody else opens up a Verizon account in your name. That is absolutely absurd on multiple levels. Verizon will be coming to my house, which is registered with the recorder of deeds in my name, to hook up service that the Town of Belmont acknowledges belongs to me. Upon coming to my house, they have every opportunity to inspect my drivers license, passport, or other government issued identification to satisfy themselves that I am who I say I am. So what gives?

In any event, you can decline to give them your social, but they say your installation will be delayed as a result. Fine with me. They’re the ones who want my business after all.

Next up comes their service agreement, which they want you to agree to after refusing to give your social security number to them. The agreement is 9,222 words of dense legalese. I’m going to post the entire thing after the fold, but it’s worth noting that they present this contract in a window that is 50 characters across by ten lines tall. Try reading a brief email in a window so small. I cut and pasted the entire thing into Word so I could read it better. And I suppose I’ll abandon my cart and start over again at some point because this will take me a while to read through and digest.

What I don’t understand is why they would want to make it so difficult for someone to sign up for their service? If I give them a credit card number and agree to buy at least one year’s worth of service, what else could they possibly need? Is the risk so high that I might not pay enough for the installation costs to force me to jump through these hoops? And if it is, why not just charge an installation fee and forget all the credit checks and prying into my personal information?

I’m just saying that this is no way to start out a healthy new relationship between a customer and a vendor.

UPDATE: Here’s my favorite provision, from attachment A-2, they have the right to terminate my service if I “(e) post off-topic information on message boards, chat rooms or social networking sites; (f) engage in conduct that is defamatory, fraudulent, obscene or deceptive;” Maybe I should have them review the samaBlog before entering the contract…

(more…)

Somehow, I’d missed that all this talk about electronic medical records included a MANDATE that they be centralized by the Federal Government [emphasis mine]:

The law specifically says that this “means an electronic record of health-related information on an individual that — (A) includes patient demographic and clinical health information, such as medical history and problems lists; and (B) has the capacity — (i) to provide clinical decision support; (ii) to support physician order entry; (iii) to capture and query information relevant to health care quality; and (iv) to exchange electronic health information with, and integrate such information from other sources.”

These records–including a person’s “medical history and problems list”–must be put into a national system that allows for “the electronic linkage of health care providers, health plans, the government and other interested parties to enable electronic exchange and use of health information among all the components in the health care infrastructure in accordance with applicable law,” says the law.

I wonder who qualifies as an “other interested party”.

Oh, but not to worry. STD’s won’t have to go into the database, at least according to Patches. Which is smart, because communicable diseases are the one thing that ought to be kept secret, right?

Be sure to opt out of the new Google based privacy violating behavior based advertising algorithm. It’s noteworthy that there is no Safari opt-out yet. I suspect that Safari plug-ins are too difficult to build.

(via ars)