er.. Wow. I thought I'd miss the Grid Girls (amazingly, I didn't notice they weren't there until someone pointed out that the parade as they left the grid carrying their signboards aloft didn't happen) and I thought I'd hate the halo (I did, until the racing started and then, except for one novelty moment, forgot it was there). I thought I'd be confused by the names of the tyres (I was, so I ignored it and it became irrelevant chatter) and I thought I'd be bemoaning yet another procession (actually, that was kind of true but it was a procession with enough drama to keep it interesting). Aside from the obvious colour changes, team...
On 19th March, the USA's Office of Foreign Assets Control, a division of the US Treasury, which publishes lists of persons sanctioned under trade and economic policies, under policies that are political including but not limited to national security plus those under the USA PATRIOT Act announced that it was to include, where it has it, cryptocurrency data relating to subjects. Just what are they planning and what will it mean for crypto-currency holders and exchanges and businesses such as online auctions and advertising platforms?
One would think that, after the revelation that more than GBP1,000 million had been collected by form fillers providing entirely unnecessary services for those claiming PPI refunds, the market would have died. Maybe you'd have thought that the action against those pretending to be official websites would have discouraged others from doing something similar. And, of course, there's law that spamming individuals is a crime. Welcome to Magnetise Media Ltd which says it's registered by the Claims Management Regulator and listed by the Ministry of Justice. Hopefully Trading Standards and the Information Commissioner have files, too.
The controversy over so-called "swatting," (a stupid name that only an idiot would come up with because it makes something heinous sound cuddly) was the first high-profile spill-over from a massive online computer game to the real world. Yesterday saw the second and it caused extraordinary disruption and expense to public services in the UK. It was launched from the USA.
For those that don't recognise the name, Elizabeth Warren is a US Senator representing the state of Massachusetts but she was born in Oklahoma. Warren is a member of the Democratic Party and has been dubbed "a progressive." She claims historical links to the Cherokee Indian tribal group and says she is part Cherokee. That's in doubt.
It's registration spam-scam time again. This one, originating from a spurious domain, (.pw domains are much loved by fraudsters and other internet criminals and this one is no exception) is one of the most bizarre e-mails ever and is therefore likely to succeed.
A report in yesterday's Law Society's Gazette quotes a passage from a speech given by David Green, the outgoing head of the Serious Fraud Office under whose watch the SFO's performance has seen a significant improvement. But there is one area where this publication forcefully disagrees with him: the development of US-style Deferred Prosecution Agreements. In his speech, he speaks strongly in favour of them, it is reported.
A director entered into an agreement to bribe someone into making sure the company was awarded a contract worth GBP6 million, approx. A new CEO found out, prevented payments, filed a suspicious activity report, asked the police to investigate. Then it all got complicated ...
It might take a stretch of the imagination to join the UK's departure from the EU and the wife-murdering, perhaps syphilitic, definitely unstable, ferociously misogynistic Tudor monarch who is, arguably, the UK's most famous king. But there is a certain logic and the admirably named Lord Judge has applied his considerable legal knowledge and intellect to make that connection and to rightly harry those responsible for the poor legal drafting that plagues English law and, in particular, that relating to the not-admirably named "Brexit." At the heart of his concerns are a major constitutional issue now known as "Henry VIII powers." This...
HM would not be amused. The UK Treasury, which is increasingly given to adopting American terminology, recently issued an "advisory" relating to jurisdictions with deficiencies in their counter-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing regimes. Hilariously, it was identified as a possible scam by the Thunderbird e-mail client.
An indictment alleges accused "tricked homeowners into signing fraudulent deeds on their properties and then allegedly used the fraudulent deeds to extort money from homeowners, charge homeowners illegal fees to delay foreclosure and eviction actions and to steal some homes outright."
Recently, I found this old (March 2013) on-line chat with Amazon.com's US call centre lurking on my hard disk. Before deleting it, I read it. It's both very funny and an object lesson in the frustrations of dealing with people who have no power to control the situation their own company has created.
We all hate them except the people who create them: LinkedIn videos are bandwidth draining, and annoying, making noises when we least expect them. But you don't have to suffer. Here's how to kill them before they even start.
When one looks at investigations into money laundering in Australia, there is a factor that crops up over and over and over again. The money came from, or has a connection to, Malaysia. And it's not the connection the rest of the world expects.
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