Originally written for The Times and published here. Below is the first draft. After this story went live LloydsTSB phoned me up and said sorry. Ha ha.
I hate my bank. Dealing with them makes me physically sick. I’d rather snog Nick Clegg than read their letters offering £20k of additional debt. I despise their awful websites that once worked but have been broken by the addition of ‘two point authorisation technology’ like the dreaded ‘pin sentry’.
Most of all I hate speaking them on the phone. If there’s a short cut to making me furious it’s spending 10 minutes on the mobile to Lloyds TSB. Arguably, because they’re now 43.4% owned by the government they’re as frustrating as speaking to the council, but their uselessness started before they started sharing staff with the Birmingham branch of Parking Solutions.
Last Monday I was forced to spend two hours on the phone to these computer-says-no David Walliams fans attempting to report a fraud. I’d logged into an account for donations to the site I run and noticed two direct debits for around £35 going to a pet insurance company.
I do have a cat – he’s called Rocky – but I certainly haven’t been embezzling website funds to insure him against third party fire and theft. As if.
So I call them up and fail at the first hurdle. They refuse me through the security check because I don’t know where the account was opened – largely because it was opened by a colleague and I didn’t pay that much attention other than signing something when asked to.
I tell them I’m reporting a fraud, and it’s important that they find a way of validating me. They insist there is nothing they can do, before passing me to the fraud department.
After 30 minutes of call waiting and sitting there listening to plinky-plonky music, I finally get through to someone reasonably sympathetic. He has no issues with validation, but his department doesn’t deal with direct debit fraud but some other type of card based robbery..
Another 30 minutes of waiting and I’m literally sobbing to the first bunch who won’t validate me. PLEASE, I’M TRYING TO REPORT A FRAUD. YOU TELL ME HOW I CAN VALIDATE MYSELF. They now say they are raising this call as suspicious. I ask them what type of fraud consists of somebody simply asking a bank to investigate a suspicious transaction – of course they can’t tell me.
Then I have a brain wave. Can I validate my identify against my other accounts and then use this as a sideways in? “Of course sir.” I can only conclude that this isn’t a security measure, but a sign that LloydsTSB staff are sadists. It’s obviously one of the few perks of a rotten job – and I’d recommend it to any bullies too weedy to get into the police.
The frustration is that it doesn’t have to be this bad. I’ve spent my life working in technology and and I can see two things at work:
1. The system operator has all the power. Upset these people and they’ll crush you with the passive aggressive application of the rules leaving you floundering on your back like the beetley victim of a cruel child.
2. Bank and government tech is poor because it lacks competition. Facebook rules not because it had an original idea – it didn’t, it won because it was nicer to use than the alternatives. With banks there’s no practical competition, yes you can switch bank, but chances are you’ll stay with the same one that gave you £20 and a Primal Scream CD in 1992 because it’s so much bloody effort to switch. Banks have no motivation to provide better service because they’ve got your dangly bits in a vice and they know it.
However there is a solution if any bank were brave enough to take it – de-couple the customer facing part from the back-end financial machine and allow any company to build their own web or phone interface. This competition would transform the banking experience.
So we cancel the pet insurance direct debits. It’s a weird thing to steal – if you’re going to rob something, how’s that going to work? You print out a load of fake vet bills for kitteny AZT for Mr Fluffy’s’ cat AIDS? Then claim it all back? Sounds a bit risky to me.
Maybe it’s an inside job – bent insurance staff pushing through 1000s of bogus claims to defraud their bosses. I phone the insurance company – thinking myself for a moment like a cyber-Nancy Drew. “Yeah, could be, but most of our fraud is via Internet cash back schemes. So you don’t have a dog named Bruno then?”
Aha – of course – affiliate marketing. The lifeblood of the the commercial internet. Say you click a link from thetimes.co.uk through to amazon.co.uk – there’s likely to be a code on it so that The Times gets a cut of sales this promotion generates.
A similar system operates with the curry touts in Brick Lane – independent workers who stand outside restaurants hassling the public to enter and receiving a couple of quid for each success.
But imagine our poppadom promoters had worked out a con: they’d phone up the tandoori, order a huge korma, pay for it with a stolen credit card and collect the new customer money for themselves. And the person whose credit card was stolen would find a bloke at their door with a big bag of naans and everyone wondering what the hell was going on.
This is exactly what’s now happening online. Except without the curry bit.
“Used to happen to us”, informs a web designer friend who wishes to remain anonymous, “I worked for a printing site and customers would get in touch asking why they’d taken receipt of a delivery they didn’t order? After some investigation we found these orders were scams made with stolen credit cards, via the major affiliate networks.”
Affiliate marketing expert Richard Kershaw concurs: “Each transaction could generate up to a £45 kick back – or even more in other lucrative sectors. Many fraudulent transactions originate in countries like Russia with a poor track record of prosecuting internet crime.”
So in the week that Wikileaks has told us American diplomats consider Russia to be a crime state – here’s how it affects you: the internet is an international community and Russians could be coming for your cat next. What you need is some pet insurance-insurance. And store your cash under your bed.
Originally written for The Times and published here. Below is the first draft. To be honest I probably wouldn’t write this now as I’ve become a little more fond of Anon as time has passed.
You’ve been hearing a lot about Anonymous recently – the group who briefly disrupted the VISA payments system in retaliation for the US attack on Wikileaks – but who are they?
Maybe you heard Coldblood – Anonymous’s self-appointed leader – on the Today program, stumbling his way through an awkward interview where he appeared to be asking for the authorities to arrest him.
Or maybe you’ve been reading about how they’ve been kicked off Facebook? Which is, obviously, about as likely to work as a helicopter powered by farts. Anyone banned can simply open another account within seconds.
These guys – and they are mostly guys – are young. Probably 14 at the kiddie end, to forty-something man-children; people who lurk in their parents’ attics endlessly playing World of Warcraft, while mum and dad worry if they’ll ever get a job, a partner or lose their virginity to something that isn’t a Japanese love-pillow.
The recruits of this cyberwar would be court-martialed by a real army for being four times the regulation weight and thinking an acceptable uniform is stained underpants and a Star Wars “Han shot first” t-shirt.
Anonymous is different every time. Anybody can start a call for action, by posting on a messageboard (4chan being the most notorious), and people either join in or not depending on whim. So we have a unique situation: an army of composed of different individuals every time they appear – and without even a consistent leader.
Previous Anonymous battle cries have been masterclasses in bad taste humour – they do it for the “lulz”. For example, they recently launched a campaign to send Joseph Fritzl thousands of Christmas cards in jail – arguably surrealist situationism. More sinister ideas include attempting to give members of an epilepsy forum seizures by mass-uploading thousands of rapidly-flashing animations.
But it’s not all darkness. This is also a world that’s given us LOLCATS, and examples of animal cruelty can invoke the mob to do the right thing . In 2008, videos of Dusty the Cat being abused were placed on YouTube – forum members tracked down the abuser and handed in the details to the police.
And it’s these people who are are being increasingly politicised by the forces of authority stamping on the internet. They’ve used the net as a playground and they fear fun is going to be slapped down by big business and government. Warning shots have been fired by the establishment: The Digital Economy Act will allow random internet users to be disconnected on the suspicion of copyright infringement; hyperbolic tweets by love-lorn men have been interpreted as threats of terrorism by an out-of-touch judiciary and the police are now pushing for the power to disconnect any website they want, on the basis that it smells a funny colour or something.
So Wikileaks being slowly crushed off the internet like Hulk squeezing a kitten’s skull is making these netizens very afraid. Thus, with a mixture of righteous anger and joyful mischief, Anonymous are going after the private companies aiding the US Government.
Using the wonderfully-named ‘Low Orbit Ion Cannons’ Anonymous took out Visa, overloading the site with so many users that the site goes pop – as, say, 100,000 people simultaneously phoning 999 would make unlikely the emergency services could still do their job. The interesting bit about this is that the action also took out some of Visa’s payment processing systems – as the machines share the same network. This is the kind of shonky tech planning you’d expect from someone like me, who crafts internet lols for a living, not a company entrusted with handling about half the debit transactions of the western world.
So there the participants in Anonymous sit – with a feeling of omnipotent power – taking out websites. Seeing the site turn into a “404 page not found” error. Watching the news spread on social networks. Grinning from ear to ear as the returns for ‘anonymous’ spiral upwards on a Google news search and, finally, the next day, a newspaper headline in the local shop they can point to and say, “I did that.”
Anonymous is about taking power in a world where power has been stripped from you – it’s like students throwing fire extinguishers off tall buildings – it’s obviously a bad idea but what a thrill to do so.
For my money, Anonymous are doing completely the wrong thing – yes it’s getting attention in the press but it’s not furthering the fundamental cause of Wikileaks, which is to expose government and business wrongdoing and force the State to behave itself.
Since the initial breaking of the #Cablegate stories, the news narrative has changed from the content of the leaks to a manhunt for Julian Assange and now to the Anonymous cyber-attacks on big business.
If the Anons really want to help Wikileaks they should be writing emails to all media outlets asking “Can you investigate Hillary Clinton for using US diplomats as spies? Hillary shrugging it off is just rubbish”, “What’s going on when the US government covers up that its contractors spend tax payers’ money on child prostitution? It beggars belief that this isn’t front page news” and “Wikileaks has revealed that Shell Oil has infiltrated Nigerian politics to the point where, gosh, I dunno, I’m so confused. But it’s obviously very, very bad. Please guide me, oh news media, through this hellish moral maze to a better world, instead of distracting me with rubbish about 14-year-olds pretending to be cyberwarriors.”
Ben Goldacre wrote me an email, “Apparently the govt have leaned on the bbc to use the word “savings” instead of “cuts”. be nice if someone made something that resubstituted “cuts” back in. “thehonestificator”. whatever.”
Two seconds of googling for “search replace bookmarket” finds me this script by sixthgear, which I can quickly hack to make the BBC tell the truth.
I’ve written a lot of songs recently and I played them to a friend who said, “You haven’t written a song about a cat – I think people would expect at least a token kitten song.”
I couldn’t bring myself to write some crap about “woo yay kittens” just to get some people on the internet to like it so I thought I’d try and write something true about our own cat Rocky. He’s extremely violet and a mixed blessing. Generally people go “aww Rocky” stroke him for a minute and then he brutally savages them and that’s that.
The video contains a shot of what is known locally as Suicide Bridge – a legendary bridge in Archway which people occasionally throw themselves off – I popped up there to get the shot on the pretence of buying lunch. My father grew up nearby and claims to have witnessed a girl jump off in the 50s but he does like a story.
Wrote a song the other day – I started with a simple idea – do a nostalgia list about the 90s. When I came to record it I had a gap for more lyrics and found myself improvising and it took another direction.
The video was recorded by walking around my flat with a stills camera and a copy of the lyrics – I photographed anything relevant then edited it together. My little rule I set myself was that I couldn’t leave the house and everything had to be shot via my camera. So for lines I was stuck for visuals I photographed some websites.
I was asked to produce the IT Crowd game to help promote the wonderful TV series by the god of twitter that is @glinner. I brought in Matt Round to do the heavy lifting and he did a fine, fine job.
During the production I drew a number of animated gifs to serve as end level things – basically to increase the references to internet culture within the game. Thought I’d post them up here because I’m sort of proud of how crap they are.
Running web projects I don’t get a huge amount of media requests and when I do I often feel really weird about them. Being interviewed by someone is giving control of your own mouth to other people and my experience is generally that nothing good comes from it as it only annoys your peers who feel hard done by that they’re not getting any attention.
But then Word Magazine got in touch and I had to say yes as A. I’m a subscriber and have read pretty much every issue since launch and it’s hugely flattering to be in something like this and B. It’s run/staffed by a number of people I’ve worked with in the past including David Hepworth (sub to his blog on RSS you won’t regret it) and more recently Fraser Lewry.
The interviewed was conducted by James Medd – who I think should write a book about red hair as his Guardian feature on the subject was great, and photography by Muir Vidler – who in himself is a very interesting chap currently putting together a series of photos of contradictory people, e.g. a Jewish person with a swastika tattoo.
Anyway – you’ll have to clicky a few times to make this big enough to read.
Photoshoot
I had a fun photoshoot with Muir Vidler – he encouraged me to pull silly faces which is pretty much how I entertain my wife so it wasn’t too hard.
BTW: The downside of this feature is that I wasn’t able to read this issue of Word – everytime I picked up the magazine I was flooded with anxiety and put it down again. Hope I didn’t miss anything good that month. Thankfully normal service has resumed and Word have stopped producing issues with me in them.
Another I Spot produced for E4 with David Stevenson – actually probably my favourite of the lot – I remember writing the first draft in a frantic two hours of typing – ranting about all the geeks I knew. Jilly Cooper, in her book Class, wrote some great stuff about how the layers of social class are like the stripes on rugby shirt that’s been in the wash. Where the colours bleed into each other there’s the most friction. I’m like that with nerd culture, I’m screaming “I’m not as geeky as THESE people” when I very nearly am.
Anyway – we produced it nearly 18 months ago and it’s only gone live now, so if there’s no references to iPads then you’ll know why.
http://www.e4.com/wtf/fanboys/index.html
My penis brings all the girls to the yard
Woke up one Sunday morning with this in my head. Not that you’ll want to think of me with a morning glory as that would turn your stomach. So I nicked some comedy cock gifs off the b3ta board to make it into a tribute to b3ta and not an icky celebration of my love torpedo. BTW: It’s on vimeo because youtube booted it. The spoilsports.
You Are a Spamming Cunt
Produced to post on the b3ta links board when we get spammed.
I feel awkward when blokes talk sport
I was walking the kids to school and thinking about how I can’t drive and started writing some lyrics about the subject. Thought about how cars are a classic male conversation which lead me onto the ultimate bloke conversation I never feel part of: football. Lucy drew the characters for the video.
Other people who performed included Joel Veitch, Nick J, Mike Rampton and David Stevenson, but they’re all too shy for their work to be stuck on youtube.
RIP ROB MANUEL. I'll be taking kittens to his funeral. I love his Weebl & Bob stuff #riprobmanuel6 hours ago
I so don't trust the trending list these days that I see "RIP Eddie Murphy" and I assume someone has written a dickheady tweet and he's fine 6 hours ago
