It was somewhat unexpected to find section headings such as "Is IPv6 a failure?" in the product support documentation, but I thought it was interesting and informative nonetheless.
This is a result of trying to retrofit a series of tighter security measures on top of a system that was not originally designed for them, in a way that is both understandable to users but also doesn't break back-compat with APIs (and therefore a lot of existing third-party apps that are seldom updated) too badly. I'm not saying Apple did a perfect job here, but it's a hard problem.
Yes, the problem could probably be "solved" by adding more UI, but "more UI" is not always a good solution. The more UI that exists, the less likely the user is to successfully navigate it. On the other hand, adding additional complexity to an existing UI is also fraught with potential for new bugs and edge cases. Again, not defending the status quo, but I can see how it might have ended up like this.
This is worth spending more time on trying to improve, and perhaps it is reasonable to expect better from an almost-$4tn company. But at the same time, a potential solution is far from easy or obvious, and there is a risk of making things worse if not done with an extreme level of thought and consideration.
(Alternate pessimistic take: A large number of users don't care or read anything, they just click "allow" on anything that gets in their way. A smaller set of users are terrified and disgusted by repeated invasions of the privacy and click "deny" on everything. None of these implementations are doing any good for either group. The allow/deny design pattern is badly broken and in need of rethinking.)
It doesn't matter what people thought. The complaints were coming from people at big companies with legal departments. The lawyers' job is to make sure there are no legal vulnerabilities, the same way it's your job to make sure your code doesn't contain any vulnerabilities. Intent is irrelevant.
I was also quoted the $1000/month price, and followed up with this same question. I was told it was separate from (in addition to) all other service pricing.
Prepaid plans across all US carriers generally have all taxes and fees included in the advertised price, except for standard sales tax (if your state/locality normally charges it).
I have a separate local user account on my computer for work. When I start work in the morning, I switch to the work user and all of my personal stuff goes away. When I'm done with work at night, I switch back, all my personal stuff comes back and work goes away. It's almost like having a separate computer.
People often look at me like I'm crazy when I tell them this. I haven't quite figured out why.
If I need to look up some personal thing in the middle of the day, I reach for my phone. If I find I've been reaching for my phone too much that day, I get up and put it on the other side of the room. Now every would-be distraction requires me to physically move my entire body.
The story continues: after that court case, Apple added a special, obfuscated 'stolen from Apple' icon to the firmware, in case they ever had to go to court over something like this again. http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Stolen_From_Apple...
The banks' monitoring software is in fact a hassle for me. I've only ever had legitimate purchases denied. The retailer's order flow is not usually optimised for this case, requiring a tedious, often manual process to get my order reinstated, while at the same time often causing the retailer to treat me with suspicion (they can't tell why the charge was denied the first time, and are sometimes reluctant or unable to retry the same card again).
As far as I can tell, Final is not really about reducing fraud, which, as you correctly state, is mostly a non-problem for customers. Instead, its value is in increasing my personal convenience, by reducing the annoyances the credit card companies force me to deal with as a direct result of their absurdly outdated technology.
I keep getting the same one from a certain car dealership every few months. Apparently handwritten address on envelope, real ordinary first-class postage stamp (even placed at a slight angle, so it doesn't look like a machine did it). Postmarked from a different state than the dealership is in. No return address.
Open it up though, and the deception ends immediately. Just your usual tacky, glossy printed brochure.
It's not just billing that is the problem. These third-party services send the carrier a list of numbers to subscribe, and the carrier simply takes them at their word that those numbers have opted in, without having any idea whether this is actually true.
Technically, the third-party could simply make up a list of random (but valid) numbers, send them to the carrier to subscribe, and the carrier would do it. There is no technical means in place to stop this. The only thing that (in theory) stops it is the carrier noticing the high number of customer complaints and deciding not to do business with the third-party any more - a clear conflict of interest, since deciding to ignore the problem benefits the carrier financially.
What many of these services do is toe the line, by enticing a customer to give up their phone number for some completely unrelated reason, and bury somewhere in the fine print that they are signing up for a recurring charge on their phone bill. The customer has absolutely no idea that this is happening unless they read through pages of legalese. This way, the charges are technically opt-in, even though no reasonable person would describe it as such.
The brain-dead simple technical solution for this is for the carrier to check with the customer before adding a charge to the bill. There is no reason not to do this.
Or maybe just get rid of for-pay SMS services altogether. In the age of smartphones they are useless.
Exactly. Apple does not refer to this icon as the 'share' icon in official documentation. It is actually the 'action' button[1]. As in, I have some data in this app, and I want to do something with it outside of this app. Hence, the symbol of an arrow moving outside of something.
Many of the possible actions resulting from tapping that icon (on iOS) may be unrelated social sharing (e.g., copy, save to photo library, assign to contact, etc.).
If it's stored in the same place as the encrypted password, then you have gained no security over storing it in plain text.
If it's stored in a separate system, then you have substantially increased the complexity of the system, and in general, a more complex system is harder to implement securely.
It was somewhat unexpected to find section headings such as "Is IPv6 a failure?" in the product support documentation, but I thought it was interesting and informative nonetheless.