Iain @ Internet

That we had more transparency around government data gathering.

A good report, with wish-washy, non-specific recomemndations as ever.

…..what madness, other than being completely unworkable, this could become the most privacy invasive yet.

….a database of all phone calls and e-mails/.

I wonder how many seconds it will take for the terrorists for find a way around that then?

According the Information Commissioners Office the recent rash of data breaches is no worse than usual.

I’d agree with that, there has been no massive cultural change so why would the underlying problem be getting better. Perhaps in 18 months time we’ll start to see an improvement – but until then expect those breaches to keep on coming!!!

Well, it had to happen eventually given the pace at which this crime is growing.

I’ll keep a running commentary here for my own records as much as anything else.

Here’s what’s happened so far:

- My Barclaycard Visa bill arrived this morning.

- I almost choked on my breakfast when I saw an charge O2 for £1,027.31; my iPhone bill should be £45.

- I assumed that it was a mistake at O2, who had a lot of trouble moving from my old O2 account to the new iPhone one (not a surprise given my previous post on the matter).

- I phoned O2 who, on the first call, handled it badly, telling me that they could not see such a transaction on my account and that I needed to phone up Barclaycard and get a ‘GED’ number for the transaction.

- I phoned up Barclaycard who told me that only a merchant could request such a number.

- While I was on the phone to Barclaycard, I noticed another two Paypal payments that I did not recognise…..the penny was starting to drop.

- I asked Barclaycard to put a stop on the account and send out a form for me to challenge the transactions.

That’s where we are at the moment. I don’t really regard it as identity theft at the moment, much more likely just plain old credit card fraud….but let’s run with it and see what happens.

Great work as ever here from Privacy International.

This appalling loss of 25 million personal data records by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs has to become the tipping point for a marked increase in respect for personal data across all of UK government and beyond.

And this on the back of last weeks revelation that the Foreign and Commonwealth office had breached the Data Protection Act.

More resignations please and then some strong proposals on how to transform the situation……

….This is unlikely to be based on an ‘honest we’ll do better next time’ approach, or even bringing in Data Breach legislation after the horse has bolted – Project VRM and User-Centric Identity Community….please help!!!!

When O2 first announced that they were to be the first UK mobile operator to have the rights to sell iPhones and contracts, there was a lot of debate as to whether they had paid too much in terms of revenue share they’d have to give to Apple.

I actually thought that they’d do well from it, irrespective of the relatively high share they were giving away. My logic was based on that they were likely to be acquiring ‘happy customers’, i.e. customers who, on average, would be advocates – of the phone and by default of O2, until such time as their exclusivity runs out. As input to that, I had considered the USA launch, noting that despite locked phones, the post launch price cut, and relatively poor mobile service from AT & T, the vast majority of existing customers are still massively positive about the device – and sales figures continue to look good.

I even pondered for a moment that O2 might have taken this acquisition of happy customers into account in their calculations and that they had figured out the ‘net promoter’ impact to show an overall positive return. Of course that would therefore mean that O2 were in full control of the launch plan, had designed the perfect customer experience around it, and all they had to do was hit the on button on 9th November……and that was where my assumptions seem to have fallen apart.

Consider what has actually happened in my case:

- I am a long term O2 contract customer, on a reasonably high tariff, and they regularly tell me how important I am to them, and how I have my own special ‘select’ number to call if I want to talk to them.

- When the iPhone deal was announced I phoned them up to see what the deal/ options were going to be; their answer…….go to our web site and have a look, we can’t tell you anything over the phone.

- Fair enough I thought, their call volumes will be very high so I can understand their logic, although I thought the might have a programme to allow existing customers to talk to someone.

- As time went on, there were no more details announced, so I thought I’d phone up again to have some specific questions answered. On that call, the penny dropped for me….there is no designed customer experience, or at least not a good one, there is no segmentation in place that differentiates between existing and new customers…..and that the all my thoughts about O2 acquiring advocates were about to fall by the wayside.

In fact it’s worse than that – the 1600 minutes I have stacked up in credit with O2 will disappear if I merge my existing account with an iPhone account. So as an existing customer it costs me more to switch to an iPhone than it does for a new subscriber. And when I then look at how I come to have 1600 minutes built up, I realise that the O2 proposition that supposedly keeps me on the right tariff is not worth the paper it is written on

So – what does that tell us (other than that I will need to spend most of this week on the phone to use up my credits)? I think it tells us that:

1) O2 are going to miss out on the chance to buy/ convert a load of high value, customers who could improve the advocate balance of their customer base (which according to Reicheld is the only metric that matters).

2) That there is obviously some weirdness going on behind the scenes in which O2 and Apple, whilst partnering, are squabbling over the customer experience – and Apple won.

3) That there is a strong danger that O2 will negatively impact trust and quality of relationships in that segment of their customer base that is already a loyal customer, and which switches to an iPhone.

Come on O2 – you’ve got 3 days to at least notice that you have ignored your existing customers. You seem to be able to send me text messages about all sorts of irrelevant stuff – how about one about my iPhone and how to avoid losing my credits????

Contrary to House of Lords recommendations, the UK Government are refusing to introduce data breach notification laws.

According to a House of Lords spokesman, Lord Errol, the UK government ‘does not get the threat to the internet posed by cybercrime’.

‘The powers would apply to government as well as the private sector. We think that’s why [the government] is resisting it, said Lord Errol.’

A very timely quote, given that on the same day it is announced that Revenue and Customs have ‘lost’ a CD with personal details of 15,000 customers of Standard Life.

Each time I log into my Network Solutions account I get reminded of the need to fix CRM from the outside.

They have tried really hard, and their cross-selling engine is a work of CRM art – but why oh why would you ever thinking that a Scotsman would want to buy these domains that they keep trying to sell me????????

Let’s just wait and see how long they keep trying to sell me this complete irrelevance…..I make it about 60 days so far.