First of all, as far as I know, no Big Webmail service supports encrypted email (and there are complications in how you’d provide such a thing on webmail anyway) and it can be fairly easy to trick the webmail service into giving access to other people. My relative was sceptical, but within a day, US vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s Yahoo mail was cracked and splashed across the news. (By the way - gov.palin counted as a personal email address? Huh? Her name isn’t “gov”.)

Even without passwords going astray, there’s no telling that the intended recipient is the only person reading the email. Here’s a fun paragraph from the Google Mail Terms:-

“Google maintains and processes your Gmail account and its contents to provide the Gmail service to you and to improve our services. The Gmail service includes relevant advertising and related links based on the IP address, content of messages and other information related to your use of Gmail.” (emphasis added)

The Electronic Privacy Information Center suggests this includes wiretapping.

There’s finally a growing awareness that free webmails are not safe, built on artificial anti-competitive encouragements like “you need a Yahoo!ID to subscribe to this yahoogroup” (no - the old “stick -subscribe after the group name, before the @” still works, just like it did before they bought it from egroups). Internet Psychologist Graham Jones writes:-

“It’s time to review your online security and think about whether you actually need Google and its like at all. Probably not.” (source)

I agree with that. Both of my phone companies (The Phone Co-op agency and 3) include webmail - although I have some personal domains (for long-term contactability), those webmails are fine for lists and short-term use. The sort of thing most people seem to use Big Webmail for.

The other main point in my argument was that free webmails are unreliable, thanks to tactics like Yahoo’s shoddy anti-spam attacks on other mailservers. There’s no telling whether the email will get through such bad behaviour and delivery-receipts are unreliable. I can quite understand why a solicitor won’t send email to the likes of hotmail, even if I think it’s just as probable that the solicitor doesn’t “get” email.

“Oh” said my relative. I think she’s still using Big Webmail though.

As I write this, there’s still no response on facebook’s news page, but I wonder whether Firsht will be to UK social networking what Godfrey was to UK Usenet. A bit of a wake-up - a reminder that the internet isn’t a consequence-free playpen. I know that more than most - my youthful indiscretions are plastered across the web, if you know where to look. Fortunately, cooperative associates seem to understand that people learn over time and don’t hold decade-old mistakes against me.

Talking of not holding old mistakes against people, LinkedIn is profitting from an influx of bankers since the banks started going bust. That’s going to change the society behind their network - for better or worse?

All of the big name networks seem to be having some growing pains, like the breakdown of the Facebook metaphor and I think the “walled gardens” are ripe for replacement. I’m still listed there at present, but I’m using my account on the cooperativemagazine NoseRub server to monitor it and most of the stuff posted to facebook is taken from my websites. I’d like to make NoseRub import and export more things in more formats, but will anyone pay for that work? Otherwise, it keeps falling down my priorities because it’s in PHP and I don’t find that much fun. Maybe I’ll replace it with something more amusing in Scheme or Perl.

Aside: is there a good bot that produces an RSS feed of jabber/XMPP presence messages?

But that’s been the least of my politician annoyances in September. Earlier this year, we were encouraged by Cooperatives-UK to get involved with our Local Strategic Partnership. I went to North Somerset Partnership’s event but I was less than impressed by it. There’s no obvious way that NSP is capable of promoting cooperation. Publishing a thick glossy book about sustainability makes me wonder if it’s capable of doing anything sensible - most people I’ve shown it to have either laughed at it, or got angry about the wasted resources.

They’re not the only LSP we have here. Last week, I went to the West of England Partnership’s Transport Forum which

“horrendously perverted the idea of a “forum” - the event would have been better titled “Joint Transport Lectures” because nearly all our time was spent watching council officers and consultants tell us how wonderful transport is here (they’re meeting 18 out of 21 targets, you know!) and what roads and bus roads they will build next. … The whole event seems like a colossal waste of resources for all involved.”

So, I seem to be having a bad time with politicians recently. If the above wasn’t enough, we got a reply to our petition requesting ODF at the National Archives which amazingly doesn’t mention Open Document Format at all. I’ve written to our MP (John Penrose) asking about that.

And finally, I asked Climate Change Minister Joan Ruddock MP

“If there’s no windfall tax to fund it, how will the government remove the climate-harming services from the market and encourage new suppliers (particularly Third Sector ones who should show concern for their communities and sustainable energy) into the market?”

and got the non-answer of

“The Government is tackling a very wide range of issues that impact on Climate Change through a variety of mechanisms. The energy efficiency programme recently announced is directed at those most in need and where a small expenditure can produce a significant and lasting saving in energy use. Thus saving households money and reducing CO2 emissions.”

What the heck has that to do with removing harmful services and encouraging new suppliers?

If any politicians want to be held in better esteem, try giving some straight answers instead of imitating the above, please. “Yes, Minister” was meant to be a satire!

This week has been an utter farce for international football coverage, with German stations showing both matches live and free-to-air, while English fans at home were being asked to pay an Irish broadcaster or go without. What are the FA playing at? Why is there no “national coverage” clause in their sale?

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