Written June 2010
by Cliff Feldwick
As both my loyal readers know, I differentiate between clueless and oblivious: clueless is the inability to process or understand information, oblivious means it is not even noticed. Of the two, oblivious is the harder to cure: people talking and standing in the way at a bottom of an escalator will ignore pretty much everything but a snowplow coming through. So let’s look at some more head-shaking activity of recent days.
Verizon changes your e-mail
This showed up as people started reporting that their email was not going out. Interestingly enough, they could get email but not send it. The common factor turned out to be Verizon FIOS – Verizon had changed the outgoing port number for email from the standard that Windows and every other system has used forever to a different port. The error message, if you noticed it, was also sufficiently generic as to be useless. So how were people supposed to know this?
I’m sure Verizon will say that they sent an email – to the Verizon e-mail account. Now I don’t know about you, but I check my actual service provider’s (Comcast, in my case) email about as often as my cat decides to go skydiving. We all use our web-based accounts, or G-mail, or anything except being vz8167er52wahoo@verizon.net that we’re given when we sign up. So that was pretty much useless.
OK, so let’s look at their website. Searching on “email ports” (assuming you knew that was the problem, which 90% of people would not) produces a post that says because spammers often use the standard port 25, they are changing theirs “in the first quarter of 2009”. Excuse me, wasn’t that last year? So the “notice” that you got was over a year ago, and the actual implementation took place in early May. Good luck remembering that.
What to do? Well, since Outlook and Thunderbird allow multiple accounts, you could add the Verizon account as one to be checked – if you wanted the flood of junk this will produce. Or better yet, maybe Verizon could actually insert a bulletin in the bill of people paying for FIOS that told you about the change. After that you’re on your own.
Texting while drinking
Wine in the Woods is always such a great event: wine, music, sunshine, happy people (think drinking wine all day could induce that?) and a chance to celebrate spring. In response, over 15,000 people showed up in Symphony Woods on Saturday this year. So how come so many people were walking through the crowd absolutely submerged in their Crackberry or iThing, looking down at the screen? A perfect way to end up wearing someone else’s Cabernet.
We won’t even go into how many butt-texts went out as people collapsed onto blankets as the day wore on.
Parking Lot Environmentalist
Sitting in the Dorsey Hall parking lot was a giant old Mercury – you know, the kind that spawned the term “Boat” – running. The occupant, on a My God What A Beautiful Spring Day, had the windows up and the air-conditioning running as he read the paper. As I passed again a half-hour later, he was still reading and it was still running. The kicker? His “Save Wild Dolphins” Florida license plates. Yep, Mr. Environmentally Sensitive, for sure.
OK, now for some computer stuff
Facebook continues to strain our tolerance for how much they want to tell the world about us and how hard it is to restrict that. You should probably be making changes in their Privacy section because of that.
First off, remember that you really don’t have to fill in every slot when you create your profile. Leave a little mystery. If you don’t want to broadcast your religious or political views, don’t. Same for your e-mail address, etc. Remember that other Facebook members can search looking for new “friends” and see a lot if you let them.
And maybe you don’t want to run so many applications, like Farmville. When you sign up for these, you allow them to extract information from your Facebook account. Then that information becomes the property of someone else who runs the game. Again, a leak in your privacy.
There’s also a new thing called Instant Personalization, which allows certain Facebook partners to “personalize” their pitches to you based on your personal information. Definitely something to turn off, even though Facebook tells you you’ll be missing out on such a rich experience if you do. Yeah.
If you want to see how much you’re sharing to the world, go to Account, Privacy Settings, then Block List. There’s a button there called Preview My Profile that shows you.
For a really comprehensive discussion of all settings, go to http://windowssecrets.com/comp/100520/ and look at the article called “Tighten your Facebook privacy settings”. You can also sign up for their email newsletter called Windows Secrets or “Everything Microsoft forgot to mention”. Well written, not too over the top technically and highly recommended.