I have been pretty upset recently about a whole bunch of things. Here are a few!

SPAM emails and Cold-calls

The sheer number of unwanted emails that I receive daily is getting out of control. I never asked for them in the first place. The CAN SPAM Act was a welcome change in 2003 when it was passed, but many didn’t read the fine print before celebrating. It is about giving the consumers a choice to opt out! It should have given the consumers a choice to opt in instead! Companies are buying bulk email lists at ridiculously low price and mindlessly blasting emails hoping for miracles. Automated SPAM detection is always late in catching up to the tricks of the marketers, so we still see many emails in our inbox. I have tried everything from Unroll.me to unsubscribing to marking them as spam. Nothing works all the time and I hate clutter in my inbox.

Phones are a bit more manageable. I have all my work calls forwarded to Google Voice and I screen calls before taking them. Also, my Android phone now allows me to mark numbers as SPAM, thank you! At home, we are extremely happy that we signed up for NOMOROBO. Though we signed up with Do Not Call Registry very early on, over the years it has become practically useless. NOMOROBO partners with the telephone service provider to detect if several phones are being called at the same time and kills the call after a ring or two. Works beautifully. But I am sure that someone is developing a way to bypass this.

Comcast and Intrusion

I am basically stuck with Comcast in CT. I don’t have many choices. I can’t get reliable satellite connection where I live and the only other choice is Frontier, which is even worse. I was tired of paying for leased cable modem, so I bought my own one of the Comcast supported modems. I understand that you have to call them to activate. However, I have an extensive wireless network in my house with multiple wireless access points, so I did not want to use the wireless that is built into the Arris modem. Guess what? You can’t do that easily. The moment you call to activate the modem, Comcast remotely gains admin access to control certain settings on the modem that you can no longer change! One of them is disabling the wireless altogether.

Now I understand why they only support certain cable modems. It is because, the cable modem manufacturers build in these backdoors for Comcast to get control of your modem.

Above all, they install a wireless access point called Xfinitywifi over which I have absolutely no control! Anyone in my neighborhood with a valid Comcast account can hop on and use my WiFi network. Terrible!!!

This is unbelievable. I was playing around, and I happened to do something and the wireless was turned on (which I am allowed to do apparently, I just am not allowed to turn it off). And I had to call them again to take it down. This is pretty intrusive. OK, I have your service, but why would you gain access to control my own device without my consent?

On top of this, the default setting on Arris was: username: “Admin” and the password, you guessed it, “password”. So, there is a period of time, my network could have been compromised!

In my condo in Framingham I switched to Comcast from Verizon (thats a whole different story). Their device’s default is Admin/Password. Based on who I see around in the condo, I think there are a lot of IT guys and I am sure that some are scanning the network for vulnerabilities in their spare time. C’mon, in this day and age, what are you thinking? How many of your users even know or bother to change it?

I am able to log in to my Comcast-Xfinity account from anywhere on the internet rand look at my router configuration remotely. This thing allows me to look at my WiFi password in clear text. What kind of a security does this provide? Why are these people not being held responsible for this kind of behavior?

Calling for help

I rarely call these companies for help because it is always pressing something or the other and only to be told to go to the website. They forget that I am actually calling because I cannot find it on the web!!! In many cases I just keep pressing some random keys and get to “representative”. And then you are greeted always with the same nonsense “Due to high call volume, your call may not be answered soon” or something like that! Lies, lies, lies.

Rarely you get someone who is nice and polite and is helpful. And when you get someone, many a times, they ask you for all sorts of identifying information only to tell you they don’t have the answer and they need to pass you on to others and you start all over. It is quite obvious that they make it so hard and pathetic experience that you will never want to call again!

I should say that I also have had some pleasant surprises. A woman at JetBlue was extremely patient and helpful. I got her information and tweeted a praise. Despite the fact that I was discontinuing service, a Verizon rep was very pleasant and helpful and finally I love the voice enabled remote and internet speed from Comcast.

I should confess that my mood is a bit sour because of other things, such as this being the inauguration week and all of these hearings for Cabinet positions. It was depressing to see such a pathetic choice for the Secretary of Education who won’t denounce guns in schools because of “potential” grizzlies and does not understand the difference between growth and proficiency in the context of assessment!

I really need to get over these because none of these seem to have any hope of changes in the right direction!