According to the Connexion, Orange has just fallen to the hackers for the second time with records of 1.3 million users being compromised, including email addresses, land/mobile phone numbers etc. They are warning that there could be a risk of phishing emails etc.
More details are attached in the report. http://www.connexionfrance.com/france-orange-hack-personal-details-stolen-april-january-phishing-emails-scam-warning-15762-view-article.html#sthash.YEzr4uCQ.uxfs
I wasn't referring either Orange or any English speaking service Brian. Luckily I speak excellent French.
It's nice to hear of good service Shirley. All the more so because receiving it generally comes as a surprise. One calls up all ready for an struggle or even an argument and bingo it actually goes well :-) Great, a load of energy saved.
Spot on Alex.
Hi John,
yes,I am an Orange ADSL Haute Debite subscriber - and have the telephone, TV and Internet deal as well, which I think is not bad - well suits me anyway. Although the size limit to files as attachments is the problem. On the business side we use Cloud as the download platform for our books - or so I am advised, and I work this very well in that sense, but I want my own site for other activities away from the publishing one - my Marketing Training seminars on CD for example.
Oh yes, I remain the last man standing who doesn't own a mobile phone, or an iPad, or a kindle, which I suppose is a bit odd with the type of work i do, but quite honestly I don't NEED any of these things, and yes I do understand the one-off emergency value of a mobile phone, but I don't drive much these days, and if I fell down the stairs I don't know if I would be in any state to phone anybody anyway. I did investigate costs many moons ago, and on my part-pension decided this was one expense I could do without.
I was a bit shocked when I did a check on my business image storage when I found that in, the 23 books I produced there are 14,000 images, and the ones I decided not to use add another 10,000! Total storage of these is 23GB! Bloody hell?
I will check out the others you mention though as other circs. are coming into play!
Thanks for the info.
Multiple redundancy John, I’m no fool 
I presume you have everything in the Cloud backed up to local drives Alex. Personally I’d never store important data on a Cloud. I’m happy to use Cloud services to share data between my devices but I would never have the definitive copy of any data residing in a Cloud. I consider my stuff too important to risk it to an underpaid, overworked systems administrator somewhere in India with whom I have no SLA at all. Too risky by half.
My understanding was that as DSL subscriber with Orange, you had access to 5Gb of data storage for personal use. When I checked my business account webmail the other day, I saw that I had 10Gb of free storage, so perhaps there is a difference between the domestic and professional capacities. I don't mind paying for storage - with Google, I get a terabyte of storage for something like a 15O Euros a year
Yes it’s free Norman but I think you might need to be an Orange ADSL AND mobile user. I’m just an Orange ADSL subscriber and whenever I try and download the Orange Cloud app to check it out the Orange site asks for my mobile number and when I enter my Free number it doesn’t let me download the app. BTW I use iCloud, Onedrive and Drobox. They all work fine and none of them tie me to an ISP which is how I prefer it. If you use Orange and change ISP you probbaly loose your Orange storage.
Sorry Norman, I don't use the Orange Cloud system, so no idea, but I have used other cloud systems : ADrive, Dropbox, UbuntuOne (which has unfortunately decided to shut down), iCloud, LiveDrive, Google Drive is currently my choice of the moment - the reason being is that I need a client that will run on Linux and Mac, and occasionally, on Windows (I have a heterogeneous IT machine pool, but which is mostly Linux based).
Hell's teeth - gets worse doesn't it? I'll never get to grips with this. Do you know anything about the Orange Cloud offer? We have Cloud (Box) for the company in Australia, but I want to get one for myself here, but I can't work out whether it is part of my 'forfait' or not - as in not paying extra for it.
I do get lost with so much of this stuff.
Norman, Chrome isn't the search engine, just your browser, which uses Google as its default search engine, and as the largest indexer of internet content, more likely to find sites containing dodgy software. Firefox uses the same default search engine as Chrome, whereas IE uses Bing. All of them are more secure now than they have ever been, but unfortunately only IE tends to suffer from zero day exploits (i.e. discovered in the wild, in action, without prior communication to the vendor/editor).
The secret to not worrying at night - unplug the box from the mains !
That might explain why McAfee have suddenly sent me a spate of emails about renewing their software package, which I will ignore blithely.
Too close to be accidental, but whenever I have put Google Chrome as my default Search Engine, I am attacked from sites I have never heard of, loads of pop-ups, and difficulty to get into anything. I did a full check on my system via Avast and found out of 23 infected files (Trojan Horse and Adware mainly) more than half were via Google Chrome. As this was my default engine, I suppose that's logical, but where the others came from I have no idea. I have always found Explorer poor, but Firefox seems about the best.
Windows Updates are almost always a problem. When the computer fails I go into 'systeme restore' which lists dates in which Windows Updates have been done (amongst other downloads) and the suggestion is to restore to a date PRIOR to the updates taking place. There's a confidence builder?
In some respects Orange is also under attack simply by being the biggest. Plus, and let's be brutal about it - do we really think we are secure whatever system we use? The horse has bolted and I don't think anyone knows how to stop it.
Thanks Brian. On the case now.
I still may go on the hunt for Big Bird and pluck myself a quill pen. Mind you, with everybody wanting paperwork in triplicate, that could be a heck of a lot of writing.
True Valerie but if they have, for example in this case, 1.3 million IDs to choose from one would be unlucky to be the one hit. It’s 90% hype IMHO. Just being sensible in using the Net will, I think, keep one safe.
I think it's almost a fear of the unknown John, an invisible attack that could potentially wipe out a bank account, cause havoc with clients and countless hours trying to sort out the chaos it would cause, having to prove who you are to various organisations because someone else is pretending to be you. I certainly do hope it's far more hype than actual cases but I confess to being paranoid - these people are becoming so sophisticated now you can't be sure what they'll manage to achieve. Ah, the good old days of paper.