I received an email from Orange today telling me that they have been compromised. Personally I think all this security stuff is overly hyped. I've been in the IT industry for nearly 40 years and I've never, ever, actually met anybody that has lost anything through internet fraud. I'm sure it happens but it is rare and if one takes the same precautions online that one would take offline then it's improbable. This is a service provider and banking problem not an end use one. However it is far more attractive to security software venders to sell to a market of tens of millions of end users rather than a far, far lower number of service providers. So who's hyping what ;-)
Very good point Brian. Mind you, I don't even know mine now. I rarely use the Orange site. Must investigate tomorrow ...
Ha ha ha, it SERIOUSLY looks as though you're shouting. I wonder whose email account they've got into then, yours or his. I never work that out. But I am assuming they've hacked his and are using his contact list to scam people. Hateful people. I wish they'd go out and get a proper job.
There are times, such as these, when I'm really glad I know nothing about computers or how stuff gets to & from my machine. Ignorance can be bliss as I don't lie awake all night worrying if some swine is nicking my dosh or passing himself off as me. I know you experts will tell me I'm stupid but in my defence if you guys can't stop your machines being compromised what chance do I have? My anti virus stuff & firewall things seems to be working, I've still got the same meagre bank balance & my 8 hours a night kip is normally nightmare free so what else can I do? You experts can explain things to me 'till the cows come home but it'll still be like you are speaking another foreign language.
Yes, that's the official line from Orange being relayed in the press. Ho hum. Funnily enough, that corresponds to about the same time as my business router had a DNS cache poisoning incident that Orange refused to acknowledge.
Great comparison site - thanks Alex.
"I had similar things in the UK, but that was a few years ago and I thought things had 'progressed' or am I living in a make believe world?"
Yes. Take a happy pill and fall down the rabbit hole, it can' get any madder.
If you're still interested in satellite link internet, here are the list of available ISPs operating in the French market :
That's brilliant, Alex, thank you. I'll tell a look at Ariase and see what's going on in my area, if anything. I was debating the satellite question in my head because I'm paranoid about lines going down due to trees/branches etc in bad weather. The work I do is sometimes on extremely tight deadlines and if a line's down for 2 or 3 days before the engineers sort it then I'd lose all credibility with that company and it's my main income, hence wondering if satellite would be good as a back-up plan in the event of engineering works?
Hi Valerie,
I have two lines : a domestic one for the house, and a separate business line for my work. If the business line goes down, my contract stipulates that they will at least attempt to sort it out within 4 working business hours - the cost is naturally not the same though ! Before DSL came to the village, I was seriously considering a satellite link, but the cost and technical issues (such as latency) held me back. Satellite link technology has improved quite a lot since then, and the prices have dropped, but you can still expect to pay more than a dedicated business DSL contract, at least from what I understand.
A good comparison site is Ariase.com : this will test your phone line or one near you (if you know the number) for free, and let you know the maximum speeds you can obtain with the locally installed telco equipment and the offers that are available. It also has a section dedicated to satellite link internet, and a map of the departements that subsidise to an extent, the buying and installation of the required equipment. The subsidies available are very much dependent on where you live, and whether or not your landline is likely to be able to have access to a 8Mbit/s DSL connection in the near future.
Never had a router problem bar when a series of power cuts zapped our Livebox. The phone thing is/was a total mystery. It looks like it was a settings issue but one that could not be resolved yesterday. It was not a connect error as they tried to tell me since I could not connect at four locations including here. The biggest mystery though is that I could make calls but not SMS! The test ones I sent to my OH appeared this morning just after breakfast! Yesterday they kept on sending for an indefinite period and then just 'disappeared' without me knowing whether they were sent or what. I now have the stupid email alert on which I have never put on myself. There are silly games going on from their end but they are unable to say what it is because there is clearly no information between any parts of the organisation.
I had similar things in the UK, but that was a few years ago and I thought things had 'progressed' or am I living in a make believe world?
Brian,
Orange can update your firmware and router configuration over the wire, but they will never tell you when they do so. If you have password protected your access to your router and set some of the (meagre) options they allow you to play with, you can expect for the whole thing to fail at some stage because they forget to clear out the cache memory when they do this, or as has happened to me so many times, the update expects a reboot, and then fails to initialize properly. Of course, they will never admit to it when you eventually get them on the phone. I don't know of any ISP capable of not taking the client for an idiot when they ring up. Granted, most people don't want to know, or care, about how their router box works, but they should at least cater for those of us that do.
Having had similar experiences in the UK with some of the UK ISPs, it must be a ubiquitous phenomenon !
Two weeks is ridiculous, Alex, isn't it. Any damage would already have been done but I suppose they faff about trying to investigate, see what info's been accessed and all that palaver which doesn't help the consumer one iota.
Ha ha ha, I can imagine you sitting there blowing raspberries at them.
Allegedly, those clients whose data has been misappropriated will be informed by Orange - seeing as it took them more than 2 weeks to publish the attack, which happened on April 18th, it might be a bit late for those 1.3 million customers.
All this after the first theft of data earlier on this year - where Orange took more than 2 weeks once again to acknowledge the fact. The CEO was recently in the press after "vowing" (and signing a charter to boot) to safeguard its clients' personal data - so much for that ! None of the providers are immune to this kind of attack, but of course Orange is a very juicy target with the largest customer base of all the telcos in France.
I wasn't here. I was several km away, tried it somewhere else when I went shopping then called Orange when I got home when it would not work here. Something fishy (should I say phishy?) but I don't have anything worth having on the phone anyway. Yahboo sucks to any hackers!
That sounds as though they're playing with the cables somewhere and it's making your Livebox glitch. I live in abject terror that they'll unexpectedly disconnect me when I'm on a deadline for something because then I'm screwed. Really need to save up and get a satellite connection.
I think if you're targeted on this hacking thing, it will mean receiving a lot more phishing emails or fake requests from Orange to supply bank details etc. This bloody hacking is far too commonplace now - I'm getting fed up with constantly changing passwords, clearing out malware etc etc.
I have reset my networks and wi-fi again (second time since yesterday) and now it is back again. Bl**dy Orange are hopeless, useless and then I might get rude about them.
I have no idea what is going on but a whole load of my applications stopped working yesterday as I found by pure chance. The phone tells me I don't have a network connection, won't let me sends SMSs but calls OK, very strange. I called Orange and all they could tell me was to try the settings, which I had already done.