Telescope issues

 New video

So, sorry. First off, yes, still a cough.
Um, almost gone. Clearing up a lot.
triggers it. I went outside for 5 minutes in the cold, triggered it. Ihave doctor's appointment 16th. I will, if it's still going, talk to them. So, panic nod.
However, today's rant is about a telescope.
So, my well, one of my granddaughters has expressed an interest in the night sky, stars, telescopes, and the like.
And I thought, well, let's help get her a beginner telescope. And I Googled a bit and I probably fell foul of some AI because what I found was um a review of a Sonara telescope that was apparentlyquite good as a starter kids telescope.
And so I went to their website and there it was and it's 169 quid.
And I'm thinking, well, firstly, obviously, my granddaughter is worth this.
Duh. Um, but, you know, it's it's not cheap. Claims to have, you know, really advanced optics and whatever.
Anyway, based on the review, which in hindsight I think the review was just but anyway, based on the review, I ordered one and it's from a site that has UK in the domain name and charges in poundsand then ships from Hong Kong for sake. And I hate this. The website does not have on it who the legal entity you're buying from is.
And this is actually I think a legal requirement. Uh and they don't.
Anyway, let's see what I got.
It's a telescope. Okay.
F370.
I think the 70 is the aperture and the 300 is the focal length. Okay. Let's just go around the sides the end. Now, I'm not going to open it up because there's no more information in there. Okay.
Okay, fine. Um, it's a telescope and it kind of meets the spec of the ...
It has no manufacturer name, no country of origin, a CE mark, but the suppliers seem unwilling or unable to provide a declaration of conformity which is a requirement as part of a C mark.
So essentially this is a scammy illegal fake CE toy telescope.
I'm not saying it doesn't work. I'm not saying it doesn't even have the aperture aperture and focal length it claims.
What can I say?
But it's a scam.
If I go on Amazon, I can find this for as little as 20 for the same telescope. So I quered and they said, "Oh, no, no, it's not toytelescope. The optics are way better." Blah, blah, blah. I said, "Fine.
Declaration of conformity." Oh, no. We can assure you it meets all the standards, etc. No, declaration of conformity. Requirement for a C mark.
No, no. I mean, I went around the whole we can't read your emails. Your email seems to have the weird attachment. It's just a signature. Um, uh, they replied to me saying, "Your email seems to be blank." But I heard this before. The reply quotes my email which is not blank saying your email seems to be blank.
This is not an uncommon thing etc etc.
We're going around circles and I'm basically saying if you cannot provide a declaration of conformity then your C mark is fake. Therefore you cannot legally sell your product. You can't do that because you've got no manufacturer ID or country of origin anyway.
Therefore, I need to report it to the authorities and my bank and get a claw back.
Sad.
I was ripped off. I fell for it. I'm an idiot. I'm sorry.
Now, what I've got, Alice, now and have a look at this. What I've got Alice now is 260 quid. Okay, this is clearly an actual telescope.
Just the very fact it comes in a box labeled 14 and a half kilograms is is a clue.
And we put it together and she is so excited to go out in the night sky with this. I've got her some books on specially aimed at kids looking at the night sky.
So, I've got those. I hope she likes it.
If she doesn't, she doesn't. But this is a real telescope I've now gother. So, I now need to sort out this that I fell for, which is clearly a toy telescope that's worth 20 quid, charged 169 quid, and an absolute ripoff with I mad.
So, that's my latest rant.
I hope to follow up with her exploration of space.
I I really hope she loves it. I hope she gets pictures of Jupiter's moons and Saturn's rings and nebula and whatever.
There there's a lot she can look at.
and they're planning a a sort of camping trip to take her onto the moors um with her telescope and it's got a whole clip thing for a mobile phone so she should be able to get lots of pictures straight off it. It's good.
Yeah, but the toy telescope is either going back or getting clawed back or something.
Don't fall for that crap, please.

Interesting new scam "worry free purchase"

Ordered something online and this is on they list this...

It has a delete icon, but do it, and it re-appears.

Update: They credited the £11.99 - yay!

Seems a third party service.

Seems mandatory.

So ordered the goods, and then emailed (seller, and supplier of 3rd party service) and said under various UK distance selling directives I wish to cancel the "worry-free purchase" service as I am more than happy with my purchase to be covered by UK statutory provisions, which seem to cover all they cover on that service.

We'll see if I get a refund or I have to claw back on card.

Extra irony, their "worry-free" purchase service is causing me "worry" I would not have on any normal purchase.

OK this has worried me...

Never say "yes"

You have seen the news story I am sure, on Telegraph (don't they check their sources?).

Police warning over scam callers who ask 'Can you hear me?'

Well, "I can hear you..."... But, which police force or authorities sent this warning?

What is odd is this is promoted on twitter by someone selling call blocking services. @CPRCallBlocker. They were on BBC Radio 5, and oddly their spokesman actually said "yes" during the interview, so allowing millions of people to record him saying "yes" to frame him in a contract! Or, so he would have you believe.

My own lawyer actually made a "call recording" (here) to prove the point, and I should hold him to it as I would love the @RevK twitter handle. That recording is entirely constructed from (many) call recordings of calls with him in the past. Nice job editing it...

The point here is that contracts are formed when parties agree to form a contract, and occasionally, when there is a dispute, there may need to be evidence of the contract and the terms. That evidence can be in testimony, evidence in call recording, in signed documents - even in scanned signed documents so no actual paper. Many ways. Evidence in the way the parties behaved and acted even.

It is simple to get the signature of a director of almost any company from companies house, but paste that in to a document and try and sue for breach of contract and you will need more evidence than that. Analysis of documents and call recordings can find the fakes, and even simple things like I have, on file, all of the calls from which that was made and could find them as a counter to any claim to show the recording was "constructed". At the end of the day a judge would decide.

What makes this even harder is scaling the scam - if you scam one person and do it well you may win - the judge may decide you have the "evidence" on your side, but it gets more and more suspicious as more people say "I never agreed to that", "that call never happened", and the scam falls down.

It also falls down on scale with one scam - make a call recording agreeing £1,000,000 for that twitter handle and that will be suspect and justify a lot of scrutiny and forensic analysis of the "recording".

At the end of the day a scam like this simply does not pan out, and the whole story pretty much has to be a hoax - maybe to sell call blocking services, who knows?

Please, Telegraph, fact check your stories. After all, you do not want to fall in to selling "fake news".

P.S. Neil has confirmed my side of that "recording" was all from a single call recording I posted on my blog some time ago, so anyone could have constructed that just the same. Well done Neil.

Scammers are obvious

We all get scam emails and calls and the like.

I find them obvious, and so do my friends, but I live in fear that someone will be cunning enough to fool me.

Indeed, I ponder what steps would be needed to fool me, and feel there are not that many, and that worries me.

But I realised now, as several have pointed out, that this is deliberate. Scammers are not so stupid! There is a reason the emails have iffy logos and bad grammar. It is to weed out, well, me!

Basically, there are people with some clue and they are the people scammers do not wish to engage. They are the people that will both take up their time and not get them any money.

So the scams look obvious and broken and badly worded. They don't need to try and fool me. In fact they want me to immediately see through it and hang up or delete the email and let them concentrate on the muggles.

Why did I not realise this before - maybe I am not that smart?!

Giving the police more power? (#IPBill/#IPAct)

With the Investigatory Powers Bill reaching final stages I expect to have some detailed comments by next week, once we have the final text of the Act.

However, we had a rather odd email today from the police, a Cyber Distribution & Prevention Team, no less. You would hope they have some clue, but their email shows drastic lack of clue...

We do occasionally get requests, usually under RIPA, usually related to telephony, and almost never actually correct. Typical errors are:-

• Not one of our numbers!
• Number too short
• Number too long

But also issues they would not know, but still a nuisance:-

• Number simply not in use, and hence must just be spoofed CLI
• Number leased to another telco

This request was different. It was a request to suspend a "line" which is in fact a VoIP service. But it shows some serious lack of clue here.

Firstly they are entirely going on the CLI. They have not attempted to trace the source of the calls via the telephone network in any way (else they would not have got to us as it is part of a block leased to another telco). But even though only based on CLI they are assuming the CLI is genuine. No hint that they know it could be otherwise, and indeed, asking us to suspend a line based only on CLI provides a means to "attack" a victim by using their CLI for something iffy and getting the police to get the victims line suspended! Our reply refers them to the wikipedia article on spoofing CLI.

Also, it is marked "Classification: PROTECT - INTERNAL USE ONLY" yet they have sent it externally to us. Ooops.

Then they explain "Attempts to contact the line have not been undertaken to prevent jeopardising any ongoing or potential investigation that may follow." Hang on?!? What would we say to a customer (if it was our customer) when we suspend them that would not jeopardise ongoing or potential investigation - seriously - suspended line is going to be a tad noticeable.

Then there is the actual request "We request that you consider suspending this line as soon as possible to prevent further harm to members of the public occurring and for a minimum period of 12 months." which I am not sure I understand. This is just a number. If we suspend it at all, the end user can have a new number to make calls within seconds, so not going to stop him, just alert him that they are on to him. Also it means the fraudster is now using a new number which nobody is blocking or watching out for, so actually that increases harm - by always using the same number one can alert people "don't accept calls from X" if that was a sane thing to do when considering CLI spoofing anyway. It also makes handling the reports they are getting easier to collate as they know it is the same person. But also, why suspend for 12 months? How does that help?

But then we have the fraud itself - a simple matter of someone calling an claiming to be something official (I am not giving details here), but a key point is the victim is then asked for "bank details" to pay something they have been convinced is due. As far as I know that only allows a direct debit, and a direct debit can always be reversed. So either the victims are getting really bad advice and not getting the DD reversed and their money back, or the fraudster is particularly stupid. The email is quite specific, and says the other trick is to ask the victim to get "I tune"[sic] vouchers and read the number, but that again makes no sense as this is someone claiming to be from an official body which nobody would be stupid enough to think could be paid in iTunes vouchers. What they are saying here really makes no sense. I suspect the fraudster is smarter than they are saying and the police are recording the details totally wrongly.

I hope they catch the fraudster, but in this case there is nothing we can do to assist further - as the calls are not through us or from one of our customers.

These are the people we want to give access to details of every web site visited by every person in the UK. Seriously?