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Comment Will somebody please think of the children!?! (Score 1) 561

by xheliox (#36417768) Attached to: Why Doesn't 'Google Kids' Exist?

Give me a freaking break, would you? Yes, my parents would drop me off at the library, but the librarians never stopped us from going into the 'adult' section. Why? Because that's the job of the parent! Not a librarian, not a teacher, and certainly not a corporation. Raise your children and spend time with them or don't have them at all.
Communications

Submission + - BrightHouse Ditches Client Who Complains Too Much 1

Submitted by
Jeff
Jeff writes: "So what do I do now?

I'm in shock. Yesterday, December 13th, I received a call from a lawyer at BrightHouse Networks. He told me my Internet service is meeting the 'national industry standard' and I could either deal with the problems I was having or they would have to disconnect me in 30 days. He mentioned my uptime was 99% over the last 14 days. Though that's certainly misconstruing the facts...

I've been using BrightHouse services for as long as they've been offered in this town. Their Internet and television packages always seemed like the best deal in the area. Though I may have had a sporadic problem, it was usually due to a splitter going bad or the like. But whatever it was, it was always trivial and easy for BrightHouse to fix.

Then I moved across town to a nicer area and my experience with BrightHouse began to change. From the very first day in May 2006 there were problems with the modem staying online and the cable boxes restarting randomly. After multiple frustrating calls to BrightHouse they began to send technicians out to diagnose the problem. Admittedly, for the first few months they were very diligent finding dozens of potential problems inside and outside the home. I was convinced at this point that my service would improve and it did — for a month, maybe two.

Within a short while my Internet was back to going out randomly almost every day. Not for very long, maybe 30 seconds to 2 minutes at a time. Just enough to knock me off of my VPN or out of my SSH terminal session for work. Based on my years of technical experience, I know this is not an expected result when dealing with broadband Internet connections.

After going back and forth with BrightHouse, they put me in touch directly with a 'technical supervisor', Greg Wingate. At first Greg Wingate put on a good show. Almost every morning he'd have a technician sitting in my drive way monitoring the service from the street. Every time the service would go out, I would walk out side and sure enough the technician would see the disruption too. Doing this was a fairly effective way of isolating where the problem was — e.g. Not inside my home.

After they determined where the problem may be, they referred my problem to their maintenance division and they made small changes that seemed to do nothing. At best they were able to mitigate the problem for a few weeks at a time, but ultimately it always comes back.

Many phone calls, many promises later I obviously felt like I had to escalate my problem to executives within BrightHouse. I contacted Chris Fenger's office, President of BH Central Florida. He immediately referred to me a customer service escalation person who basically repeated all the above processes.This same cycle continues multiple times and still my Internet service was unstable.

I don't know I can dispute that 99% figure that the lawyer mentioned — hard to say, I haven't tracked it. But when a company offers a Service Level Agreement (SLA) of 99%, they say that so there's a reasonably understanding among the client and the service provider that 'stuff' happens. Sometimes someone hits a pole, sometimes there's a network hardware failure. There can't be an expectation of constant service at all times and I fully understand that. I'm not unrealistic, the service is $60 a month — it won't be perfect. But to use that 99% figure when my service literally disconnects multiple time a day is just using a vague clause to get rid of a vocal customer.

It's fair to say that I have never been so disappointed with a company in my life. I had always been a big fan of BrightHouse. Though now I have photo and video evidence of my Internet service being interrupted multiple times a day though BrightHouse tells me their service meets 'national industry standards'. They've simply given up. It's a very sad day for customer service.

What do you do when the big bad corporation wins and the little guy gets screwed?"
Privacy

Submission + - Passwords Compromised At LayeredTech

Submitted by Jeff
Jeff writes: It seems that the large dedicated hosting company LayerTech has experienced a large security breach of it's support database. LayeredTech's support database contained root passwords for many of their clients servers, among other private details. LayeredTech sent out an e-mail last night:

"Confidential

Protecting our client's account information is a top priority, and we value the trust you place in Layered Technologies. Regrettably, criminals are increasingly using the Internet for illegitimate purposes. As is the case with many companies that maintain databases of information, Layered Technologies is from time to time subject to attempts to illegally extract information from its databases.

The Layered Technologies support database was a target of malicious activity on the evening of 9/17/2007 that may have involved the illegal downloading of information such as names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and server login details for 5 to 6,000 of our clients. Layered Technologies responded immediately to this specific incident by conducting a comprehensive security audit of internal processes and procedures.

Due to the significant amount of uncertainty in determining which accounts may have been impacted, Layered Technologies felt that it was in your best interest to take the precautionary steps of reaching out to you and all clients regarding this issue. In addition, we are asking all of our clients to change the login credentials for all host details they have submitted in the past 2 years. This includes any login credentials for the following: Cerberus, Modernbill, Encompass, and all servers you own and operate with LT, all services that may have submitted passwords in the past for such as Webmail, Remote Desktop, SSH, MySQL, cPanel WHM, FTP Backup storage or similar services. Please utilize the 'reset password' features on all of our tools to reset and send a new random password. Any LT customers needing assistance with resetting passwords should contact our technical support team via our ticketing system for methods for how we can assist with resetting them and not providing the updated passwords in the tickets.

We are committed to maintaining an ongoing dialogue with all of our clients about Internet security and the steps Layered Technologies is taking to protect its clients. LT has launched a series of initiatives to enhance and to protect the information you have entrusted to us. Some of these steps are being immediately implemented, while others will be put into place as appropriate.

We believe these actions are the responsible steps to protect the trust you place in LT. We will continue to share information with you about the enhancements we are making.

Sincerely,

Todd Abrams
President and COO
Layered Technologies Inc.

Confidentiality Note: The information contained in this transmission is legally privileged and confidential, intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you receive this communication in error, immediately delete this message."

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