How do we insure the new car? It's not a legal requirement, since the registration includes
basic liability, but we want at least third party insurance. Back to this horribleBudget Direct web site,
where in fact things went relatively smoothly. Nowadays that's worth reporting.
This is about the level of incompetence I had expected of the Australian Government,
based on personal experience. In particular it relates to this horribly insecure
myGov platform.
I've been personally involved with almost exactly this scam four years ago. That's interesting for a number of things: they discovered the
scam in time, something that the Four Corners programme claimed that they didn't do.
And it happened some months before the exploit that the programme describes. I was
actually left comparatively positively impressed at the time.
So far (I've only watched the first third) there's no evidence that the reporters are
any cleverer than the ATO's fraud detection system as they describe it.
So after my various online experiences of the last couple of days, should I think like a
cracker and plan (and document) exploits? How can I break the security of Bank Australia? I don't think I
can, as long as I keep them off my mobile phone. And they claim to be able to recognize me by my voice.
But what if I have installed their app? One of the ways they identify me is to send me a
“secure” SMS, whatever that might
be—they're too polite to assume that I don't know. How does that work if the phone has been
stolen? They claim that it does, but they don't say how.
And Budget Direct? I
don't even have a password! To authenticate me they use this stupid date of birth
and address. Any of my neighbours could steal my phone and log in as me. About the only
good thing about it is that I can't think of what harm a cracker could do, though my lack of
imagination is exactly one of the reasons why I don't trust phones for security.
Off this morning for my Elantra's last journey. I've had it for nearly 12 years, and it has served me well. But it howled all the way to Ballarat. Not pain, of course, just the
wheel bearing that was the last straw to break its back.
Somehow it's sad. The car is still functional, but before long it will just be a pile of
metal. And last week Yvonne took it for some reason, and
filled up the tank! I got $200 for it, and lost $60 on the petrol in the tank.
How do I deregister it? I should get another good $100 back for the rego, but the
VicRoads web site beat me.
Chris had given me the number plates, and he told me that I should send in photos of them.
But there was nothing on the site that reflected that. Call their help line. Ah, says
Ajay, he would send a video to my phone. To my phone, not my “landline”. Nowadays a
“phone” is a “smart phone”. The video (from YouTube) shows things
relatively well. You need to select “Other”, not “written off”. And it seems that “written
off” implies an accident. And I have to send photos of the destroyed plates. So, goodbye
RUO 901:
A few statistics: I got the car on 11 September 2013, 4340 days or 11.89 years ago. It had 150,975 km on the clock when
I got it and 186,832 when I left it today, a total of 35,857 km or an average of 3,016 km
per year.
The new car, the Toyota Yaris, looks different. A number of things confused me, and I spent a good 5 minutes
RTFMing before I drove off with the
handbrake on. But apart from that everything went smoothly. It has a display of
instantaneous and average fuel consumption. The first jumps around so much as to be almost
useless. I saw consumptions of between 0.0 and 47 l/100 km, and even during normal driving
it changed by several litres from reading to reading. The average stayed constant at 7
l/100 km, probably needing resetting to do anything useful.
But it's here.
Congratulations! Explaining BSD just got its first reader
Video Player Error
Sorry, there has been a problem playing back this video in your browser. This error has been logged with our technical team for investigation.
Please check our list of recommended web browsers .
Error Code: 102630
OK, they don't like firefox? Try with Chromium. Log in, please. And because they're so “secure”, they sent me an email:
Here is your one-time code
Copy this code to verify your ABC account.
The code expires in 10 minutes.
Thanks,
Your ABC Account team
And that's all. I suppose the HTML version makes more sense, but in the text version the number was only in
the Subject: line.
And of course that didn't work either. It did work on distress, the Microsoft
box, so I think what they're really saying is “we don't like your operating system”. A good
thing that there are workarounds.
This page contains (roughly) yesterday's and today's entries. I have
a horror of reverse chronological documents, so
all my diary entries are chronological. This page normally contains the last two days,
but if I fall behind it may contain more. You can find older entries in
the archive. Note that I often update a diary entry
a day or two after I write it.
Do you have a comment about something I have written? This is a diary, not a
“blog”, and there is
deliberately no provision for directly adding comments. It's also not a vehicle
for third-party content. But I welcome feedback and try to
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I'll assume that it's OK to do so.
