Fastweb. Again!

That’s incredible! Fastweb answered the Data Protection Authority questions by claiming to ignore ? who was calling me on its behalf, and not to have any personal data belonging to me. A few days after (March, 26) I got a NEW CALL from “Fastweb Commercial Department” trying to sell something.

I’ve reported againg this new fact to the Authority, and now I’m really courious to see who – between Fastweb and the Authority – is better “nuts-equipped”.

More to come…

European Union, Copyright Lobbies and Italian ISP’s. The Big Brawl.

On Feb. 9, 2007 the Civil Court of Rome, under the Italian enforcement of the EU 2004/48 directive, issued a preliminary ruling (technically speaking, in Italian, “ordinanza cautelare”) ordering Telecom Italia to disclose the identity of about 3.000 people allegedly committing the “infamous” crime of exchanging copyrighted material through P2P network. The Court order was “backed” by a statement from the plaintiff – a German based recording label – claiming that a private cyber-investigation revealed that Telecom Italia’s users were involved in such illegal behaviour.

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Intesa Sanpaolo Internet Banking’s Catch 22

It might happens for some odd and unpredictable reason (at least from the user perspective) that the Internet Banking stops granting you access to your account (incorrect userid or password, they say.) Then you have to call customer assistance by phone, and the automated system, before allowing to talk to a human being, asks for your userid, password and one-time-password.

But that information are incorrect (in fact you have no longer access to your account), and you can’t talk to anybody to fix the problem unless you have a working userid and password (that you have not). You just need to wait, and at the end of the day some human being will answer your call.

It would be better to answer first, isnt’it?

Intesa Sanpaolo: when marketing meets security

Recently Intesa Sanpaolo (born after a merge between Banca Intesa e Istituto San Paolo) moved its Internet banking authentication system from a password-based to a one-time-password-based access.

They sell that “innovation” – ever happens in the ICT business – as a major increase in IT security and then as a benefit for the customer, but if you think for a while this is not entirely true. Or – better – this might be true from the perspective of a marketing manager. But it is not from the customer standpoint.

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