Shepy
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Homepage: http://www.shepy.co.uk/blog/
Posts by Shepy
Travelodge UK hack update & official statement
Jun 23rd
This is an update to a previous post, so if you haven’t already then you may want to read the original post first (new window).
I just received a call from a friend saying they had received an email from Travelodge, which said that no data had been sold. I asked him to forward it here so that I could share it, and in the meantime while I was waiting for it to arrive I checked the Travelodge UK twitter feed, which offers:
@TravelodgeUK Hi there. Please click here for a full update on the issue of spam emails http://ow.ly/5oSh4 #travelbotch #travelodge #spam which I will copy the content of here for you;
Dear Customer,
Our main priority is to ensure the security of our customers’ data, which is why I wanted to
make you aware, that a small number of you; may have received a spam email via the email
address you have registered with us.Please be assured, we have not sold any customer data and no financial information has
been compromised.All financial data (including credit card information) is compliant with current best practice
standards and is audited to PCI (Payment Card Industry) requirements.The safety and security of your personal information is of the upmost importance to us and as
a result we are currently conducting a comprehensive investigation into this issue.If you receive an email similar to the one detailed below, please delete it as spam.
Good day.
Don’t miss exciting career opening.
The company is seeking for self-motivated people in United Kingdom to help us spread out
our activity in the UK area.Conditions:
– Full age United Kingdom resident
– Only basic knowledge of Internet & computer.
– Free access to personal e-mail box
– 2-3 free hours per day
– Immediate replies on our written requests
– good organizational skills.You can without problem connect our work with your primary activity.
Brilliant income ability. Free training available.
Applicants must be smart and commerce motivated. Working only some hours per day.
Any person residing in the United Kingdom can be our representative.
Our manager will contact you within few hours if you attracted.
—————-
Local News: from paris, with love who’s the toast of the airport show.If you have any questions regarding this matter please email: andrea@travelodge.co.uk. A
further update will be given, when we have completed our investigation.Guy Parsons
Chief Executive
The update is basically the same as what has started going out on email.
Whilst I appreciate that the update states no financial information has been compromised and adheres to PCI standards, this still doesn’t sit well with me.
Mainly because;
If they have been compromised enough to steal customer names and email addresses, how are they so sure that financial information has not been taken also?
If safety and security of personal data is of utmost importance, why did it take people complaining on Twitter etc to highlight the situation and get this half update?
What information has been compromised, though a full investigation will take a wee while it would still be more re-assuring to know what they know so far. By saying “no financial information has been compromised” they are, through omission of discussing other details, saying that some data has been compromised.
It is ignorant to think that just because financial information has (claimed) not to have been accessed, that it is unimportant to announce what HAS been accessed. Having name, address and other such details is just as worrying in regards to identity theft. Have passwords been compromised, it makes no mention of these, and some people may have used the same password on Travelodge as they have on other sites.
This ‘update’ is nothing more than fire fighting to try and calm the situation and save face in my opinion, and leaves more questions open than it answers.
~Shepy
Bike lock, Scotland Style
Jun 23rd
Been meaning to post this since my last visit to Perth. Walked past it on the street there, entirely the kind of thing I would do. Genius.
~Shepy
Are Travelodge UK selling data, or have they been hacked?
Jun 23rd
I received an email last night which suggests that Travelodge UK have either began selling their customer database, or have had their security compromised. The mail I received was:
From: Ena Walton To: <***@shepy.co.uk> Subject: Richard Shepherd Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2011 19:12:14 +0000 Good day. Don't miss exciting profession opportunity. Our Corporation is looking for energetic representative in United Kingdom to help us spread out our activity in the UK sector. Required Skills: - 18+ United Kingdom resident - Only basic knowledge of Internet & computer. - Free access to personal e-mail box - 2-3 free hours per day - Immediate replies on our written requests - good organizational talents. You can without problem combine our work with your primary work. Great income ability. Free instruction available. Those who are interested must be fair and business motivated. Operate only some hours per day. Everyone residing in the United Kingdom can be our agent. Our manager will e-mail you within several if you attracted.
The eagle eyed among you will notice that the subject is my full name, which is not what you would expect me to see in spam, which caused me to look a little closer and see that the email address to which it was sent is actually one that I have only ever provided to Travelodge UK.
I put out a tweet last night saying “Dear @TravelodgeUK I’ll not be staying with you again as you sold my email address to spammers, and it was a unique mail addy only you have.” and then this morning got a reply from @benjymous providing the email address for the CEO of Travelodge, and suggesting that I was not the only person with this problem.
Following suit from @zoeimogen I have sent an email to the CEO of Travelodge, stating the following:
Dear Sir, Yesterday evening I received a spam email from a company, which was interesting in the fact that it had my full name as the subject of the email, certainly unusual for spam. Looking closer in to this I notice that the email address it was sent to is an email address that I have only ever provided to Travelodge. This leads me to one of two conclusions. 1) You are in the business of selling customer details and databases 2) Your systems have been compromised and customer details have been exposed. I would therefore like confirmation if my details have been sold or provided to third parties or if the security of the data has been compromised. To the best of my knowledge I gave no such permission for data to be passed to a third party, and habitually tick the box to not be contacted for promotion or third parties when registering with a site. As the subject of personally identifiable data I have the right under the data protection act to know if my data is being handled correctly and in accordance with the reason for which it was provided, and nothing else. If the data was sold I would like confirmation that I authorised this to happen, and no doubt will be following this up with a data protection request to view all information held on me and how it has been processed. If you have suffered a security compromise and data has been obtained by unauthorized access I would like to know which data is stored in the systems that have been broken in to, such as address, billing etc. The mail address used to register with yourself was ***@shepy.co.uk I eagerly await your response. If i receive no reply within 72 hours I shall be raising a complaint with the ICO. Regards Richard Shepherd
Hopefully myself and others will receive a reply soon, and if so I will obviously follow up this post with an update.
UPDATE:
Well Travelodge has been thus far silent with consumers, but El Reg is reporting and also Travelodge say themselves “Sorry for the spam email you may have received. We have NOT sold any data. We’re currently investigating this issue and will update you ASAP”, which basically means this is either a leak or a hack, neither of which is very reassuring and confirms that someone has had unauthorised access to the data, the question now is to what extent and what data?
If you’ve seen any of this spam, there is a hashtag at #travelbotch you can monitor / join in to keep updated.
UPDATE #2:
More on this on another post at http://www.shepy.co.uk/blog/2011/06/travelodge-uk-hack-update-official-statement/
~Shepy
Model Shoot – Dee La Beau Latex Shoot
Jun 21st
After a previous latex shoot got re-arranged to a time when I was not available, Dee La Beau and I had been meaning to shoot a latex set for a few weeks now. As ever the shoot was full with typical ‘Dee-isms’ which always make for good craic and a good laugh while shooting. If you’d like to arrange a shoot with Dee you can do so via her Purestorm page, and I highly recommend you do! Have a look through the images below, click to enlarge.
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~Shepy
Sold another two book covers
Jun 16th
A great start to the day this morning, an email through to say I had sold another two images to be used for book covers. Again both crime thrillers as with the previous ones. It seems my urbex images are quite apt for the genre :)
The two books are:
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The Sixth Man by David Baldacci |
Truth Lies Bleeding by Tony Black |
~Shepy
Honda, providing info and engines
Jun 14th
As some of you may already know. Honda sponsor a lot of Channel 4 documentaries – something they are planning to continue into the next year of programming, but now it is going to add in some extra content about ways in which people have used Honda cars and vehicles in unusual ways. One such documentary will be about Philippa, an alpaca breeder in Oxfordshire, who tends to the animals on her farm using her trusty Honda ATV.
I remember when i used to work at Warden Law Go Kart Track and ATV centre, we would use a Honda Big Red as the staff vehicle for getting about the site, towing customers back to base if there was a problem and such like. Amazing powerful and versatile machine (and shedloads of fund, especially to 17 year old me!)
They'll also be backing this up with a site at www.honda.co.uk/stories as well as facebook and twitter feeds for the shows, so if you are a bit of a petrol head, like a bit of edutainment then this is probably right up your street. It's going to have a load of mini-documentaries that people can vote on, and the winner will be turned into a full length documentary, so you get a chance to have an influence and find out more about the stories that particularly interest you. Find out more at http://hub.honda.co.uk/?s3campaign=Cars_Channel4Outreach&s3advertiser=eBuzzing&s3banner=Alpaca
Here is a taster video to get you started:
New immersion game on the horizon
Jun 10th
Ubisoft's latest game, Child of Eden is the latest action game by Tetsuya Mizuguchi. A wonderfully immersive and surreal expereince, the game strives to bring new ways of interacting and playing to the console market, using the Xbox's Kinect controller to remove the game pad barrier between players and the game.
The storying of the game is: Project Lumi, a project to reproduce a human personality inside Eden, the archive of all human memories, has begun. As the project nears completion, the archive is invaded by an unknown virus. The Player’s mission is to purify the virus and restore hope and peace to Eden.
As you can imagine, a game that is set inside the human mind, it's memories and personalities will by it's nature take on some almost psychedelic situations, interactions and sounds to fully set the scene of the world in which you are playing. You can watch a video to give you an idea of what you can expect over at http://www.childofedengame.com
Eagle eyed readers may recognise the creator, Ttsuya Mizuguchi, from the earlier gam Rez, which was hugely popular in Japan, and hopefully he can follow up this sucess with Child Of Eden.
~Shepy
Live Streaming the easy way
May 31st
If you're looking for an easy way to make a Channel with your own tv content, then Streamago from Tiscali might just be the way. They offer live streaming of your content, with a great community of other users to make the whole experience a lot easier and a lot more friendly.
Whether you're looking to stream your own shows that you make, videos you have created or perhaps even a live event that you'd like to share with others on the web, then Streamago should be just what you're looking for, all you need is a PC with an internet connection and a webcam. It even has the ability for you to be able to stream directly, in real time, straight from your smartphone for those roving reporter moments! Imagine being able to share the concert or festival you are at, live with your friends, with minimal fuss and setting up?
As well as the ability to actuall stream the video, you can also add things like overlays, subtitles, title screens and much more to make your video and channel look like a much more polished production. You can stream live, or simply stream into your account for editing and broadcast later, and with free space of 10Gb you can make sure you've got a nice buffer of content waiting to go out if you want to try and keep to a release schedule. You can even publish direct to facebook, saving you the time and effort of having to upload it yourself.
You can find out more about what other users are saying at their facebook page, and I'd love for you to post more ideas below on how you could use the service.
~Shepy
Holiday with a difference
May 27th
If you’re looking for inspiration for a holiday, and want to try something a little different, then you might want to have a spy at the Atlantis Hotel
at the Palm Resort in Dubai. This gargantuan resort (over 1,500 rooms!) is as impressive in it’s list of rooms and facilities is it looks in the picture over on the right there. Boasting a 17 hectare water park (which is 1/3 of the entire site!) stuffed full of action rivers, waves slides and pools you can be sure of some fun for the kids (and the adults who refuse to grow up too).
There are rooms of varying levels of opulence, from the deluxe rooms right through to the Bridge Suite, which means you should be able to find something to suit exactly the kind of budget you hope. There is even the chance to win a 5 day break at the resort for you and 3 of your friends, through the new interactive advertising campaign that Atlantis are running. Simply head over to their site www.SpottedInAtlantis.com and use the system there to include yourself and friends in the interactive video, and you could be experiencing Atlantis sooner than you think!
Some of the entertainment you could look forward to at the park includees:
Waterpark
– 700 metre beach with sun loungers
– 27.5 metres down The Leap of Faith through a shark filled lagoon
– The highest free fall waterslide in the region
– 2.3 km long looped river ride
Marine Life
– 90 minute shallow or deep water Dolphin interactions (new experience Royal swim)
– Over 65,000 marine animals
– 10 metre long viewing panel
– Over 20 marine exhibits
Food & Drink
– 17 unique bars and restaurants with different themes and cuisines
– From fine dining to family dining
– 4 Michelin starred chef restaurants
and there is even a spa with 27 treatment rooms to help you unwind after all that!
Get yourself along to the site, which again is www.SpottedInAtlantis.com and see if you can win that trip :)
~Shepy
xkcd + Kindle = 727 Kindle Screensavers
May 25th
If you’ve got an Amazon Kindle, and have jailbroken + added screensaver hack, then you might be interested in one of my recent little projects. I’ve taken all xkcd strips up till today, removed the ones that needed the colour to work or were simply too large to work on the Kindle screen, and turned the rest into screensavers. If you are not familar with xkcd, then you really should head on over to www.xkcd.com and have a read if you are at all into anything geeky, techy, language or maths based then you’re bound to find something there to interest you!
A quick couple for preview:
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You can download the screensaver pack via this torrent link or this magnet link. (If you need a torrent client, you should check out www.utorrent.com)
~Shepy