Mickey Mouse Plan

We continue to pay for an old-fashioned telephone landline despite its escalating cost (currently $90 per month). From 2010:

[Our Mickey Mouse telephone] survives because it's our one phone that can operate if the power goes off say, during an earthquake. As long as our landline has tone, we can dial out ("dial" for once may be interpreted literally).

Suffering from escalating maintenance costs on copper-wire technology and from a shrinking customer base, AT&T wants to exit the landline business: [bold added]

A proposal by telecommunications giant AT&T to withdraw landline service from most of the Bay Area has sparked widespread fear among residents, many of whom live where cell service is spotty, power outages are frequent and losing connectivity is “very scary.”

...Thanks to its earlier monopoly status and state law requiring voice communications for all who want them, AT&T is for large areas of California the “carrier of last resort” — the utility required to provide phone service to anyone wanting it in its service area. In its proposal to the utilities commission to escape that obligation, the company said it is seeking to stop landline service only in areas “where there is a demonstrated voice alternative.”

Nearly all those commenting said they opposed the plan, citing a host of concerns, from medical crises to loss of communications during earthquakes, fires, floods and storms because cell phone infrastructure is damaged or power outages cut off internet service.

We are not as exposed to power outages and cellphone interruptions as residents who live in the mountains, but earthquake risk is enough to make us landline subscribers. We plan to keep Mickey Mouse useful as long as possible.

Beginning to Push Back Against Scammers

Roger Anderson (WSJ)

Scam artists pollute all avenues of communication--telephone, email, text messages, social media...except for the plain old U.S. Postal Service!--and we've posted our frustrations over the years. I'm willing to spend time and money to entrap some of these people, but the authorities can't be bothered. The next best solution is to make the crooks spend a lot of time on a lead that comes up empty.

Roger Anderson of Monrovia, CA has written software that uses artificial intelligence whose objective is to waste the time of telemarketers and scammers.

Anderson takes pleasure in foiling them. He began his war on telemarketers nearly a decade ago, he said, after one called the family’s landline and said a bad word to his son. He started with an answering machine that said “Hello” a few times before hanging up.

Anderson has since rolled out his weapons of mass distraction. He has posted conversations between man and bot, some lasting as long as 15 minutes before the telemarketer hangs up.

The posts are part of Anderson’s own marketing. He has several thousand customers paying $24.99 a year for use of his call-deflection system, called Jolly Roger...

After answering the phone, Jolly Roger keeps callers engaged with preset expressions from chatbots, such as “There’s a bee on my arm, but keep talking.” Chatbots also grunt or say “uh-huh” to keep things going.

This sounds like a terrific invention by a motivated entrepreneur. This year our phone calls have died down, but if they pick up I'll give the product a try. $24.99 per year should buy a lot of emotional enjoyment.

E-Mails: a Curse and a Blessing

(Universal scribbler)

I entered the work force in an era when it was considered mandatory to respond to every phone call and letter request. The reasons were intuitively obvious: a response could lead to a sale, you're representing your company which has the highest standard of etiquette, treat others how you wish to be treated, etc.

Then telemarketing and email happened.

Re phone calls, I initially spent too much time on the phone listening to sales pitches. Worse, I fell for a few of them and was usually disappointed by paying too much for products that fell shy of promises. Now every call from a number that I don't recognize goes to voicemail, and even within that group I ignore nine out of ten messages, which are, no surprise, from telemarketers.

I receive over a hundred emails a day. The majority go to the aol account that was originated in the days of floppy disks and dial-up modems. The yahoo and google mailboxes were created for specific purposes and capture the remaining traffic. The only vestige of traditional etiquette is that I always open and answer emails from individuals whom I know and apologize to if their message goes unanswered because it got buried or was sent to the junk folder.

The sea of communications from people trying to reach others to serve their own purposes has become a modern burden:

So many of us spend our days ruled by email: constantly refreshing, wading through detritus, paralyzed by the pressure of crafting a reply to the one note that actually matters. The moment we reach inbox zero, and few of us ever do, the ding sounds again.

Consultant Greg McKeown's suggestion:

Start your day by writing a list of priorities on a piece of paper. Block two half-hour slots on your calendar to really deal with your email—rather than scrolling through constantly—and ignore it the rest of the time, he says.

Regardless of the tech tools at one's disposal, one must spend 30-60 minutes a day on email in order not to lose control of the inboxes. E-mail supposedly has improved our lives immensely, but it sure has us stressing while sucking up our time.

Mickey Mouse Technology

They were cute and once upon a time ubiquitous and cheap. I even had one.

The old mechanical Mickey Mouse watches, which were on display in the Walt Disney Family Museum, are passé, superseded by high-tech wrist devices.

If the kids must wear watches with cartoon characters, they seem to favor ones that are popular from this century. Despite their current lack of popularity, I know several of the over-40 set who refuse to part with Mickey Mouse timepieces though they no longer wear them. Such is the powerful hold of nostalgia.

Another vestige of earlier days is our Mickey Mouse dial telephone, which I first mentioned in this journal in 2010. We keep it and our landline as insurance against natural disaster:

Mickey Mouse survives because it's our one phone that can operate if the power goes off say, during an earthquake. As long as our landline has tone, we can dial out ("dial" for once may be interpreted literally).

Many in the younger generation don't have landlines, because cell phones and router-plug-in phones are sufficient for their needs.

It's long been rumored that AT&T will abandon the pulse dialing technology that once powered everyone's phone. When it pulls the plug on that, I'll pull the plug on them.

The Dog That Didn't Bark

Pay phones are still found in public places like airports, hospitals, and bus stations.

On this hospital's surgery floor access to the phones was partially blocked by tables.

If anyone cared, he or she would have complained, and the tables would have been moved.

Two-Factor Authentication Not All It's Cracked Up to Be

(Image from nakedsecurity.sophos.com)

Not being a computer expert, I foolishly took comfort in the security of two-factor authentication (2FA).

I log in to the accounts at three different banks by typing the user name and password on my regular computer. When I try to gain access using a new device, such as another computer or an iPad, the bank sends a numerical text to my cellphone-of-record. Entering the numerical code on the new device causes the bank to be confident that it's me---I know the name and password, and I have physical possession of the phone.

Crooks have found several ways to hack 2FA. They usually exploit features that aid hapless consumers who have "forgotten" their passwords or have "lost" their phones.

Cathal McDaid, Adaptive Mobile: One very popular way of doing it is that you ring up the carrier and you say, “My name is X and my phone number is X. However, I’ve lost my SIM card or it’s been damaged or been destroyed somehow and I need to get it assigned to a new phone.”

Allison Nixon, Flashpoint: When the SIM swappers steal a phone number, for that very short period of time they own the victim’s phone number. Then they do a password reset against their emails until they take over the victim’s financial accounts and steal what they want.

To review, the first move by a thief is to transfer the phone number to a different cellphone by claiming that the equipment was "lost". The next step is to log in to the bank website with the victim's email account (some sites require that the userid be the same as the email, I actually prefer to have a user name--e.g., My3rdDogFido--that's harder for the hacker to know), and go through the "forgot password" routine. The bank will send a code to the stolen phone number, and the hacker now controls the bank account.

There are technical solutions, but they all involve inconvenience. For example,

Allison Nixon: if [banks’] policy required a period of time to pass [after a password was reset] before you could empty out an account, that would definitely prevent SIM swapping. The attackers can only hold on to a phone number until the victim gets it back—usually not that long. However, most of the time when people are doing password resets, it’s legitimate, and when you lock down an account for a period of time it makes people very frustrated.

A phone that doesn't need electricity

My solutions are old-school. For any account the theft of which would be very painful I have never allowed electronic transfers. (Setting up the capability for the first time in these accounts would take at least three days.) Yes, I have to wait to get a mailed check from them, but that's how we did it in the 20th century, kids.

The accounts that I use for electronic bill-paying each have a few thousand dollars, and their loss would make me angry but not cause permanent grief. Finally, the UserID's on all my accounts are not an email address.

If the hackers become too proficient, I can disable all outgoing electronic payments and go back to writing checks. Modern systems are complex and convenient, but you should have a back-up plan.

Landline: Peace of Mind

I'm glad to see we're not alone in keeping it: Why the Landline Phone Will Never Go Away [bold added]

Rotary-dial Mickey still works

According to a 2017 U.S. government survey, about 44% of households still own traditional phones, down from 53% three years before—but still much higher than, say, the share of those buying vinyl records, another cultish throwback.

For many, the reason is pragmatic. Cell service is spotty in large, rural stretches of the country and even the hills of Los Angeles. Rocky elevation disrupts communication with cell towers, which are also often banned in environmentally protected areas. You can rely on a landline when the power is cut, or during an emergency like a hurricane that causes cell blackouts. And cellphones offer no real escape from harassment and distraction; we’re all being beckoned all the time, everywhere—if not by an actual voice on our cellphones, then by texts, emails, swipes on dating apps.

As we reflected last year:

I'll still keep the AT&T landline. Old-fashioned single-purpose phones still operate on it, and because it has a separate power source the landline may still work when cell, WiFi, and electrical services are out.

About 20% of the time the cell-phone calls at home are faint or are filled with static. When we try again on the landline, it's clear as a bell.

If we were pinching pennies, we'd probably cancel the service because $60 per month is expensive insurance. In our current circumstances, however, we'd rather have peace of mind.

Net Neutrality: Keep Them on a Short Leash

The Economist has a restrained view of this week's repeal of the "net neutrality" regulations. First, let's define the term:

Put simply it is the principle that all internet traffic, whether from Netflix, Tinder or a news website, is treated equally by the “pipe” companies carrying that traffic, like AT&T or Verizon....With the rise of Netflix and its ilk in streaming media, broadband companies began to suggest that they may have to charge more for some types of traffic, or slow down some services (“throttling” them). Net-neutrality activists argued that if providers could discriminate between different types of traffic, they would have far too much power over the internet. They could privilege their own services over competitors’, or they could even throttle or block some services they did not like. The Obama-era rules were designed to prevent that.

After considering the pros and cons the Economist concludes: [bold added]

In the end the argument about net neutrality boils down to whether internet-service providers should be regulated before they have shown they might abuse their power, or only after they have actually done so. The current FCC has just opted for the latter.

The regulatory mindset is ascendant, and it's refreshing to see it halted, if only temporarily. However, we harbor no illusions about the beneficence of the internet providers. We have seen how these same companies behave in the wireless and television markets and expect them to try to raise prices and degrade service where there is no competition. However, regulation can also stifle innovation by forcing new players to spend resources on compliance.

Let's give the providers the benefit of the doubt but keep them on a short leash.

A confused message, since the FCC would be doing the regulating.

Disappointing the Plaintiffs

Deep-pocketed PG&E has responded to a blizzard of lawsuits over last month's fires by stating [bold added]

last month’s Wine Country wildfires may have been started by electrical equipment not owned or installed by Pacific Gas and Electric Co., the utility said in a legal filing Thursday.

A filing Thursday from PG&E states that while fire investigators are still trying to determine what caused the Tubbs Fire, “preliminary investigations suggest that this fire might have been caused by electrical equipment that was owned, installed and maintained by a third party.” [snip]

October’s wildfires, which included blazes in the Sierra foothills and Orange County, caused more than $3.3 billion in damage, according to an estimate from the state’s insurance commissioner. California utilities can be held liable for economic damages from wildfires caused by their equipment, even if they followed all applicable safety regulations.

Marginally relevant: the aging telephone pole
outside my parents' home has more cables and
transformers every time I visit Honolulu.

Even if PG&E equipment did not initiate the fire, downed power lines likely contributed to its spread. The utility will have to cough up something, though that amount will disappoint the plaintiffs.

ATT: the Penultimate Straw

Thirteen years ago we had decent diversification in our communications providers: DirecTV for television, SBC for WiFi and landline, and Sprint for wireless. In 2007 we moved the wireless to AT&T, which was the only carrier that could carry the iPhone initially.

SBC/ATT went on an acquisition binge--its latest being DirecTV in 2015---and now provides all four of our services (wireless, landline, TV, and WiFi). Like clockwork AT&T jacks up prices annually, but just below the pain point for switching. We now pay a total of $500 a month, about 50% higher than for the same services five years ago (worse than it sounds because the DSL is appallingly slow while the competition has raced ahead).

The pain point was reached when AT&T today sent out emails to customers who have a grandfathered unlimited data plan for the iPad; the unlimited status is essentially being eliminated on May 24, 2017. (This affects one member of our household.)

In 2017 Mickey still worked

In the next month we will take up Comcast on its offer to provide TV and WiFi for $69.99 per month, more than a $100 per month savings over DirecTV and AT&T's snail-like DSL. The big switcheroo will come this fall when the new iPhone comes out. Four lines will move to Verizon, Sprint, or T-Mobile, and AT&T will lose our $300-per-month cellphone (it was $200 a few years ago) account.

I'll still keep the AT&T landline. Old-fashioned single-purpose phones still operate on it, and because it has a separate power source the landline may still work when cell, WiFi, and electrical services are out, another instance of diversification lowering risk.

Let the Donald Be Your Guide

I've been getting a lot of calls on the landline from local numbers that I don't recognize. They don't leave messages, a sure sign that the calls are from telemarketers.

This morning I had to answer the phone because I'm expecting a call from a contractor.

"Good morning, sir. We're contacting utility customers. How are you this morning?"

Uh-oh. Another sales call. Fine.

"Would you like to save over $70 a month on your utility bill?"

I need the landline open. I'm not interested in solar. I've already talked to a number of salesmen, if that's what you're selling.

"OK, thank you."

I wasn't rude, but directness saved both of us time. The Donald is showing us the way.

(Business Insider image)