Peer to peer is over
I thought that we were promised peer to peer communication without any central server for managing contact lists and chat histories, specifically for those who choose not to keep any history as per settings we can use on every platform.
Skype
On top of that a chance of being able to manipulate those is deeply worrying, to an extent where I had to read twice to imagine the consequences, if the warning letter was true in the first place. One way or another, I verified how our communicators have changed over the years. I guess the time of peer to peer communication is over and now with another place storing and potentially sharing your data, you’re no longer secure to to talk freely, exchange passwords or our nude photos as we’re used to be doing.
Although I wasn’t able to speak with anyone to verify if the e-mail is genuine, I have clicked the link to “change password” just to double check it leads me to the intended website and the link seems genuine.
BlackBerry
I have recently tweeted about BlackBerry reporting (here) attempts to access my e-mail history. BlackBerry is actually very good at spotting any unusual activity as their servers in London are constantly talking to my accounts and are able to report any slight interrruption, irregularity asking to verify the credentials, sometimes providing a detailed report on what is the reason if credentials need to be re-entered or if communication is disrupted. On this occassion the report was saying that multiple accounts have failed to synchronise because there were too many attempts to access the account by unverified source, so the accounts have been temporary locked out.
Datacenter
I have also noted unexplained loss of one virtual machine (here) in one of our data centres. The situation was so strange that I decided to go over there in person just to ask one honest question. I wanted to know if anyone told the data center to loose our data, to which they have denied. Yet, there was no explanation as of how this could happen, nor any information on technical reason as the data center has multiple facilities against data, power, hardware losses – all of them seem to have failed in a different way at the same time.
Play Mobile
Strangely enough I’ve found today that P4 has completely lost track of my mobile number, essentially saying that I cannot retrieve password to the admin panel of my phone number because my phone number is (prepare)… not registered with the network, even though I’ve been using the same number for years now. I’ve doubled checked as access to my panel was also preauthenticated with my iPad application – and it didn’t work either. Even more strangely was able to create a brand new account today for the number I was using for the last five years. I was even able to restore the credit balance on my number – but not the call history…
Solution
I’m reviewing lots of the accounts right now and responding to each report very seriously. One of the solutions I personally use it to make my work/personal e-mails shared between a number of people who deal with stuff on my behalf (family). At work I prefer to use function based e-mail addresses, which are shared by many co-workers (e-mail like office@…, support@…, etc) I also use own collaboration and messanging systems, which tick all the boxes and are not dependant on third-party providers. With plethora of open source solutions available out there, with a little luck you can implement your own custom solutions with private storage and custom security. Let’s get compiling, it’s time now.