Page 13 - Computeractive - January 2, 2018 UK

possibility of borrowing o f e books from STAR LETTER
libraries. A ll that is needed is OverDrive
(www.overdrive.com, s ee screenshot
below) or Adobe D igital Editions (www. Facebook a ddicts took over m y office
snipca.com/26318). Setting u p c an be a
bit d emanding, but the a bility to read In Issue 5 16’s a n egative e ffect, b ut he
anything you b orrow (rather t han thought- was a bout to retire, s o h e
anything you b uy) m ore t han provoking ‘ Question of didn’t really care. His
compensates. I d ownload library books the F ortnight’ you a sked exact w ords were, ‘ I’m
on the P C w ith D igital Editions and l oad whether F acebook off to Spain, it’s
them on to my Kobo. M y w ife d ownloads addiction was “ ruining your problem’.
to her i Pad M ini u sing OverDrive. the U K e conomy”. My Since Facebook
Leon Williams answer, based o n t he past launched, n othing has
10 years working i n a caused more conflict
busy office, is absolutely! within the o ffice. It seems
I’ve just retired a s a n to turn workers i nto
office m anager, h ead o f a naughty pupils, t rying to
department of around 30 do what they shouldn’t
people. From around 2000 without the t eacher noticing. Things
I w itnessed a g radual decline i n calmed down after we blocked i t o n
productivity, d irectly c aused I office P Cs, b ut then the a rrival o f
believe b y t he temptations presented smartphones s tarted another w ave.
by the i nternet. I t s tarted slowly i n t he What astounds me is how t oday’s
early y ears. I c ould tell that some workers r egard u sing Facebook a s a n
Two-step c hecks c ause employees w ere s pending t oo long essential p art o f d aily life t hat e ven
no-signal pain online, but I t hought t hat t he novelty work shouldn’t i nterrupt. W hen
My heart s ank when I r ead a bout of the i nternet would w ear o ff. How confronted, they offered vague
plans to introduce two-factor wrong I w as! apologies, p ledging t o c ut back. This
verification to confirm purchases online By about 2005 I h ad to discipline might l ast a d ay or two, but then
(News, I ssue 514, page 9), not least several e mployees for s pending t oo they’d be sucked back i n. Needless t o
because the m obile s ignal w here we live much time online d uring w ork h ours. say , when I c onsidered m aking
is simply not up to the j ob. But t hat w as nothing compared to the redundancies, t he Facebook a ddicts
I w ill never f orget t he time not long a go Facebook a pocalypse about to hit. It were top o f t he list.
that I n eeded a v alidation code to access seemed that overnight t he entire office Anyway, i t’s n ow someone else’s
my credit-card b ill from Tesco o n a n ew had d iscovered t his ‘ amazing’ site, problem. Like my old b oss a d ecade
PC. I w as talking t o a r eal h uman on the where t hey c ould ‘poke’ each other. ago, I’m o ff t o s unny Spain!
phone – h e s aid he would t ext m e t he I w arned my boss that it would h ave Frank Burstow
code (but he couldn’t s ee what it was
because it was s o s ecret it’s generated The Star Letter w riter wins a Computeractive mug!
automatically s omewhere in the v oid). He Views expressed don’t n ecessarily r eflect t hose of Computeractive
said it would b e v alid for o nly 1 0 m inutes.
I m ade h im stay on the l ine s o t hat h e in a s mall window at the b ottom o f y our will be collected, a nd I b elieve most
could override the t ime l imit. Th e c ode screen. I t t hen d oesn’t matter where i n people u nderstand t hat. They m ay not
arrived s ome 4 0 m inutes later ( we had a the h ouse your phone is. like i t, but it is understood, a g iven. Y our
nice c hat w hile we waited). Gary Marshall solution to prevent t his f rom h appening
To give them credit, Tesco n ow offers t o is to delete my Google account, r endering
send a c ode t o a l andline. But t his It’s a ‘ given’ that web g iants my new A ndroid phone useless. Delete
so-wonderful i dea t hat w e c an do know our d ata my Amazon account? W ell, that’s the e nd
of
everything using o ur mobile phones It is always a p leasureure of my Amazon shopping f orm
simply won’t w ash. There are s till too to read your letters good. C ancelling F acebook
many people w ith r eally b ad signals. It’s and a rticles, b ut in Issue accounts w ill result in
another e xample of those w ho have will 515’s Cover F eature (‘What the s ame.
be OK; t hose who d on’t will lose out. Google, F acebook a nd It is expected, rightly o r
Elspeth C hristie Amazon Know A bout wrongly , that these major
Y o u’) y ou may b e g iving corporations collect
There is an easy solution to the strange a dvice. What they information, s o d on’t use t he
in
in
inconvenience of two-step know about us comes internet, h ave n o e mail
ad
verification. I nstall the f ree s oftware with the t erritory. I f y ou address, and f or good
measure m
Pushbullet (www.pushbullet.com) o n connect t o t he internet, me aybe don’t have a
your PC and p hone, l ink t he two, and h ey all m anner of PC here does it stop?
PC either. W
presto, y our v erification code will pop u p information about you Jeremy Newman
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