Life & Technology

Being a CBA customer, I was hit by the Netbank meltdown last week, which was inconvenient to say the least.

For those of you who don’t know, transaction data for the past two months was ‘lost’ on the CBA’s Netbank service for the best part of a week and was restored yesterday. For a small business like mine, right at the end of the financial year, this posed a bit of problem as far as reconciliation of accounts go, but there were a couple of bigger questions that this problem posed.

Being a 21st century kind of guy, and an embracer of technology, it wasn’t lost on me, that written, hard copy records of banking transactions still have a place in modern society. I have used internet banking for some time now, so the idea of getting physical statements was not something I’d thought of in a while. Until last week.

There were a couple of minor irritations, too. I thought the lack of contact and transparency from the CBA was pretty poor. I know they must have been run off their feet trying to fix the problem, but having to find out via Netbank, with not much of an explanation was not good enough. They could have at least emailed, or put something up on their main website, about the problem, its cause, and when they expected it to be fixed. Sure, it must have been stressful for them, but what about small businesses like me trying to get our accounts sorted? There was minimal contact, and talk of what they thought was some sort of cyber-attack.

This, on the back of the CBA not passing on interest rate cuts to customers, leaves a bitter taste in the mouths of some customers. If this was an end of year school report, a tick would go next to “could do better”.

I’m really looking to being part of the Sony team at its Vaio Village this Saturday at Westfield Bondi Junction, where I’ll be helping people with their social networking.

One thing that has fascinated me over the past couple of years has been the impact of social networking in our everyday lives. It arguably starting with texting, but when MySpace came online, quickly followed by Facebook, and now Twitter, this media skyrocketed in popularity as a way for people to keep in contact with one another.

And this will be my role at the Vaio Village – helping people with their social networking pages – from setting up an account, through to how to get the best out of your page and the different features that are on offer.

I’ll be there from 11.30am to 2pm this Saturday, and every Saturday throughout July. So if you’ve found social networking a bit too hard, or you want a few pointers, then come and see us at the Vaio Village. It’ll be a lot of fun

No sooner had I read a story in the SMH about Smishing – a form of Phishing via SMS – then I got a call from my mother telling me she’d won $120,000 on lotto via an SMS.

Of course she didn’t believe it, but what both she and I found insidious about this particular attempt to get money for nothing, was that it happened directly after the $90 million lotto draw last night. This suggests a whole lot went out last night, so if you receive an SMS telling you that you have won this modest amount of money, you haven’t. A couple of things to remember, if you have won lotto, the people who run the competition will call you, not SMS or email.

This scam is interesting, because these guys are not going after huge amounts of money, just $1000, unlike the Nigerian scams where they try and get your bank details. Still money is money, and these guys claim to be from Thailand where AU$1000 can go a long way.

As technology has advanced, so have the scams to try and part you from your hard-earned cash. But there is an upside – we can tell you about them just as quickly. And, you know, if you’ve heard this once during your lifetime, you’ve heard it 1000 times, but it’s worth repeating – if it sounds too good to be true, 99.9 percent of the time it is. If you are unsure, ignore. If it is a genuine email, they will contact you again, but even then I would double-check the source.