Yougetitback Blog, October, 2008

Prepaid Registration in UK

Cork uber blogger Pat Phelan has an interesting post about prepaid registration.

Carriers in the UK are facing a major headache with the new Communications Data Bill. They will be required to gather data on all prepaid phone users.

“The office of Richard Thomas, the information commissioner, said it anticipated that a compulsory mobile phone register would be unveiled as part of a law which ministers would announce next year.
“With regards to the database that would contain details of all mobile users, including pay-as-you-go, we would expect that this information would be included in the database proposed in the draft Communications Data Bill,” a spokeswoman said ”

It will affect some retail stores more than other e.g. Tesco where you grab the phone and can pay for it at self service and away you go. One key problem facing the carriers is the fact that it is planned to be retrospective so registering millions of customers when all you have is their phone number is going to be very expensive.

New Yougetitback.com Software

To date we have covered Symbian and BlackBerry smartphones, feedback has been really strong to date. We are pretty close to cracking Windows Mobile , we have seen the first version in the last week here in Yougetitback.com HQ and it is very impressive.

Before the new smartphone software goes live we will be launching our new Laptop Superhero in November. This will be going live in a major deal we have signed in Spain - more details when the time gets closer.

The laptop superhero has some great features allowing the good guy to easily return it(without trying to break through your windows password) and allows you to lock your laptop remotely if it is lost or stolen. From demoing to industry people they reckon it is one of the best applications they have seen for the past 18 months - looking forward to getting lots of feedback.

97% want Oyster Phones

Interesting blog post by Adam Cohen Rose about the recent Mobile Monday event in london.

Claire Maslen the Head of NFC, O2 Telefonica detailed the trial of Oyster phone.

Claire gave a good overview of the O2 NFC Trial, as reported in the Evening Standard by the headline “9 out of 10 people would like an Oyster phone!”

* 500 O2 customers with a Nokia 6131 NFC for 6 months
o Oyster
o Barclaycard Visa
o Access control at the O2
o One use case of smart posters
* O2 owned the customer data
* “Agency said at the end that this was the most compelling evidence they had seen for rolling out a new technology”

Oyster integration

* Worked with Transys and TfL for the Oyster card implementation
* 87% said that Oyster in their phone would drive their decision to buy a mobile phone — interesting to mobile operators

Barclaycard Paywave

* less people than Oyster said they were interested, but then Paywave is not common usage yet
* more efficient for retailers than cash but only 47% said they’d be interested in going further

Other results

* Were people happy to leave their homes with just their phone?
* Customers initially complained that 6131 was too low-end, but realised that applications were what was useful (perhaps they felt that Series 40 is a better interface than Series 60?)
o However, it’s not one size fits all
* People were happy with using stored value without a PIN

How can we add more value?

* put a loyalty card in it
* do more smart posters — didn’t have enough to really try it out
o only use case was touching a Tutankhamun poster
o got a mobile internet page about the exhibition with a link to the TfL mobile site

T Mobile Mobile data loss causes Boardroom Bustup

Deutsche Telekom said at the weekend that a technical error made it possible to use stolen passwords to access data on 30 million mobile phone customers. The company said it had closed this security gap on Thursday.

A bust up the German carrier’s board room is imminent with lots of fingerpointing re data security . This latest gaffe comes after recently admitting this month that thieves hijacked sensitive data on millions of Deutsche Telekom mobile phone customers in 2006.

Credit Crunch will drive Mobile Banking

An interesting post at Computerweekly which argues that the credit crunch will drive a new business model with fewer staff and fewer fixed costs.
Japan’s Ebank is setting the trend and manages 3 million customers with 200 staff. “With a corporate vision that mobile computing can give customers their own personal branch in the future it is an example of a company that has totally automated its business using the latest technology.

One of the major attractions of eBank is that it offers services via mobile phone which opens it up to many more people, says Chris Skinner, CEO at financial services think-tank Balatro.”

A possible silver lining in the current financial maelstorm. They say most technical innovation happens during times of war - this would equate to financial WW III so interesting to see the new business models top emerge.

Identity Theft is a bigger worry than mugging

A Populus Poll carried out on behalf of Fellowes showed that 81% of the British public were concerned about becoming a victim of identity theft. The survey also showed that identity theft was of greater concern than other crimes like burglary, mugging and pickpocketing to people in the UK.
Identity fraud costs the UK more than £1 billion every year, and has already affected more than 4 million adults in Britain.

100,000 pensioners’ details on Deloitte stolen laptop

A laptop containing data on around 100,000 pensioners was stolen last month. The computer, which contained pensioners’ names, National Insurance numbers and salary details, was in a handbag snatched from an employee of accounting firm Deloitte.

Deloitte said the machine was protected by security measures, and there was only a “very very low” risk of anyone being able to access the data.

Deloitte said it had notified police of the theft, and informed its clients, who in turn have contacted all of the pensioners whose data was on the laptop. No addresses or bank account details were stored on the machine, the company said.

New Blackberry Storm

The New Blackberry Storm , RIM’s first touchscreen phone is getting rave reviews. It is being touted as the iPhone killer , it may slow down the iPhones drive into the Enterprise market. Looking forward to test driving it, the typing ability is apparently very good.

Yougetitback.com Testimonial

A yougetitback.com customer , Steve O Donnell, has blogged about the recovery of his Nokia N95 that was tagged with a yougetitback.com tag. We see it every day but Steve sums it up when he says “People are basically honest and if you make it easy for them to be honest they do the right thing.”

20% of discarded phones have sensitive data

All of us have a few old mobile phones lying around , seemingly harmless but 20% of 2nd-hand Mobile Phones Contain Sensitive Information

New research from BT, the University of Glamorgan in Wales and Edith Cowan University in Australia has revealed that a significant number of mobile phones which are bought second-hand still contain sensitive company and personal information.

The major culprit are smartphones including Blackberry. Some information found include banking details, details of board meetings, personal medical details. In one example, a Blackberry was examined that had been used by the sales director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) of a major Japanese corporation. It was possible to recover the call history, the address book, the diary and the email messages from the device. - Scary stuff indeed.

My tip for the day ( shameless plug) - get Mobile Superhero and lock your blackberry down when you upgrade.