As previously blogged our company (the one Liz and I operate privately) has received unsolicited advertising from 'Pieroth Wines NZ' at least once before. They gain our details via the Companies Office Register.

This has been further validated; Last week Liz updated our details with the Companies Office now we've relocated to Auckland.
It didn't take long to receive more junk from Pieroth, addressed to 'Dear Lover of Fine Wines' at our registered address.

DO NOT EVER TRADE WITH PIEROTH WINES! This sort of harrassment-style direct marketing is rude and obnoxious. I'm not a wine lover, no matter how many times you try to suck me in with your faux-manners!

Most of my previous rant on this subject remains entirely valid. It's postal direct marketing, so it doesn't fall under the UEM Act... It could potentially be argued that using the Companies Register for purposes other than for which it is provided, is in breach of its terms of use. Yeah, that'll stand up to scruitiny... ??

Are people stupid enough to actually respond to these mailouts with enough frequency to make the cost of doing them worth the grief?

Why do I have to live with the fact there's absolutely no way to protect myself from this sorta crap?

By all accounts the PublicACTA event held in Wellington on Saturday was a roaring success. Sadly, I was unable to attend, and it sounds like I missed a great event. That said, we now have a bunch of smart folks who've had opportunity to discuss at length the issues that the so-called Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is generating, and to produce the 'Wellington Declaration'. This is to be presented to the Government in less than 2 days - and hopefully made available to the ACTA negotiators.

Everyone who cares about the ongoing rights and freedoms of citizens of NZ - in particular regarding the Internet but also regarding the ways Government creates law - should be paying careful attention to ACTA. If the contents of the declaration ring true with you, show your support and Sign the Petition.

I Plugged it on NZLUG, and AuckLUG as well. It goes a little way toward explaining the background of this, largely ripped directly from the PublicACTA website.

Big Kudos to InternetNZ (hat-tip Jordan Carter), Nat Torkington, Don Christie, Peter Harrison and all of those who've been involved in both PublicACTA and from my personal perspective, the NZOSS's arguments against ACTA - NZOSS have been very proactive in responding to ACTA's potential risk to the FLOSS community and i'm proud to be involved with such upstanding folks.

So yeah, anyway, get signing! And stay tuned, I have no doubt we've in no way heard the end of this.

Warning: Once your incorporate a company and provide your details to the Companies Registry, you're doomed to receive unsolicited junk mail on a periodic basis.

I won't go into the electronic kind; the Companies office don't require you to provide electronic contact means (though when the forms are submitted, contact numbers are provided...) What i'm talking about here is plain old unsolicited postal junk.

Today we received a windowed envelope with our street address (per the companies office) in the window. Above that was no name; instead it was addressed to 'Dear Lover of Fine Wines'.

Enclosed was a self-addressed envelope (with 'Affix Stamp Here'; obviously they're not interested in supplying postage!), a glossy brochure advertising the firm 'Pieroth Wines (NZ) Limited' with an address at North Harbour Industrial Estate (Auckland); and a 'Consumer Survey' which then asks 'Are your name and address printed correctly?' Please check, so you are sure to receive your Thank-you-gift and the free 6 bottle International Wine Sampling without any delay.' To the rightare three boxes with contact detail options and a title 'Details of Interested Friends!'

On the reverse is the survey, which starts with 'Your support is very important. With the help of your answers we may better adapt to the friends of Premium Wines and improve our services in future'. Goes on to ask questions for demographics and a bunch of wine preferences. It then asks for contact phone numbers (home and work) in order to arrange for the free gift and 6 bottle wine tasting.'

What's the bet that the free gift isn't 6 bottles of wine!

This is the 'please forward this to all your friends!' of the 20th century.

It's funny, when you keep a relatively close eye on the places your details are filed, and on your buying habits, you can get a good idea for all the dirty, dirty tactics out there.

Noted a couple of simultaneous subscriptions to NZLUG mailing lists this morning from different addresses @zeusmail.org - this immediately looked suspicious, and a Google confirms my fears.

A warning for those others dealing with mailing lists, forums and such; that's one domain with a baaaad rep.

Required Reading for anyone who cares about the future of our Internet Freedoms (Or for that matter, our Civil Freedoms either).

Those of you who used (or registered) for Ferrit, beware....

This morning my wife received a spam email with ominous overtones; the destination address concerned was only ever used on ferrit.co.nz.

The bonus with using role-driven email addresses is that you have instant ID on where an address was sourced from. Thus the email concerned could only have come from one place; Ferrit's Database of customers; or someone associated with Ferrit.

My wife did infact purchase things through Ferrit. Twice. One has to ask though, how do someones personal details wind up being used for spam purposes?!

Telecom NZ - Over to you! Meanwhile I guess we have to engineer yet another spam-black-hole on an email address that's now a write-off :(

New Critical Vulnerability in MS Powerpoint documents.

I never liked those 'amusing' .PPT's anyway...

If you us McAfee or Symantec, beware!

I must say prevention is better than cure. Yay for using software with reduced vulnerability and following safe browsing/email practises, I say...

Qantas are looking seriously at the possibility that a passenger using a laptop on their flight may have been responsible for the recent airborne incident that resulted in the aircraft experiencing a "sudden loss of altitude". Several passengers were seriously injured in the process.

Something I hadn't earlier spotted was reported in one of the above links:

In July, a passenger clicking on a wireless mouse mid-flight was blamed for causing a Qantas jet to be thrown off course, according to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau's monthly report.

This is interesting. Ive observed before that proof of actual in-flight interference from onboard electronics seemed to be lacking - but this seems to be much firmer proof...

It will be interesting to see the outcome of this latest problem - and how airlines around the world react.

This is important: The New Zealand Copyright Amendments due to come into law very shortly. These should be scaring any and all Internet users in NZ.. hands down.

At the recent Software Freedom Day Barcamp and then the New Zealand Open Source Awards the issue of NZ's participation in ACTA, as well as the revisions to Copyright law, were mentioned. It also came up during the ICT Ministers debate. Enough attention was drawn, that Hon David Cunliffe, Minister for ICT, volunteered to set up a meeting with interested parties and the relevant minister, to discuss.

Colin Jackson blogged post his attendance at said meeting, as NZOSS's representative. There is also Colin's slot on National Radio (with Kim Hill) where he was able to make his views known. (Audio (.ogg) and Transcript available). Don Christie then documented the situation on the NZOSS Site.

In short:
- If you are accused 3 times of copyright infringement, your ISP will be obligated by LAW to cut you off.
- That's an accusation. No proof required.
- The scope of this really needs some thought for a minute.