In the unlikely event that I’m not the only person who uses SuperGenPass to manage my passwords and MicroB on Maemo on my Nokia N900, here’s a few tips that I thought I’d share (they’re also valid on the N800 and N810 and “hacker edition” N770s, too, I expect):
- You don’t have a Bookmarks Toolbar (where would you put it on a 3½ inch screen?), so once you’ve customised your SuperGenPass bookmarklet, you’ll need to click-and-hold on the generated link, and then select “Add bookmark” to save it to your bookmarks).
- Use it as normal: either fill your master password into the form and click your Bookmarks menu and select the bookmarklet, or select the bookmarklet and give it your master password. Don’t forget when using complex forms or changing passwords that Maemo provides a full clipboard so you can copy/paste passwords around where the need arises (thankfully quite rarely).
- If you’re irritated by the “You have requested an encrypted page that contains some unencrypted information” warnings that you see when logging into SSL-secured websites (and the
fact that unlike desktop Firefox, you can’t turn it off from the settings), here’s how you disable it:
- Enter the web address – about:config
- Agree to the warning page, if you’re presented with one
- Type “security.warn_viewing_mixed” into the search box, or browse the properties list for that option
- Select it by clicking on it, and tap the Enter key to toggle it from true to false.
- I don’t yet know the reason for the fleeting “Maximum number of characters reached” message, but it doesn’t seem to impact on functionality of SuperGenPass. Does anybody else know what it’s about or how it can be suppressed?
Forcing people to have deliveries sent to their registered address cuts down on card fraud, which is moderately freqent at mail order computer hardware stores on account of the high value, discreetness, and availability of the goods. It’s not possible to accurately perform such checks on credit cards, but it’s easy to with debit cards.
Many banks give special dispensation on their student accounts; allowing them to – for example – submit two addresses which they will automatically switch between throughout the year – or allow two registered addresses to function for card checks (while still delivering the statements to one). Ask your bank if they can do this, and, if they can’t, write a letter to inform them that there are banks that can. If you’re not willing to let your feet do the talking, there’s no way to let these large organisations listen to you.
There’s no reason not to own a credit card unless you feel you cannot trust yourself to do so – or the banks won’t give you one! For many such cards, there is no interest if you pay them off immediately each month (which can be automated thanks to wonderful schemes like Direct Debit): this increases the flexibility of your purchasing power (particularly when purchasing from overseas) without costing you a penny. On a side note, owning one that you only ever use in this fashion increases your credit rating (which is checked when buying a contract mobile phone, getting a mortgage, applying for credit on a car, or whatever). Just for examples’ sake; if you owned an unused credit card, you could have ordered these computer parts and – odds are – immediately transferred the money from the bank account to the card, thereby giving you the bits sooner.
All of that said, I think I’ve quite aptly (and almost entirely) undermined the sense in preventing expensive goods being delivered only to the registered cardholder’s address, because as we’ve just seen there’s always a way to circumvent such checks by routing the money other ways: this leaves a longer paper-trail (banks and credit companies are, by law, required to keep better records for longer than companies that happen to process card transactions), but is otherwise a sensible way to commit fraud without triggering the little alarm bells that debit cards have hanging from them. So yeah; perhaps Scan should be a little less draconian.
Now Chip-And-PIN in the UK: there’s a flawed, insecure, badly-implemented system.