I was aware that such situations exists that even your voice while having your phone in your pocket could be used to get information for personalized ads, but recently I was surprised by how far it went...
Annoyed by odd volume numbers...
It happened recently at work and (interestingly) with switched off WiFi and no mobile coverage at the place I was working. I was having the phone in the pocket while I talked to a colleague and he was telling me that he always gets annoyed by the volume settings on the radio if an uneven number is used. Either 12 or 14 is fine, but neither 13 nor 11! He claimed that many people where having this issue forcing them to correct the volume every time.
Although the conversation was in German, the following day Facebook suggested me a video about the exact thing in English where people discussed that in a car! Coincidence?
Talking about a certain software?
Or: Recently I had a job interview when I was asked about having experience with a certain software. A few days later Facebook suggested ads showing exactly that software and other products of that company. And I wasn't using any WiFi, I only had connection with via mobile data.
Apparently companies like Google and Facebook are denying such things. But secretly the situation could be different and it's definitely interesting.
What are your experiences? Let me if you had similar situations in the comments!
In the past few years I made it to several hostels around the planet and the supply of WiFi most went into the same direction, but in in New Zealand I got to see something different...
I've been to several hostels in Europe, US and Asia and the WiFi has always been free and even the password was often visible written on the wall. If that's a safe solution is another topic, but in New Zealand I faced another situation: In three hostels I've already been had always solutions for paid WiFi - only free in certain scenarios:
1) Only paid + extra free WiFi for certain hours on one floor
Exactly, no free WiFi in the dorms, just in the floor of the reception - but not in the evening. Interestingly the access code for that password was changed every few days (some sort of safety at least). You could pay for WiFi either per day or per week.
2) 2GB per day / per device
A free WiFi solution - but with limited data. Everyday you had to go to the reception and ask for a voucher with a password - valid for 24h after the first login. And it's only for one device at a time.
3) 30 minutes per day / per device
The first solution with unlimited download - if you are quick enough. But after thirty minutes you need to pay if you want to continue. You could cheat around it by changing the MAC address of your device, but still not ideal...
Generally speaking NZ seems to be a bit behind in comparison to other countries. I'm not the only one surprised by this as a talked to other travelers coming here. On the other hand there are still diners, buses or even public spots within cities with free WiFi...
Maybe the solution to pay for extra WiFi still works well for the accommodation owners...
While doing technical IT support in a call center you sometimes face some interesting scenarios, here are a few worth mentioning:
"Is your laptop connected via cable or WiFi?"
- "Yes, the WiFi cable is connected."
It was actually both, but the user was just talking about the cable.
Or another one from another case: "Yes, the WiFi is connected with the cable..."
"Hi, I was forwarded by the ****** Bank and I need a new PIN for my credit card, I would suggest I just start with giving you my credit card number..."
- "Wait, wait,... We are only supporting employees of a certain company and don´t deal with credit cards."
The moment I missed the chance getting lots of money. Like "Ok, can you also give me your security code and the expiration date?" xD #MissedOpportunities
"So I´d like to put my phone down on the table now since I drank too much tea before..."
The user´s way to tell me that she needs to go to the toilet while I was recreating the ost file of the user´s Outlook profile...
"Ok, I need to check this internally if I should confirm clicking on this link. Thanks. Bye."
User denied confirming to download a setup file from an internal server with a 172.16.XXX.XXX address. (see screenshot above)
"Let me explain the following steps to recreate the Outlook ost file: [...], to delete the old ost files, you need to close Skype before and..." (Call stopped)
Well, the user did close Skype while I was explaining the process... so therefore, call stopped :D
Maybe also stuff your get to hear as usual, nothing new...:
"Yesterday it still worked..."
"I didn`t do anything different..."
"I tried that already.." (apparently not...xD)
"I forgot my password...."
...
Ok, now it`s getting old. Maybe some more another time. But still, as Howard Wolowitz would say: "There's two kinds of people in this world. Those who call tech support and those who make fun of the people who call tech support."
You often meet people believing having WiFi also means having Internet connection. I'd like to tell a little story about a case where a client of a hotel couldn't get Internet despite having WiFi connected.
It was in a hotel in the Netherlands and myself also on holiday sitting outside. At the reception there was a woman complaining that she doesn't get Internet connection. As I noticed the situation I went there to find out what's going on.
After telling about my qualification I could take a look at that laptop. It was in French, a language where I'm just familiar with the basics and the user also didn't have admin permissions.
So I checked if the WiFi connection was actually working and also used ipconfig to look for the current IP address.
And it was an address from the 192.168 area. For that hotel it seemed quite unusual to me so I checked the IP address from my phone and it had an address from the 172.16. range. So my conclusion was: The IP address was manually changed on the laptop, but unfortunately I couldn't see it due to not having the needed permissions to see and change the network settings.
I asked for the asked password, but apparently she misunderstood. Language barrier. Finally she logged off and logged in with the admin account and she had the password! Now it was easy: I went to the network settings and I really saw that the network settings where manually changed to a 192.168 IP address.
I made a screenshot of the settings and changed the them to DHCP. The Windows laptop got a new IP address and Internet was working. The woman and the people at the reception were happy.
Obviously her husband made this change because their local network environment made it necessary: Like the laptop had trouble getting an IP address, their DHCP server isn't working or he just wanted to make sure that nobody else gets an IP address except the ones he would chose manually.
Anyway, it was probably too easy and not worth to mention, but these are such cases where basic users don't have any idea at all. It's better to help out if you can instead of people throwing their stuff unnecessarily away.
After the first time using the TP Link wifi stick WN823N it worked for a whole evening. But the next day a WiFi connection was suddenly no longer possible...
After a few tests with different USB ports and another reboot failed to solve this issue I thought:
'The last reinstallation of this Windows 7 PC was at the beginning of last year and I already should have done it weeks ago. So let's do this first and the problem might be solved in the same step.'
Interestingly, I was right, but only for like thirty seconds. The same issue occured once again and didn't disappear. Maybe I should explain more detailed what happened:
The WiFi signal was always perfect as it should be. But every connection attempt failed - it didn't make a difference when I used the TP Link configuration tool.
But the WiFi stick was still fine as I tested with an Windows 8.1 laptop. So I installed an extra USB port on the mainboard and the issue still remained. The firmware hasn't been updated for a longer time - so that's not it...
Finally I decided to change the WiFi encryption on the router from WPA with TKIP (which I used for testing reasons) to WPA2 with CCMP.
And then all of the sudden: Issue solved! I deleted the old WiFi settings in Windows, reconnect with the WiFi, typed in the PSK and it was working.
But that was only for a day and it happened again. After checking the event log it couldn't have been much simpler: Several hard disk failures!
So I installed Windows on another hard disk again and these problems didn't occur another time.
