Virtualization, Cloud, Infrastructure and all that stuff in-between

Argh, I hate this kind of thing .. give us £5.99 and we’ll send you some PDFs to allow you to claim compensation from the govt. for identity fraud arising from the loss of confidential data, if you read around a little bit I doubt they’ll be paying much out unless something serious really does happen but the ambulance chasers with the website will have made a few quid. And even then if they did get forced to pay some kind of compensation – don’t you people get it? if you sue the Govt. where do you think the money comes from? that’s right – your own pocket, we fund the govt. they don’t really “earn” money; they are not Comet, or Sofa Warehouse, we are the share-holders – you might as well take an extra £10 out of your monthly salary and put it in the bank as compensation; as if the govt. have to pay the entire nation compensation they’ll pay for it one way or another via via your tax money, or by shutting down a hospital etc; it’s like fining police forces and the NHS for not performing.. by doing so you reduce their capacity to pay for improving things and give them a further excuse to grumble about how they don’t get enough funds.

I think it would be better for the govt. to do some kind of deal with Equifax’s identity watch scheme to give people a cheap/free subscription to their service for ID fraud detection.

This would be a good thing to do on a national level as the trouble with ID fraud is that it goes un-noticed for so long, it might also be better for the people that seem totally incapable of working out their monthly finances and don’t realise what impact missing payments/defaulting really has on their future pans to buy a house, TV, car “bling” etc. on finance. All those ad’s for sub-prime loans etc. are not cheap money and lenders don’t really just “write off” your debts just because you say you can’t pay them back and say “never mind… don’t worry about it”.

Seeing your credit report really makes it plain to see what criteria lenders use to assess your credit-worthiness, rather than making it such a dark secret; I guess the other side of the argument is that it gives people some scope to “game” the system; but this information is already available on request from the credit scoring agencies (£10 IIRC) so anyone wishing to do so already has the tools available.

Anyway, rant over.. must get back to the paracetemol, this cold is making me cranky!