Dick suffers a trio of data lockouts but, with no thanks to his GP surgery’s IT system, manages to keep his blood pressure under control.
Dick suffers a trio of data lockouts but, with no thanks to his GP surgery’s IT system, manages to keep his blood pressure under control
On one drunken evening with members of the Chaos Computer Club I accepted a floppy disk that blew up the laptop I was using
Being curious, I Googled ‘Patient Access memorable word problem’ and stumbled into a pit of white-hot rage and indignation
Last month, I confessed to feeling less hostile toward the giant digital corporations than is fashionable nowadays, and this month I’m heading further still into the wilderness by admitting that I’m not particularly paranoid about online security, either. That’s not to say I deny the importance of my dear colleague Davey Winder’s advice; I do follow it and, as a result, have only experienced two successful virus attacks in 40 years.
In the mid-1980s I used to visit CeBIT with Byte magazine every year, where on one drunken evening with members of the Chaos Computer Club I accepted a floppy disk of source code that blew up the laptop I was using. Luckily, it wasn’t mine but borrowed from a friendly London dealer. Oops.
I caught the second one around 1998 after clicking a photo on The
Register, which injected some malign entity that rapidly paralysed my ThinkPad. Windows Backup failed too, and the plucky PC Pro lab folk had to dig me out of that one.
Maybe it was that experience that persuaded me to eventually sell my soul to Google. Since then, Gmail’s forensic abilities have stopped all manner of nasty attachments and, together with Windows Defender and Malwarebytes scans, kept my laptop clean until I moved to a Chromebook.
But Google’s vigilance has recently turned oppressive: I occasionally get a “Critical Security Alert” warning that someone has just logged in using my password. I have four devices: two Android, one Windows and one Chrome OS. Google appears to no longer realise that they’re all me. I change my password now and again, just in case it’s true, and thrillingly Google refuses to accept my new password the first time I try it and asks for the old one, then accepts it and sends a Critical Alert Message saying someone has just changed my password. It’s all very entertaining, but small beer compared to some of the other sites I use.
I recently had a spat with PayPal when it upgraded me to a paid-for professional account I didn’t want. It was quite a performance to sort that one out as it’s virtually impossible to speak to a human and they place “limitations” on your account that stop you changing anything. In the end, after sending several emails to the help centre, I was permitted to close the account and open a new, non-pro one that I now use satisfactorily.
But even that’s a model of efficiency and approachability compared to Patient Access. A subsidiary of EMIS Health, this site provides appointment booking and repeat prescription services to GP practices, including mine. I only use one service, a three-monthly repeat prescription for blood-pressure medication (not induced by Google or PayPal, I hasten to add). This had been working well for over ten years until last November, when Patient Access announced an extra level of security using a memorable word and hint mechanism. This didn’t bother me as my bank has been using a similar system for years, so I duly set both and forgot about them until last week when my prescription needed renewing.
I tried to log on with my old ID and password, at which point it asked for three characters from the memorable word. I entered them, but it said they were invalid. I tried several times more with the same results, and was then told I only had three tries left. I decided it must have stored my memorable word wrong, so went to change it. But I could only do that after receiving a code sent by SMS to my mobile, and since mobiles had never been involved before my record showed an old number. You guessed it: to update my mobile number I need to enter the memorable word.
Eventually. I reached a human via email who told me that there was nothing they could do except close the account, and I must re-register by visiting my GP surgery (pretty well inaccessible due to Covid). Fortunately, I had linked the account to my local pharmacy years ago, which is now permitted to renew the prescription for me, so I’ve just walked away from the wreckage. But, being curious, I Googled “Patient Access memorable word problem” and stumbled into a pit of white-hot rage and indignation. Hundreds were locked out despite having the correct login details, with some needing far more serious meds than me. One of them wondered whether the site had been designed by Dido Harding.
Last month, I suggested that a good way to tax the tech giants would be by accepting part payment in use of their infrastructures for our public services. I can’t imagine a better example of where Amazon’s seamless purchasing process is sorely needed.