Online Shopping
March 8th, 2006 at 22:30
I’m not usually a luddite who’s scared of computers and what they can do, but I’m slightly worried by what Amazon have done to me. For some reason “one-click ordering” had been enabled on my new account by default- what this means is that you don’t have to go through the process of clicking “confirm”, filling in your address and so on- whatever you want is just ordered through that one link.
I’ve managed to spend seventeen pounds in seconds. For the obsessive readers among you, to save you going through my bins, again, I bought: Hayek’s Road to Serfdom and Mark Thomas’ The Night War Broke Out, the latter of which I didn’t know existed until approximately ten seconds before I’d paid for it. At a rate of 2 p/m (purchases per minute), it looks like I might need that job afterall.
Yesterday, I received a phonecall out of the of the blue (as they say). In reality, it was probably out of India down a high speed internet connection. “Hello Mr O’Malley, an order on your card from over a month ago didn’t work so can you give us some money pls?”.
I suspected identity theft, so asked for some sort of proof of identity- in retrospect I don’t know what I was expecting. The woman on the other end of the phone couldn’t show me any identification, so she sent me an e-mail saying “gimme sum cash”- and I said to myself “this completely secure and unspoofable document is all the proof I need”, so promptly rang back and handed over my new Maestro card details.
The question is now: will my identity be stolen? Will there be another James O’Malley somewhere on the internet tediously blogging mundane aspects of his life and using words like “blog” as a verb? Will MPs receieve another survey asking if they prefer Tango or Fanta? Will I cry tomorrow when I discover I can’t afford to get home? Tune in next time.
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