AT&T Gives users more data with out them asking! Oh and they are gonna charge them for it… Wait WTF?

So AT&T is in the news AGAIN! This time they are fucking over long time customers on older plans by giving them 15gb of data extra per month but then charging them for it. AT&T is claiming that these customers have the option to change plans if they would like and its a small number of customers that are still on older legacy plans.

Ok so now for my opinion (I am very good at giving it!)

Fuck that if I have been a customer on the same plan for “X” years I should be able to maintain that plan. Don’t tack on additional charges and fees just because you want me to switch to a newer more profitable plan that you offer. This ties into my previous post about deceptive marketing with the “unlimited” plans that were offered that were not unlimited. All the big phone providers are just screwing over customers where ever and when ever possible. The only thing we can do as consumers is find a provider that screws you over as little as possible that you can tolerate.

Fail!

-Tracker

Source[Gizmodo]

At&T has a new “Unlimited” plan

Ok so here we go with some info about AT&T and a opinion of the big 4.

At&T released info on its new “Unlimited” plans (or not so unlimited) they are giving users the following choices for single lines

$65 for Unlimited data. What they failed to mention in the press release was that data throttling would be possible at ANY TIME down from a soft cap and throttling after 22gb. What does this mean? Well if you are in a congested area your speeds are going to suffer extensively.

They are also offering a plan for $65 that includes 15gb of hotspot usage and a 50gb soft cap (Throttled after 50gb) a long with a $85 plan that includes a 50gb of hotspot and a 100gb soft cap along with HBO Go (Does anyone really care about that?)

So they are saying its unlimited but hiding in the fine print that its not really unlimited and after you use a certain amount on some plans its throttled and on the lowest tier it’s ALWAYS possible to be throttled.

Now for the opinion portion of this…

If your going to advertise something then deliver on it. I have said for years on the web hosting forums I use to be a part of as well as well as on my own hosting website when I ran that company that “Unlimited” simply can not exist there will always be a limit. Companies bury those limits in the fine print and expect the average customer to not be smart enough or care enough to notice it. Don’t get me wrong AT&T is not the only one to do this. The provider I use (T-Mobile) has a 20gb hotspot limit and a 50gb high speed limit with the plan that I am on or lower if you have a different plan. However if you look at any of the promotional info online in big bold letters it always states “Unlimited”. Sprint and Verizon use a very similar strategy and don’t get me started on the smaller providers like simple mobile, h20, trackphone, boost…ect…ect.. as all of these guys are using tower time leased form the big 4 providers and are subject to being throttled at any time in favor of the priority customers from the provider itself.

This is not a issue centered around cell phones either. Look at any major web hosting site and they will offer unlimited storage and transfer. Cloud backup sites do the same thing. Now I have spent countless hours on different websites and have yet to see an “Unlimited” hard drive. While storage media is extremely cheap these days the simple economics of it is that no provider is going to let you store 4tb of data on their cloud for $5 a month. Again if you read in the terms of service there are limits just perhaps not clear ones.

I wish that some of these providers across all the industries would practice more fair and reasonable tactics when it comes to the services they offer as well as be more up front about what it is you are actually paying for instead of trying to hide it in the fine print where most every user wont be able to see it.

Seems I may have rambled on a bit but I feel I made my point.

Remember, Always read the fine print when you sign up for a service. You never know what little tricks are hidden in there

-Tracker

VPN Fail?

So in the news recently was a breach of a VPN server owned by Nord VPN. Media outlets keep covering it like its the biggest thing since Experian leaked the personal info of a lot of people. In reality the server that was accessed did not store any user data nor did it contain any logs. The only thing the hackers obtained was a key that would allow them to set up a spoof server.

Theoretically they could set up a server and direct Nord VPN users to it and then harvest data of the users from there. The problem here is that it would require them to send out tens of millions of spam phishing emails to people in hopes that someone uses Nord VPN and clicks it thus directing them to the spoofed server. In reality the chances of a exploit of this nature would not be as rewarding as some of the other schemes that hackers are using these days.

As to why Nord VPN took so long to release the info about the breach. From what I have seen on various news sources I have seen it claimed that they were investigating, among other things. My thought? They didn’t see it as being important. Considering that they did not leak any user data and no other servers were compromised it would seem that the best corse of action would be to audit the security of all the other servers in the network and make sure they are secure. From there its just a matter of damage control. Why would you release that you have been hacked when the hackers got essentially nothing out of it.

The reality of this just shows that anything is able to be exploited given the right set of circumstances and that you need to do what ever you can to protect your personal info and data to the best of your ability. Probably be a good idea to have a plan to mitigate the effects of a breach on your personal data should it ever happen.

You may look for other VPN providers at BrownCoupon.

This is just my opinion on the matter but hey we all have one right?

-Tracker

*Side note: Look 2 posts in 2 days! I’m on roll!*

New RSS Feed.

Ok guys if you are currently following the site via RSS please come to the site and re-subscribe to the rss. I added feedburner so that I am able to track how many subscribers we have. If you dont currently subscribe well then you should 😛

You can click the blue RSS icon on the upper right hand side of the nav bar. That will take you to a page that will allow you to add it to your favorite rss reader [google reader, yahoo…ect..ect..ect]

Lets see how many subscribers we have 😉

-Tracker

Contact Us!

I have added a script that will allow you to contact us with your comments and tips and anything else you could possibly need to contact us about. Hopefully someone uses it. 🙂

The link can be found on the right hand side of any page on TMS and it does open in a new window. Please try and keep the spam down the form does log IP address and any abuse of the email form will cause your IP to be blacklisted from the entire site.

-Tracker

Team Disscussion!

Well seeing as this is only me [Dark] and Tracker, its kinda funny that I call us a team. We don’t generally work together. Sure we discus mods, news, tech, and even game together, but we don’t exactly work as a team. We each do our own thing and try to mash it all into this site. Its interesting and I’m happy to be along for the ride. However I would like to post more original content, as would Tracker, this we have discussed many times. Our forums should be filled with tutorials and we should have many more active members to even expand our little two man team. We have tried to find new other writers to help generate content but we have had no real luck. So I’m proposing that me and Tracker attempt to make every post from now on, a real post. What I mean by a real post is that we actually write our content. I have in the past posed stupid things from engadget and even Gizmodo, but the time for foolishness is over. Tracker is ordering 2 very nice personal servers and will have them set up soon. I’m hoping to do some fun networking mods and tricks with him and his new servers. For example, me and Tracker had at one time a nice VPN set up, however things got hectic and the project fell apart. So here is to a hopefully much more interesting future on TMS!

Also we are STILL looking for writers / modders to simply generate more content, if you have a mod we would love to showcase it, or if you love to talk about modding we would love for you to post your content either here or become a full time writer!

-Dark

Tags are back

Ok well I am going to experiment with something. Site traffic has went up but user comments have dropped. I am wondering if tags will bring more people into specific posts and cause more comments. So from now on the posts that are on TMS will be tagged.

-Tracker

Asus Eee Box Available Now, Tracker Want?

Eee Box Picture

So Most People Should know that Tracker is practically obsessed with all things Eee. And lucky for him Asus is determined to milk the crap out of the Eee Brand. Did any one here about there huge list of new models? Well On top of that the new Asus Eee Box- Basically is like a tiny desktop -Which was officially available yesterday. However Wanted to wait until I was sure there wouldn’t be any delays. So the question might be ” Is TMS getting a Eee Box?” Well Probably not at a $350.00 Price tag that’s for sure. Hell for a little bit more I could overhaul my main desktop and have a machine that could crush that lil’cutesy looking “Box”. Although if I was in need of a computer to do say… only internet tasks? and I was in a tight position with money like most people then hey this could be the answer to their prayers. Usually I [Dark] and Tracker need more power, and there are loads of times where I wish Trackers Eee PC could be more powerful so he could help me with things when he isnt around. But the Eee PC is portable, this “Box” is not. So good? bad? Well its up to two things.

1. Do you really need it?

2. Is your wallet big enough?

One more reasion Burst.Net sucks!

 

Well over at the ServerComplete blog [the guys that host this site] are reporting this.

 

” Well BurstNET has struck again! I submitted a simple upgrade request for RAM for one of our customers still in the BurstNET facility and here we are, almost 7 days later, without the additional RAM.

After pestering the live AIM support agent for BurstNET I found out that the sales, billing, and order processing departments decided to take a nice long weekend, well more like the entire week off.

According to the AIM rep, no new orders have been processed nor have any sales or billing tickets. This really irritated me, but there is not much I can do except call or email them :( The prices at BurstNET are unbelievable, but it goes without saying, you get what you pay for!

Now, for those of you reading, no worries! We no longer are working with new servers from BurstNET and are phasing all existing servers out as people upgrade. All new signups and major upgrades are getting shiny new hardware out of Dallas :)

-Daniel | Server Complete”

AVOID BURST SAVE YOUR TIME!!!!