Terence Eden. He has a beard and is smiling.

Terence Eden’s Blog

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Preventing NAPTR Spam

· 4 comments · 900 words · Viewed ~738 times


Glowing computer text showing dot com dot info etc.

You're the sort of cool nerd who knows all the weird esoterica which makes up DNS, right? In amongst your A, AAAA, SOA, and MX records, there's a little used NAPTR. Yes, you can use DNS to store Name Authority Pointers! What?! It is yet another of those baroque standards which spits out things like: cid.uri.arpa. ;; order pref flags service regexp replacement IN NAPTR…

The NHS shouldn't outsource its QR codes

· 8 comments · 600 words · Viewed ~1,217 times


Screenshot of terms and conditions with an hello email address.

QR codes are brilliant. They're a simple way to allow users to easily and quickly go to the right URl - no matter how complex. No more worrying about typing in long addresses or figuring out if that's a letter O or the number O. Scan and go! The best thing about QR codes is that they're free. It doesn't cost any money to generate one. They're an open standard with no middle-men. Users can go…

No, ActivityPub votes aren't anonymous

· 4 comments · 500 words · Viewed ~374 times


Logo for ActivityPub.

Several years ago, I posted this poll on Twitter. Terence Eden is on Mastodon@edentIf the recent Twitter hack had exposed they way you voted on every Twitter poll, how would you feel?(There is no suggestion that this has happened, I'm just curious about people's relationships to voting and privacy.)Meh. So what?: (167)167Hmph. That's annoying.: (68)68Umm… This could be bad!: (32)32Delete account …

Book Review: Understanding Privacy - Heather Burns

· 1 comment · 400 words


Book cover for Understanding Privacy.

Heather Burns has an absolutely deft way of turning the sometimes-dull world of digital privacy into entertaining, informative, and actionable prose. Too many of these sorts of books end up being a list of woes and end with "someone should do something, I guess?". Understanding Privacy is different. All the way through the mantra is "You are someone! You do something! And here's how..." …

What the UK Government gets wrong about QR codes

· 12 comments · 700 words · Viewed ~824 times


A leaflet for Childcare with a prominent QR code.

One of my most memorable experiences in the Civil Service was discussing link shortening services with a very friendly person from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. I was trying to explain why link shortners like bit.ly and ow.ly weren't sensible for Government use. They didn't seem to particularly care about the privacy implications or the risk of phishing. I needed to take a different…

Can you trust ProtonApps.com?

· 2 comments · 450 words · Viewed ~370 times


Screenshot of the ProtonApps page.

I've recently signed up to the privacy-preserving service Proton. All the email, calendar, drive, VPN, and other services seem to hang off the proton.me domain. I wanted to download the Android apps to my phone - without using the Google Play Store. The VPN app is on F-Droid but none of the others are. So, because I'm lazy, I Googled "Download Proton Mail". I landed on…

O2 UK's Weird MSISDN Lookup API

· 7 comments · 250 words · Viewed ~219 times


Sorry, we don’t recognise this number. Please try again.

It's always fun keeping your network inspector tab open. While looking around the O2 UK website, I found this page all about eSIMs. For some reason, it wants to know the user's phone number. I put in a random number, and it refused to let me in. Putting in a genuine O2 number let me through. So what is it doing to validate numbers? It is making an API call to this URl: …

Safelinks are a fragile foundation for publishing

· 16 comments · 550 words · Viewed ~619 times


Screenshot showing a document. The cursor hovers over a link. The pop up shows a safelinks URl.

Microsoft loves you and wants to protect you. So every time you receive an email with a link in it, Microsoft Outlook helpfully rewrites it so that it goes through their "safelinks" system. Safelinks allow your administrator, or someone at Microsoft, to stop you visiting a link which is malicious or suspicious. Rather than going to example.com, your link now goes to…

Envelopes and GDPR

· 6 comments · 700 words · Viewed ~314 times


A letter addressed to me. Just inside the plastic window you can see the word "colonoscopies".

Privacy is a funny concept, isn't it? Very few people want the whole world to know what medical complaints they have. But most hospitals are open-access buildings, where the waiting rooms have large monitors to tell patients that their doctor is running late. A few years ago I was sat in the proctology waiting room. Anyone who knew me would have seen I was waiting for an bum doctor. They may…

I don't think you need to be civil to puppy-smashers

· 5 comments · 400 words · Viewed ~305 times


AI generated image of a small industrial machine crushing a cute puppy.

My good friend Jess wrote this a little while ago: Jessica Rose@jesslynnroseThe function of a system is its output.If you have dog grooming machine that sometimes smashes puppies and you keep running it, you're in the dog smashing business.If you work for a mass surveillance company that keeps enabling genocide and undermining democracy...❤️ 2,323💬 23🔁 013:19 - Thu 07 January 2021 The whole thre…

Let's track footballers' heart rates!!

· 9 comments · 550 words · Viewed ~214 times


Photo of a football match. The striker's BPM is a high 150, the goalie a more leisurely 75. Original photo from https://www.flickr.com/photos/wonker/8603265115/

I don't follow football - or any sports - which made me an unusual choice for this particular pitch. Let's wind back the clock a decade... A relatively unknown hardware company has just released one of the first "fitness trackers" which can measure a wearer's physiology. As well as counting steps, it now has the ability to measure heart-rate and a bunch of other things. They think that athletes …

Fediverse Account Portability And Blocking

· 1 comment · 600 words


Cartoon of a tusked mastodon holding a phone.

One of the many great things about the Fediverse (Mastodon, PixelFed, Lemmy, etc) is that your account is portable. Let's say you're bob@social.boring and, one day, you decide to move your account to foxyfun@furryextreme.yif. Well, with a few clicks of a button, all of your old followers are now following your brand new account. You're still following all your old friends. The accounts you…