John Tate reflects on the pros and cons of an increasingly technology-driven world.

For a long time our family television was a 14-inch analogue device. Nearly spherical in shape, it provided an effective, if rather small, viewing screen. Pressure from a certain element of my family (unnamed) meant we didn’t have Sky or an equivalent, to avoid our ‘children’ watching too much sport (football) on television.

Calm family discussions took place regularly to review this investment opportunity. With the passing of time, the unnamed element relented and a couple of years ago we purchased a cable-channel package and a larger, flat-screen digital television. 12.45pm, 1.30pm and 5.30pm kick-offs are now available and often watched at the Tate household.

Replays of Friends, Home and Away, and Frasier, outside these times, can play a pacifying role.

Surprise

OK, I haven’t got a home cinema, surround-sound or a wall-mounted screen but, having lived with a 14-inch device and no cable for years, my new set-up suits me fine.

So it was with some surprise last month that I received a letter from a catalogue-sales company congratulating me on my purchase of a new TV. T

hey took the trouble to remind me of my minimum monthly repayment for my purchase; that the interest rate (APR) was a modest 44.9 per cent; and that I would be liable for a £20 penalty if I missed my repayments.

I rang the catalogue company on their premium-rate number to inform them I had never set up the account, nor ordered the TV or ever received it.

After some digging around it emerged that someone had fraudulently made the order, and a third-party freight company had then claimed to have delivered it to our house. So it looks like someone from the delivery company had been part of the fraud – probably in collusion with someone from the catalogue company.

Anyway, the catalogue company eventually did the right thing and accepted we had not been involved in the deceit. However, I now need to check that our credit rating has not been affected and am concerned that further incidences of fraud using my details may follow.

Actions to help address this issue include:-

Contacting a credit-rating agency to check on my status. Apparently they may also be able to provide some insight into whether the fraudsters have tried to open other accounts in my name;

Checking my online bank transactions daily for a while, to see if anything untoward happens;

Reviewing our recycling of paper to make sure we do not include any confidential information in the bin we leave outside our house each week;

Reporting the incident to Action Fraud –  and

Checking the level of security on my home computers and broadband to minimise the risk of my machines being hacked and confidential information extracted.

IT fraud

This is a small example of the fact that internet fraud is on the increase. For example, according to the UK Cards Association, total fraud losses on UK credit and debit cards reached £185m between January and June 2012, a 9 per cent increase over the same period last year.

According to the National Fraud Authority, an estimated £1.1bn is lost to charities each year from fraud (see the article on pages 42-43). As my experience has shown, fraud can hit anyone – so beware.

On a lighter note, the Guardian reported last month a fine example of IT failure, supported by staff who seemed to have lost the plot. A French telecommunications company (Bouygues Telecom) sent out a bill to a customer for €11,721tn when they terminated their account. At 5,000 times the GDP of France, this was a hefty bill.

When the customer contacted the company she was told by the staff that there was nothing they could do as it was ‘calculated automatically’ and that she could pay in instalments if she could not make the full repayment in one go. The issue was finally resolved when it was discovered that the correct bill should have been for €117.

Computers can, and do, make really stupid mistakes. However, let’s hope that people keep their sanity in an increasingly technology-driven world.

John Tate is a business consultant, IT adviser to CFG and a visiting lecturer at Cass Business School