Calif. Residents Sue Verizon Over 'Secret' Charge

Calif. Residents Sue Verizon Over 'Secret' Charge

Post by Monty Solomo » Thu, 05 Oct 2000 04:00:00



Calif. Residents Sue Verizon Over 'Secret' Charge

Wednesday, October 04, 2000

By Dan Whitcomb

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Remember those black rotary telephones the
phone company used to make you rent back in the 1980s because you
were not allowed to buy them?

Guess what? You may still be renting that phone whether you know it
or not, whether it still exists or not and whether you want to or not.

http://news.lycos.com/headlines/TopNews/article.asp?docid=RTNEWS-TELE...
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Calif. Residents Sue Verizon Over 'Secret' Charge

Post by Joseph Singe » Fri, 06 Oct 2000 04:00:00



Quote:>Calif. Residents Sue Verizon Over 'Secret' Charge

>Wednesday, October 04, 2000

>By Dan Whitcomb

>LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Remember those black rotary telephones the
>phone company used to make you rent back in the 1980s because you
>were not allowed to buy them?

>Guess what? You may still be renting that phone whether you know it
>or not, whether it still exists or not and whether you want to or not.

I'm sorry, but this at best is a frivolous lawsuit.  Forgetfulness is not
an excuse for sueing a vendor.  If you see a charge on your bill and you
don't know what the charge is it is *your* responsibility to find out what
this charge is for.  Verizon and AT&T (who received the equipment after the
breakup of Bell in '84) did just what they were allowed to do.  Just
because the people at the time decided that they'd keep their phone either
because they were satisfied with what they had or for whatever reason it is
no excuse 25 years later to be all of a sudden surprised that they have
this addition to their telephone expense.  Just as a comment on the actual
phones, there's probably the likelihood if they indeed do have the old
phones that those phones are still working.  They may have thrown out 2 or
3 phones that they purchased at the local K-mart since then.
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Calif. Residents Sue Verizon Over 'Secret' Charge

Post by Hal Murr » Fri, 06 Oct 2000 04:00:00


Quote:>                                       Just as a comment on the actual
> phones, there's probably the likelihood if they indeed do have the old
> phones that those phones are still working.

Mine works fine.  I'm still using it.

Many years ago, when the rules changed, Pac Bell offered to sell
my my phone.  It was only a few dollars.  I accepted and they mailed
me a sticker to put on the bottom next to the "Bell System Property"
stamped in the base.

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Calif. Residents Sue Verizon Over 'Secret' Charge

Post by John McHarr » Fri, 06 Oct 2000 04:00:00




>>Calif. Residents Sue Verizon Over 'Secret' Charge

>>Wednesday, October 04, 2000

>>By Dan Whitcomb

>>LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Remember those black rotary telephones the
>>phone company used to make you rent back in the 1980s because you
>>were not allowed to buy them?

>>Guess what? You may still be renting that phone whether you know it
>>or not, whether it still exists or not and whether you want to or not.

>I'm sorry, but this at best is a frivolous lawsuit.  Forgetfulness is not
>an excuse for sueing a vendor.  If you see a charge on your bill and you
>don't know what the charge is it is *your* responsibility to find out what
>this charge is for.  Verizon and AT&T (who received the equipment after the
>breakup of Bell in '84) did just what they were allowed to do...

Well, reading the article, AT&T isn't to blame for this one.  It is
the part of Veri-zon that used to be GTE.  Whatever, it looks like a
big monopoly taking advantage of old, poor, and uneducated people who
can't follow the intricacies of a technical necessity.  
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Calif. Residents Sue Verizon Over 'Secret' Charge

Post by Steven Licht » Fri, 06 Oct 2000 04:00:00


<<
Well, reading the article, AT&T isn't to blame for this one.  It is
the part of Veri-zon that used to be GTE.  Whatever, it looks like a
big monopoly taking advantage of old, poor, and uneducated people who
can't follow the intricacies of a technical necessity.  
-- >>

It is an old issue. The whole thing started several months ago when the son of
an older woman was looking into her bills while she was in the hospital.  He
saw the charge for the phone and could not figure it out.  It was an old dial
phone that from what I remember was from the 60's.  When GTE was contacted
about this, they removed charges back sometime, then gave her the telephone.
They also said at the time they were going to look into other cases and in fact
several years ago they did contact the customers who had been renting the
telephone for years, wanting to know if they knew they were still renting. A
side note is the phone were owned and serviced through GTel., which for years
handled non regulated equipment and ran the phone stores.  When rules changed
they were brought back into the fold of the local GTE operating companies.
What it looks like is many people who had service for years just continued not
thinking of what the cost was, or maybe just not interested.  I worked for GTE
and when deregulation hit, any employee in GTE service areas, were given
ownership of the phones in place, and others who lived in other companies
service areas where given up to 3 phones, which is what I took. By then most of
my phones were my own, with the exception of a wall phone in the kitchen and a
really old space saver which PacBell just let me have.  I'm not saying GTE or
any of the others companies were right in continuing to charge, but until I
said something to my parents they were renting an old 500 from AT&T.

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1. FW: CHAP secret changing with 'wr mem' and 'reload'

FYI,

The problem is a known bug: writing CHAP passwords to NVRAM only saves the
first 11 characters. This is fixed in 10.3.15 (I tested this) and probably
other recent releases.

It came to light in our network because I wished to make the CHAP secrets
more secure, as recommended in RFC1334, which suggests that they should be
at least 16 characters long when MD5 encryption is used. Oh well, silly
me.......

Peter

 ----------
From: Peter
To: Spot
Subject: CHAP secret changing with 'wr mem' and 'reload'
Date: 18 November 1996 11:19

I've just discovered a problem with the encrypted CHAP secret. When writing
running-config to startup-config, the already encrypted password appears to
be encrypted again, resulting in a different password residing in
startup-config. If the router is reloaded, the incorrect secret appears in
running-config (naturally) and CHAP negotiation and hence connectivity is
lost. Has anybody seen this before? Router concerned is a 2501 running
10.2(11) with 10.2(8a) boot PROMs, using ppp/CHAP via aux port. The
configuration lines in question are:
!
username fred password <encrypted string>
username fred autocommand exit
!
interface async 1
encapsulation ppp
ppp authentication chap

I'm going to go away and play with different software versions now, but any
input is welcome.....

Peter

2. Problems with Apollo 68040 25MHz - long :(

3. CHAP secret changing with 'wr mem' and 'reload'

4. VREPAIR and name spaces?

5. Yes, you yung'uns, there are 'legit' 800 charge companies

6. Tabbing problems in C++ mode

7. Don't Link or I'll Sue!

8. SpeedStream 3010 on NT

9. Denver Post: Group Sues to Block Federal 'No Call' Rules

10. Owner of Stolen 'sex.com' Can Sue VeriSign - Court

11. Cisco 'Enable Secret' MD5 Algorithm

12. CISCO 2503: 'enable secret' unknown