Tag Archives: sms

ZipDial plugs hole in its verification service

One of the emails from themorpheus email list that caught my attention last week was how @bevenky found a hole in the ZipDial’s phone number verification process. ZipDial for those who don’t know was in news recently for signing up some big ticket Indian e-commerce players and TutorVista to end their vows(in sending verification SMS’s) anticipated to occur because of TRAI’s revised guidelines applicable from 1st April.

I’ve been following the conversations on Venky’s Blog Post and was glad to note that ZipDial team’s response to the pointed flaw changed from ‘It doesn’t really matter’ to ‘Thanks for sharing the flaw, we’ve made the suggested changes to fix it’

It’s a good idea for companies(especially startups) to acknowledge the flaws in their offerings and try to fix ’em rather than proclaiming “All’s Well” when it is not.

Add your mobile number for Gmail’s password recovery

If you know it already, good, but if you don’t, here’s the thing

Now you can also add your mobile number as one of the password recovery mechanisms for Gmail

gmailaccountrecovery1

So now there’s another option to retreive your Gmail password and what’s cool about this is that you don’t need to depend on your seconday email anymore  . I think this should make life a simple in case someone looses their Gmail password.

Forgot your password ? Go to password assistance page and enter your username/email. Google will sms/text you a code on your mobile which you can use to get back on track.

Here’s a test for the new work flow

Step 1:

password_assistance

Step 2:
reset_pwd

I just added my mobile number and went for the recovery option.  Contrary to what Google says, I haven’t received any sms, though I did get an email on my alternate email account. So for now we can’t say it this option is working for India but in any case the new feature/change sounds good(and safe) and I think we all should  go for it

Shame, they did it again.

Absence of statements blaming the other party from any political leader on the first day of Mumbai attacks was conspicuous but if you thought Indian politicians have finally learned not to politicize the terrorist attacks you are mistaken. The second day of seize saw leaders from the opposition starting the blame game again. What’s worst is that the ministers from leading party for whatever reasons invariably end up doing “tit for tat”.

Just when I was thinking if and how “Mumbai Attacks” would reflect on the Delhi assembly elections my phone beeped. It was a sms, that read “Atankvad ke virudh apna sangharsh jari rakhen, jinhone atankvad ke liye naram niti apnayee unke virudh bhari sankhya main matdan karen. Mehengi Padi Congress” which roughly translates into “continue your fight against terror and vote out people who took a lenient approach against terrorism”

A couple of hours later my phone beeped again for another sms and this one read “har terrorist attack chunav se pehle hi kyun hota hai ? isme faayda kiska ? Aatank par vote maangne ki sasti raajniti desh ko mehengi padegi” which roughly translates into “why does every terrorist attack happen just before elections, who stands to gain out of this?  the lowly act of asking for votes under the name of terrorism will cost the nation”

It’s a pity that this is the state of Indian politics, they won’t even spare terrorist attacks and shamelessly try to use them to garner votes.