Telkom & Passwords

[CathJ]

I realise that Telkom walk a narrow line between promoting security and dealing with idiots. But it seems that they're so far over onto the dealing with idiots side, that they've become idiots themselves.

My father recently got an adsl connection at work. Not only can Telkom see his account password, they also advised him NOT to change the router password! The explanation was that if he does, and if he then forgets it, they won't be able to give it to him and he won't be able to get in to the router settings.

Aaarggh! That's like saying, don't lock your front door, because if you lose the keys you won't be able to get into your house.

Besides which, it's not even true - he could always do a hard reset and they could walk him through setting up the defaults again. And even that isn't really necessary, because the Mega100 seems to have a soft-reset, where if it loses power for 45 seconds it resets the admin password, the wireless settings, but (for some reason) not the account settings. They got him to do this yesterday when he couldn't find the paper I gave him with the router password on it.

 

[Alchemist]

On most routers there's a reset switch, that will reset the router to it's original factory settings, include username and password. So if worse comes to the worse and he forgets his username and password for the router, he can just reset it and set it up again.

 

[mercurial]

gosh Telkom are a bunch of idiots. i mean everyone knows about the reset.

 

[ijack]

Dude, dont use anything Telkom. Their worse than iBUST!

 

[CathJ]

Dude, dont use anything Telkom. Their worse than iBUST!

Well, seeing as only Telkom offers ADSL, there's not exactly an option. You can't just make blanket statements about what should or shouldn't be used.

 

[MrH]

Dude, dont use anything Telkom. Their worse than iBUST!

Now you are really talking BS, nothing is worse than the company that runs iburst.

 

[mercurial]

Well, seeing as only Telkom offers ADSL, there's not exactly an option. You can't just make blanket statements about what should or shouldn't be used.

true, but not quite true. i mean even tho they are Telkom's lines, you can still rent the lines and buy bandwidth from other companies like WebAfrica and it's usually cheaper than Telkom.

 

[CathJ]

true, but not quite true. i mean even tho they are Telkom's lines, you can still rent the lines and buy bandwidth from other companies like WebAfrica and it's usually cheaper than Telkom.

Yes, but you're still dealing with Telkom at the end of the day. If there's a fault on the line, you're still going to go back to Telkom in the end.

And sometimes Telkom is more convenient, if not cheaper - for a company that already gets a Telkom bill that's automatically paid each month, it's easier to go with Telkom's Do than have a separate bill from a different ISP.

 

[CathJ]

And here's an article on IOL where Telkom advises everyone to change the default router password. Never mind that the support people are telling people not to!

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=13&art_id=vn20071018073406318C611400

"A software programme downloads the default username and password which comes with the newly purchased ADSL hardware," said Mvelase.

He said if legitimate customers did not change and personalise their usernames and passwords, fraudsters could steal bandwidth capacity.

and

He urged Internet users to take "preventative measures".

In addition to altering the default username and password, Mvelase urged clients to use "reputable anti-virus and anti-spyware programmes".

 

[mercurial]

yeah i saw that article as well