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I work for a certain convergent outsourcing company which converges with converging technologies to provide a ... okay I've taken this too far: I work for Convergys. Every user on their network is an administrator. Every. Single. One. We have 1200 or so employees at my site alone, and we've got over 70 sites in the US.

They use group policy security to control the network, but you wouldn't believe how little thought goes into it. We had a new team form to provide support for a certain now-defunct pacific-coast city's municipal wifi. Because supporting an internet service sometimes requires tools such as ping/tracert/whatever -- they gave us a command prompt. But because they didn't want us having all kinds of access, what they really gave us was a shortcut to a batch file, which started with a choice prompt, allowing you to 'paste' so-to-speak, several commands, such as it would not let you have a blank prompt. It would always have a command, such as C:\>ping .

Well apparently no one told them that you can concatenate commands. We soon discovered we could just use the batch file to C:\>ping google.com & start cmd and have an unrestricted command prompt. And since we're all administrators, we can use MMC, and control every other part of our access.

I've since moved past my call-taking days, but I still work for them as an analyst. Of course they still won't let me provide any kind of network security device.

Here's a page with photos of the singer.

And here's a page with a photo of the Maureen Govern in question here.

Do you see much of a resemblance?

I'm a customer service rep/tech support agent. The billing software I use at work stores credit card info whenever we put it in. It also shows the entire credit card number and expiraion date (although I have used this same version with another employer where everything but the last four numbers of the CC acct# was hidden). Obviously, when we talk to customers we pretend we can only see the last four digits.

This software has an initial copyright of 1980 (it was text-based then), the version I use is copyrighted 2004 (reeal ugly GUI pasted over it). It keeps the credit card number whether you're doing a one time payment or an automatic withdrawl. It has no delete feature for this data. Yes, some version of this software has been in existance for over 20 years, without a delete feature being added. If someone wants us to remove their credit card information we have no way to do it. We can change the exp date to something that wont pass with the CC company, but this is all up to them. I've seen credit card companies take charges when our exp date listed is three years expired.

I have heard that current versions of the software do have the ability to remove the CC info. But it seems this verison is popular.

In this system your records stay on the database after you cancel your services with the company. So I have credit card data for people who are no longer our customer and haven't been for years.

I have used at least two other billing software packages that are pretty much the same. In other words, this lack of security is completely normal.

On a side note, I believe a company (one call center located in West Valley City, Utah) called Convergys http://www.convergys.com/ does a good deal of telemarketing and technical support for DirecTV.

``I've been developing Linux business systems for nearly 10 years and I've never heard of a company not adopting Linux for legal reasons.''

A former employer of mine had planned to port its flagship software to Linux and reversed course after SCO filed its suit. Their primary engine was already ported to HP/UX, AIX, and Solaris, so I don't think porting to Linux would have been that difficult for them.

They may have changed their path back to their former plans since I left, but I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't. From what I understand, the legal department said that deploying Linux should be delayed at least until resolution of SCO's various lawsuits. Of course, their estimation of SCO's lawsuits may have changed in the interim.

Convergys has offices all over the world. Not just in Canada and the US.

Not every place in Canada has a ridiculous sales tax on products and services. There is a PST (Provincial Sales Tax) in all provinces except Alberta, and there is a GST (General Sales Tax) of 7% that is across canada. The PST is set by the province and can range from nothing (like Alberta) to hovering around 10%. It gets added onto the GST, so if you're paying 8% PST and 7% GST you've got $1.15 CAD to to pay every $1 something is priced at.

Anyway, if you're shocked by high taxes in Canada, Alberta is the place to go - low taxes, the provincial government runs without a deficit and the alcoholic everyman redneck Premier (think Governor) runs the province like a business, and as a result we are nearly debt-free.

Here in Edmonton the cost of living is low, but IT jobs are hard to get unless you know someone or are willing to work low-level helpdesk jobs. I work as IT Manager for a local publishing and marketing company (which employs about 50 people) and am paid on the low scale of what someone in my position would make (I earn in the $30,000 - 40,000 CAD range). However, because the cost of living is low and taxes aren't too bad, I at 24 years old am a homeowner and enjoy a comfortable standard of living.

Some of my friends have done IT jobs that earn upwards from $40,000 - $60,000 but you need a combination of luck, determination, high skill and good connections to land that sort of salary doing IT here. If you're missing any single one of those traits (like I admittedly am) then you have to settle for what you get.

A lot of brilliant technology-oriented minds end up in shitty call centre jobs employed by Americans trying to save money by outsourcing to Canada, but it's a mixed blessing really. Those people would not be working in their field if it wasn't for those jobs, and they pay well enough that you can not feel live a welfare case.

They already farm out support because it's isn't profitable for them to do that themselves.

Who do you think pays the bills to the 3rd party that provides support? Dell, Gateway, Compaq, etc. The fact is that "farming out support" doesn't mean they don't provide support. They pay a company, like, say, Convergys to hire people on a contract and those people essentially work for Dell. They are paid by convergys to go through training and they are paid by convergys hourly to give customer care, but then Dell pays Convergys their salary, plus extras.

Yeah, it's cheaper this way, convergys has the infrastructure in place to do phone based customer care (they even have new systems that allow the employee to sit at home with a headset on and a computer in front of them, thus lowering their costs). They can usually ramp up a contract faster because people are coming off another contract or waiting for one (no one is allowed to work two contracts). It makes sense, but it doesn't have anything to do with the viability of support. Support is the business that these guys are in! Otherwise you'd just get a frankenstein from Joe's PC Shack.

BTW, I know quite a few people who have worked/still work at Convergys (and other call centers).

Just an update to my short post yesterday

Yesterday about 1,000 phones were sent to both the washington DC and NYC areas. (this is a pretty big deal since customer care workers activated all these by hand).

Last night we batch activated and programmed an additoinal 850 handsets (in about 25 minutes). These phones should be distributed today.

And to clarify...I don't work for Sprint PCS...but rather a Cincinnati based company called Convergys. Sprint is one of our clients.

I hope that these phones will be helpfull to all who need them.

Sprint PCS is donating Cell phones to the red cross as we speak.

I'm sitting at my desk right now writing a script to activate the phones to the network elements and create the account.

cvg