'It is comforting to know where your data centres are.' UK.GOV does not

Plus: Anons are 'wannabes', KKK says, before being pwned

Google's UK encryption worries

Also in the UK, Google’s encryption everywhere claims have been found to be true only if you’re not a BT Wi-Fi subscriber piggybacking on wireless connections. According to sysadmin Alex Forbes, BT customer searches are being broadcast in clear text and possibly open to interception.

Customers are being told that it’s the network, rather than Google, that’s stripping out SSL search, but Forbes believes the Choccy Factory is turning the option off on behalf of BT:

I can think of a couple of reasons to block SSL search. One is child protection and filtering. Disabling SSL search allows BT to filter searches for undesirable terms, and theoretically allows them to append “?safe=active” to the search URLs. It doesn't do this though, in fact doing so would require the use of a proxy server, which would be a whole new level of intrusion.

The other reason, and the one I feel is more likely to be responsible for this policy, is data mining. It’s reasonable to expect that BT knows the location of every BT Wi-Fi router within 10-15m, because it has a home address for every one of them. Whether or not it knows who is signed in to Google (it’s reasonable to assume it doesn’t unless it’s actually inspecting the contents of the message body, and that would be *WAY* overstepping the mark), knowing what is searched by location is a marketing gold mine.

Google engineer and security bod Adam Langley said in a forum comment that the ad giant was aware of the issue and it would be sorted soon:

At the moment, yes, no nosslsearch VIP will do this. However we're getting rid of it soon and replacing it with one that enables SafeSearch, but still over HTTPS.

However, if you want an encrypted search option, 'https://encrypted.google.com' is always encrypted and isn't affected by these methods.

Well, if you will go to Blackpool, rather than wherever this is, what do you expect?

And finally, a British couple has been left fuming after a hotel charged them an extra £100 charge for leaving a bad TripAdvisor review.

Tony and Jan Jenkinson spent a night at the Broadway Hotel in Blackpool, which they later described online as a “rotten, stinking hovel”.

Unfortunately, they hadn’t read the fine print on the paperwork when they signed for the room, which warned of a charge for bad reviews. Mr Jenkinson told the BBC:

Annoyed isn't strong enough for how I feel about this, what happened to freedom of speech? Everybody we have spoken to says they are not allowed to do this.

As it turns out, the Jenkinsons were right. The trading standards authority told the hotel they couldn’t charge folks for reviews, no matter how bad they were. The hotel said:

We exercised this policy with Mr and Mrs Jenkins as we felt extremely upset by their actions and insulting comments towards our staff. However, we now understand that our policy was not good practice and we are refunding the £100 in full. We have taken advice from our local trading standards and have also removed this policy from our terms and conditions. ®