Named & Shamed
SOFTWARE WARNING!
21WHAT ARE THEY
TALKING ABOUT?BARRY’S VILLAINS OF THE FORTNIGHT
Kieran & Connor Maher
Want to impress the ladies? You may have to do better than show them your broadband ‘speed’Barry Collins puts the boot into tech villains, jargon-
spouting companies and software trying to trick you
Internet Speed Booster’s ‘prank app’
T
his Microsoft
Store app is not
so much making
your internet go faster
as pulling a fast one.
On the surface, all looks well:
a 3.9 out of 5 rating from 81
reviewers isn’t bad (see http://www.
snipca.com/41638). But if you look
closely at the ‘Description’, all is
not what it seems: “Note: This is a
prank app made for entertainment
purposes. It is meant as a prank to
fool your friends or to impress the
ladies at the office.”
Now, it’s been some time since
I worked in an office and
entertainment has been pretty thin
on the ground over the past couple
of years. But if there are any ladies
out there who are genuinely impressed
by an internet speed booster graph
ticking upwards, they are a lot easier to
please than my other half.
My guess is the developers are hoping
nobody reads this ‘Description’. And
judging by the reviews, many haven’t.
“I tried this app on three differentmachines... there was absolutely no
change in the ping, download or upload
speeds,” writes one. Other five-star
reviewers claim they’ve been using it
for months and it’s made the world of
difference!
Guys, it’s nothing more than a graphic.
A graphic wrapped in advertising, whichthey even have the nerve to offer a
paid-for premium version of, to remove
the ads.
There’s nothing wrong with prank
apps, per se. But when they don’t make it
blindingly obvious they’re a prank, the
real jokers are Microsoft for letting this
rubbish into the Store in the first place.There’s trouble at t’mill in
Bury. Brothers Kieran &
Connor Maher were jailed
for three and five years
respectively after police
caught them selling stolen car parts
on eBay. Police tracked Connor’s eBay
account back to a unit in a mill in
Radcliffe, Bury, which had parts from
stolen BMWs, Range Rovers and Audis.
The pair, who had previous
convictions for growing cannabis,
covered their tracks by using signaljammers to stop the
stolen cars’ GPS trackers
raising the alarm.
However, the criminals
came unstuck when they
used Connor’s real name as his eBay
username (connormaher92) for
disposing of the stolen parts. He
realised this might identify him and
changed the name to C.Parts, but it
was too late. Prosecutors said the pair
made £120,000 from the sales before
getting caught.WHAT THEY SAY
Kyounghoon Kim, Samsung, on its new
M8 monitors
http://www.snipca.com/41640
“The M8’s colour palette composed of
four different colours was inspired by
the theme ‘Shades of Nature’. Gazing
at the clear blue sky on a bright sunny
day, recharging in the lush green
forest, or finally bathing in the glow of
a sunset.”WHAT THEY MEAN
Please think of nature’s beauty, not the
£700 these monitors cost.Issue 631 • 11 – 24 May 2022Credit: Greater Manchester Police