February 18, 2012

Dutch banks won’t employ anti-skimming hook

Filed under: Technology by Branko Collin @ 5:56 pm

Banks like ING, ABN Amro and Rabobank refuse to fit their ATMs with special anti-skimming devices that have proven successful on ticket vending machines, Webwereld reported last Wednesday.

This despite the fact that, according to the same publication, skimming is still very much a problem in the Netherlands. In January the police caught a Romanian gang of skimmers that stole from the bank accounts of thousands of people.

Dutch Rail and Amsterdam’s public transport company GVB claim that since they introduced the so-called anti-skimming hook, their ticket vending machines have no longer been misused by skimmers.

The hook lets you insert your bank or credit card. If skimmers manage to remove the hook, the entire machine shuts down.

ING and Rabobank claim that they employ their own anti-skimming technology, ABN Amro says that it isn’t easy to fit existing machines with the hooks. Bank cards both chips and magnetic strips on them, the latter being susceptible to misuse. Banks have started a campaign to encourage consumers to use the chip rather than the magnetic strip. The latter cannot fully be replaced, as magnetic strips are still required in countries like the USA which have yet to adopt the chip-based technology.

(Photo of an anti-skimming hook discovered during a police raid, by Politie Haaglanden)

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January 9, 2012

Court forces paedophile to move to Christian Internet provider

Filed under: Religion by Branko Collin @ 8:26 am

Last November the Zutphen court told a man to relocate to a Protestant Internet access provider (verdict, Dutch) as part of his punishment. The man had acquired a collection of more than 50,000 images and videos containing child pornography.

The public prosecutor had asked to give the man a suspended prison sentence of twelve months, to force the man to switch to Dutch Reformed provider Kliksafe, which provides censored Internet access, 240 hours of community service, and a treatment for ‘cannabis addiction’, whatever that is supposed to mean. The defense went largely along with this.

The court saw as a mitigating circumstance that the man had reported himself, and that it then took the Public Prosecution Service two years to act.

The non-profit foundation that owns Kliksafe writes about itself:

The basis of the foundation is God’s word, as is recorded in the Belgic Confession in Articles 2 through 7. It affirms completely and unconditionally the Three Forms of Unity as they were determined in the National Synod, held in Dordrecht in the years 1618 and 1619. It therefore declares the absolute power of God’s Word over all of life’s areas, including the use of media.

The filter criteria of Kliksafe are amongst others:

  • Sites that proselytize for non-Christian faiths
  • Sites that contain depictions of God
  • Sites that promote the desecration of Sabbath
  • Sites that promote unbiblical forms of cohabitation.

None of the parties in the court case seem to have seen anything untoward in sentencing a sex offender to start using the services of a provider allied to a religious denomination, even though the Abrahamic religions have a really dismal track record when it comes to healthy sexuality. The three judges seem to have seriously dropped the ball there.

(Link: Bright.nl.)

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November 6, 2011

Internet thugs Realnetworks lose case against Hilbrand Edskes

Filed under: General,Online,Technology by Branko Collin @ 4:53 pm

In what looks like a typical case of trying to silence somebody, American company Realnetworks with the aid of the Dutch public prosecutor, the Dutch police and the Dutch courts has managed to bully webmaster Hilbrand Edskes into running up over 66,000 euro in legal costs, losing all his spare time, and putting off his hopes of one day buying a house.

What Realnetworks did not manage to do is win its lawsuit against Hilbrand Edskes. The latter won last Wednesday. Edskes had a link to software (Real Alternative) competing with Realnetworks’ product (Real Player) on his website, which the company alleged was illegal. The court thoroughly dismissed all of Realnetworks’ claims.

Realnetworks won an ex-parte case against Edskes in August. An ex-parte case is one where the defendant is not allowed to defend himself, so it wasn’t strange that Realnetworks managed to ‘win’ that one. Remember how Louis Vuitton tried to keep the world in the dark about its involvement in the Darfur genocide? They used the same legal crowbar.

Realnetworks, you may or may not remember, used to produce a piece of software called Real Player with which you could play videos and music. Almost nobody uses it because it is not nearly as good as VLC or Quicktime. One wonders if perhaps suing small fry is Realnetworks’ latest business model.

That a supposedly democratic country like the Netherlands lets anyone with deep pockets abuse the court system to bully others is a disgrace, and judges who see no problem with ex parte cases ought to be deeply ashamed of themselves.

The court only awarded Edskes 48,000 euro in damages, because both parties had agreed to this amount beforehand, according to the verdict (Dutch).

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October 22, 2011

Phone companies may not let thugs force teenagers to buy subscriptions

Filed under: General,Technology by Branko Collin @ 4:03 pm

A type of crime that I had not heard of before is that Dutch teenagers are being forced by peers to buy them expensive mobile phone subscriptions. Back in February consumer watchdog show Kassa reported that this sort of thing happens on a large scale.

Stores that sell these subscriptions tend to close their eyes to this problem. Arnoud Engelfriet reported two weeks ago that in a surprising verdict, a judge said that even though they are not a party to the crime, telecom companies can still not hold the victims to these crimes to the contracts they entered into.

An eighteen year old girl from Rotterdam was forced under threat of violence to enter into several contracts with KPN subsidiary Telfort. Dutch law says that if you entered a contract under threat, you can rescind the contract. The court also weighed heavily that forcing teenagers to buy cellphones and mobile subscriptions is a common enough practice that Telfort should have been suspicious, especially now the victim bought five subscriptions at five different stores in a single day, which is uncommon.

(Photo by Macinate, some rights reserved)

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August 29, 2011

Parrot helps catch its thief

Filed under: Animals by Branko Collin @ 8:43 am

Last Wednesday the Barneveld police arrested a thief after the parrot he had stolen responded to its owner’s call.

The African Grey was one of 70 birds that had been stolen from a nearby location. The owner had received a tip that two of his birds had been spotted at the animal market of Barneveld. When he called the bird’s name, it came to him. The police then verified the owner’s claim by checking the ring numbers. A second bird from the theft was also retrieved.

Two other birds were discovered in the home of the thief, a 30-year-old man from Hilversum.

(Photo of an unrelated African Grey parrot by Wikipedia user Jonathan G Wang who released it into the public domain)

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July 31, 2011

Sixty hours community service for ripping open scrotum

Filed under: Health,Weird by Branko Collin @ 3:05 pm

A woman from Zeist near Utrecht was convicted last week for maiming her ex-boyfriend by twisting his scrotum in such a way that it tore open and a testicle fell out.

According to Algemeen Dagblad, the woman defended herself by claiming that the man had abused her before, and that she was afraid it would happen again. “He had been using drugs, and I could see in his eyes that things were not all right. […] I wanted to pull him off the stairs by his crotch.”

The man had to call an ambulance himself, as the woman’s phone credit had run out. The judge felt a claim of aggravated battery was not proven, says RTV Utrecht, and sentenced the woman to 60 hours community service, and awarded the ex-boyfriend 300 euro in damages.

(Photo by Steffen Zahn, some rights reserved)

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July 1, 2011

British criminals big fans of Amsterdam

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 11:03 pm


First, British students who apparently were interested in studying in the Netherlands and now the media tells us of wanted British criminals enjoying the good life in our wee country, mainly Amsterdam because it kinda looks like back home.

“In the past three years, 83 British fugitives – 10 of them wanted for murder – have been arrested in the Netherlands. But the Dutch police are getting good at catching these people and sending them back to the UK. They don’t want them here.”

Well duh! Of course we don’t want criminals here per se, silly journalist. Amsterdam sports some Irish pubs, well known food and clothing chains, and an overwhelming amount of English (Dunglish), let alone good weed and whores. ‘Costa del Crime’ they call it. What’s next?

(Links: badnewsfromthenetherlands and uk.news.yahoo.com)

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June 27, 2011

Rotterdam plans to give away free bikes from stash

Filed under: Bicycles by Orangemaster @ 12:53 pm

The city of Rotterdam is currently looking into the possibility of giving people whose bikes were stolen a new bike — well no, ‘another’ bike, one that was ‘towed away’. Illegally parked bikes (yes, if you park it in the wrong place because the racks are too full or whatever, the city takes them away) are to be re-used and given to people who had their bikes stolen.

The odd reason behind this move is to encourage bike use (do we really need to do that?) and help out the ‘victims’ of theft. Very nice spin, PR people. The goal is actually to do something with all the bikes not picked up by their owners taking up space in some Rotterdam city depot somewhere.

Don’t people whose bikes were stolen just grab, steal, borrow or use another one? How many stories have I heard about how time-consuming and complicated it is to find out where your bike was ‘impounded’, never mind having to pay like 50 euro to get it back? What if I had my bike stolen in, let’s say, Gouda, and I needed a new bike?

Shame on you media for buying into this ‘let’s make Rotterdam a less scary place to live in’ when it was crowned for the fifth time most dangerous Dutch city to live in. Your Dutch city really goes downhill when you actually need PR to encourage bike use in one of the most bike-friendly countries in the world.

(Link: blikopnieuws)

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June 25, 2011

Masturbating motorist almost frightens cyclist to death

Filed under: Bicycles,General by Branko Collin @ 1:44 pm

A fourteen year old girl on a bicycle got so scared by a man in a car next to her masturbating that she took off and almost got hit by a passing bus last Wednesday, the Den Bosch police report.

The man was in his early twenties, drove a black Seat Leon, and was of a skinny build. He wore a white vest with a broad, horizontal stripe. He had short, blond, curly hair and a pair of the most remarkably bright blue eyes. And those are all the details about him we got.

The incident took place last Wednesday around 10 p.m. at the intersection of the Zevenhontseweg and the Eekbrouwersweg in Den Bosch. Two girls were waiting to cross the intersection when a car pulled up next to them up. The occupant was watching the girls while he was pleasuring himself.

It’s not clear if the police have looked at video imagery of the bus’ on-board security cameras, but they sure would like to lay their hands on the perpetrator.

(Photo of the alleged intersection by Google Streetview.)

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June 13, 2011

State unemployment insurer mistakenly persecuted customers

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 8:44 am

A while back we reported about a mistake the Dutch unemployement insurer UWV made in which 3,000 formerly unemployed entrepreneurs had—often accidentally—committed fraud during a UWV led worker reintegration program after having been given some incorrect advice. It was the UWV who then made sure these misinformed people were fined, and in some cases, criminally prosecuted.

After a scorching indictment by the Dutch ombudsman in 2010, a parliamentary committee led by Ruud Vreeman collected 2,000 complaints, approximately half of which were by people who had been misled by UWV and who should get their money back. UWV will pay out about 5.2 million euro to its victims, Volkskrant reports.

UWV has instated its own appeal committee for the remaining thousand complainants led by law professor Irene Asscher-Vonk, who has already concluded that “a significant number” of the appellants have also been unjustly accused. Apparently the Vreeman committee never looked at all the complaints in detail, something Asscher-Vonk wants to rectify:

Asscher-Vonk does not just want to do justice to the unjustly suspected entrepreneurs, she also thinks it is important that UWV not be portrayed as a bunch of crooks. It must answer to suspicions of benefits misuse. “Mistakes have been made, but mistakes are made everywhere. UWV is an important and indispensable institution, and the reparation of trust is important.”

Interestingly, UWV pays on average 5,000 euro back per victim, but originally fined them 15,000 euro on average. That means either UWV will not pay back everything, or the real fraud in that pool of 3,000 entrepreneurs has been taking the insurer for much more than fifteen grand a pop.

(Photo of Atelier van Lieshout’s “Food Cart” by me—part of the Art Zuid set)

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