Couldn't agree more. There are entirely too many dodgy programs out there and as always you should never install software from an untrusted source. I completely understand that obviously you have no gauge of my skills or knowledge but for what it's worth I have been in IT for many (nearly 30) years as a professional, and I do not make recommendations lightly.

Having been through the source code, and having built it from scratch, yes I do. Interestingly the closed source, "premium available" LastPass has just had to ask it's users to change their passwords after admitting it had been hacked.

Take a look at the excellent open source program "keepass". You can store all your passwords in a secure database, and then you only need to remember the one password to open it.

Absolutely agree. The joy of linux is the number of flavours out there for people to try. I also provide tech support for a radio station that is entirely linux based, and uses everything from Pi's up to i7s

Ubuntu Studio is a great bit of kit for audio/video/graphics work, but it does suck the life out of older hardware unfortunately. Linux Mint is becoming a great "day-to-day" OS (he says, posting from a Mint Cinnamon desktop ...)

I've been using the Windows 10 tech preview for a while now ready to advise/support my clients and it's not actually too bad. It's certainly an improvement on 8/8.1! Technically this should be a "good" release on the alternating schedule of good/bad releases from MS! That said, Linux and OS X win hands down every day

I agree there are some very questionable practices around some of the "free" apps, usually involving adverts that appear all over the place and make it very difficult for you to click in the right place. Fortunately the App store is now much better at showing when an app "offers in-app purchases", however it is still somewhat annoying. I will slightly correct you however as it's not Apple on the make - they just facilitate the purchase and take a small cut from the proceeds. It's the publisher that takes the lion's share of any profits and so are responsible for these practices ... Putting my programmer hat on, I would always advocate going for a paid app from an independent programmer/studio (assuming it does what you want) over a free one as generally the experience is better. Many apps take us geeks months of coding to get working. The "free" apps tend to be used as a hook by the big companies to get you to spend money through the in-app purchases, whereas the bedroom coder who asks for 69p for an app is normally just looking for a little beer money to help them support the app and it's users. Of course the exception to this rule is the apps that the big business put out free for their customers (e.g. mobile banking, account maintenance) as they are after your money in other ways! And yes, if people are not savvy with their mobile data allowance/usage and in-app purchases, they often can be stung.

Managing to get 10 minutes of cuddles with my 8 week old daughter before having to get up for work!

Could you request call barring on the line to prevent calls in/out until such time as you can move the line?

Thanks UB. Fully intend (with the help of CAG!) to see this through and update as required on here.

That's what I thought originally - hence my post. Thanks Andy

Again, apologies, but it seemed that it was a "take the CCJ" type post, which I put down to be my misunderstanding due to lack of sleep from a 7 week old. Is it worth defending then, or do we just accept liability?

Please understand that we are not, nor are we trying to be "debt avoiders" and have successfully negotiated repayments with creditors where applicable. I originally posted here to try and assist my wife in dealing with, what is for her, a fairly stressful situation and having read other threads on here believed that this was the correct course of action, especially as we believe there is PPI and other (as I understand it) unlawful charges on the account. However given that it appears my original post has caused either offence or misunderstanding, I ask the admin to delete this thread accordingly and I apologise for the inconvenience.

I had read that, but it seemed at odds (33 days) with the paperwork (28 days) ... Was just checking I wasn't missing something as usual

Thanks UB - can I just double check when we would need to file a defence by?