Watch your dongles people!

Dongle to the left, mouse to the right

Actually, it didn't dawn on me last night.  No.  Rather the horrible thought that it's just as easy for scammers to send me messages to that (as it's just a normal SIM with a regular mobile number) as it is to my mobile phone.  Shudder...

When using the software provided with the dongle, if I so wish, I can send and receive messages.  I could also possibly receive spam from mBlox's partners and other companies of that ilk.  As I mostly use my mobile modem on my Linux-flavoured Eee PC and, as I have no way of seeing if I've received SMS messages on that OS, then I could be in the process of being fleeced right now and have absolutely no idea until either my bill arrives or I find my bank account overdrawn.

Looks like I need to log in to My3 on my PC.

In the meantime I recommend everyone in the UK that's on mobile broadband - check your account regularly!  The 419ers would love to get away with something like this (maybe they could club together and get enough money to go "legit" - in the UK you can scam people legally and don't have to pretend to be a dodgy solicitor, banker or civil servant!)

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Slightly misleading title as my trial 3 Mobile Broadband dongle hasn't gone back just yet.  However, it will in the next day or two.  Although I never got the thing working with my Eee PC (I used it with a Vista laptop instead) and, even though things weren't always 100% hunky dory, I still decided I needed to look into getting one for myself.

So, tomorrow I should be having delivered a Huawei E220.  I'll be getting up to 5 gig a month for £6.91 and the dongle thrown in.  Looking around, I think that's got to be the best mobile broadband deal in the UK at the moment.  And using 5 gig on mobile broadband can actually be more difficult than you'd imagine (I know from experience!*)

Anyone interested in the deal should check HotUKDeals out.  It's the site where I found this - oh, and by the way, you'll need Quidco.  If you've got a Linux flavoured Eee PC (or perhaps another non-Windows subnotebook) you *have* to go for the E220.  That's the only one that works out-of-the-box.  The direct link to the offer is for a different Huawei dongle but thanks to some resourceful folk on the deal's comments page you'll be able to select the E220 without any problems.

*Keep away from 720p video podcasts on Miro and you'll be fine!

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Here's two dongles, USB dongles to be a bit more precise.  These dongles are primarily designed for laptops but can be used on desktops too.  The dongle on top is for digital TV, the dongle down below is for mobile broadband.  Because of the size at the sides, trying to insert each into adjacent sockets might be a squeeze (certainly on the Eee PC).

Broadband and digital TV - side-by-side dongle comparison

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