About the security of online services

Some time ago, I started receiving in my Gmail inbox notifications of purchases from the Playstation Network... the thing is: I neither have a Playstation nor registered an account on that network!

My Gmail account has been protected for a long time with 2-factor authentication; therefore, I was not worried about the security of my account.

Those emails are just the annoying consequence of at least two facts:

- A dumb user who cannot remember or type their email address correctly.

- An online service that does not care to verify the email address during the registration process.

Since I considered it not worth digging into the support pages of PSN to search for a solution, I initially decided to add a filter to Gmail to delete those emails automatically.

Last week, I received a welcome email from Uber and, soon after, a receipt of my very first trip around Philadelphia (US).

Again, even though I suppose it is a lovely place to visit, I have never been to Philadelphia!

And I never registered an account with Uber.

Same as above, someone used my email to register an account (same person? no way to know).

As I got annoyed by these notifications, I have decided to spend one evening trying to find a way to either delete these accounts or disable the notifications.

Uber

After reading throughout their support site, I finally landed on the page to delete an account.

To delete the account, you first have to log in.

You might ask how I can log in if I did not create the account in the first place? Easy: request a password reset!

I reset the password, logged in, and finally clicked on the button to delete the account.

Ridiculous.

PSN

Here the problem is finding the support page. After a good thirty minutes in the forum, I found a link to the US online support live chat.

Being outside the US, a message on the waiting page informed me the service was not available, and I had to contact the Support Team for my country.

Select your country on this page:

https://www.playstation.com/country-selector/

Then scroll to the bottom of the page and click on Support (this is the UK Support page)

Search for "chat".

This is the link to the UK Live Chat.

Since the service is available from 10:30 to 19:00 Monday to Saturday, I will contact them tomorrow and hopefully find a solution.

What amazes me is the total lack of verification from these services. I could not access any sensitive information regarding these persons, but in the Uber case, I could find where this person has been in the last two weeks - not what I define as privacy.

The bottom line is: for the services you care about, always enable the 2-factor authentication and try and change your password as often as possible!

The Maltese Language #2

In the first post regarding the Maltese language, I introduced the alphabet.
Today, following my notes order, I am going to write about the article, but first let me add that in the Maltese alphabet the consonants are arranged in two groups:
Sun Consonants:  Ċ, D, N, R, S, T, X, Z, Ż
Moon Consonants: B, F, Ġ, Ħ, J, K, L, M, P, Q, V, W

This grouping will make easier to remember the rules for a correct use of the articles.

The Maltese language actually has only one article: il-
Note that the article requires to be separated from the following word with a "-" (dash).

Even though it is written as one of the Italian articles, its usage is in fact very similar to the English the: it remains the same regardless the number and the genre of the noun it precedes.

However, unlike the English article, the Maltese one changes slightly depending on the first letter of the following word.

If the following word starts with a        The article is
Vowel A, E, I, O, U, IE                    L-
GĦ, H                                      L-
Sun consonants                             I<consonant>-
Moon consonants                            IL-

Basically, when the word that follows starts with a sun consonants the L changes into that consonant. If the word that follows starts with a vowel, the I is dropped. In all the other cases the article is always IL-.

Since għ and h do not have a sound on themselves, the rule is the same of the vowels one.

Some examples:

L-Ilma      The water
L-Ieħor     The other one
L-Ħobż      The breadIĊ-Ċirasa   The cherry
ID-Dar      The house
IX-Xita     The rain
IL-Mara     The woman

The last example "il-mara" gives me the opportunity to introduce one characteristic of the Maltese language: adding the article to a word, can change the meaning of it.
In this case, "il-mara" can be used with the meaning "my wife".
To distinguish these cases in writing, the general rule is to change to capital the first letter of the word following the article.
In speaking, the intended meaning can be understood from the context.

Some examples:

Il-mara     The woman
Il-Mara     My wife 
Il-raġel    The man
Il-Raġel    My husband
L-erbgħa    The four
L-Erbgħa    Wednesday

As far as I know, there are no exceptions to the rules for determining the correct article, but I cannot be completely sure, being my knowledge limited.
Native Maltese speakers, am I correct?