From the Guardian blog… it seems a Londoner, trying to make an online donation to the Tsunami Appeal, found that his use of a “non-standard browser” was construed as a hacking attempt and led to his arrest. Great.
I can’t say I suffered in the same way, but I didn’t have much luck donating via the Disasters Emergency Committee website. Despite several attempts, I just didn’t manage to give them any money… neither of my Visa card numbers, the site told me, were valid. Of course, I could have transferred the money over to my HSBC account and tried paying by Switch, but that’s not really how online banking is supposed to work, is it?
So I’m alarmed and embarrassed to report that I never got round to donating any money during that surprisingly generous froth of British giving earlier this month. Actually, I did drop a few handfuls of change into buckets at football matches and on high streets, but nowhere near the £50 or £100 I’d intended to donate online.
With the massive success of the Tsunami Appeal, I now feel like I probably ought to give the money to another charity. I recall hearing that the financial benefit of aid in the Indonesian crisis areas will amount to an average of 100 US dollars per head. This figure was at the top of a table; at the bottom was Mozambique, whose aid recipients get an average of only 40 cents per head. This thought stuck in my head, and I’ll probably be on the lookout for Mozambique-specific charities. Anyone got any better ideas?