Nebulosities create a lack of clarity in our communication. They contribute to vagueness and ambiguity. They’re the language of “saying things indirectly.” We may think we’re getting our point across without being too aggressive. Instead, we make it a cloud of words. Often times, they come to a different conclusion.
After spending over 1,000 hours per year with CEO’s I have an observation, companies break in the middle.
Hold a stick with both hands at each end. Your right hand is the CEO, your left hand is the front-line employee. Everything in between is the middle. Now bend the stick…until it breaks.
The break will happen somewhere in the middle. No matter the strength of the branch, it will break with the right amount of pressure. This is why it is so important to pay attention to the middle.
These are stressful times with hard decisions and long days. For many of our members, this is the first economic downturn they have faced. This is my sixth downturn and... I believe that we will win.
I read (and listened) to 24 fantastic books in 2019. Most of them were business related, personal growth or pure entertainment. I rate books based on impact to me and add bonus points if I reread it. The 2019 nominees are:
At the height of the dot-com bubble in January 2000, 19 online startups bought very expensive Super Bowl advertisements to herald their arrival on the national scene.
Eight of those companies no longer exist. Most didn't make it more than a year or two.
Others have merged, been acquired, or continue to chug along, but with a much lower profile.
Only one — E-Trade — has survived and is strong enough to have an ad during Super Bowl XLV this Sunday.
The Super Bowl ad is the ultimate stamp of legitimacy for a company, which is why the king of this year's start-up class, Groupon, is going all in on their first big TV campaign. Will this be the coming out party that takes them to the next level? Or are they the next Pets.com?
Founded: 1998. Folded: 2000 The pet supply company (and it's ironic theme song, "If You Leave Me Now") was the poster child of the first dot-bust: Too-much, too-soon excess for a product that people probably didn't need. It was arguably the biggest flameout of the big bubble.
Some kind of viral e-mail marketing scheme that tried to pay people for putting referral links in their personal emails. They never got a second round of funding and folded by the end of 2000.
They went the cheap-o "ironic" route, spending nothing on the production of their ad, while promising customers ... more emails. They self-declared it the "worst ad on the Super Bowl." And it was. This vague unnecessary service folded soon after.
Founded in 1999 as "Shbang!", the company manufactured low-cost computers designed only for surfing the internet. In 2002, they pivoted to network security devices — after changing their name to Tipping Point and dumping the entire "netpliance" concept. (The URL is now owned by a shady-looking online pharmacy.)
This was the first company authorized to sell US Postal Service stamps online. They went under in 2001, and the name and patents were bought by Stamps.com
Not technically a start-up or a dot-com, but the "technology services" company had the most memorable ad of 2000 with their famous "Herding Cats" spot. In 2008, they were acquired by Hewlett-Packard and became HP Enterprise Services,
A decade later, these companies are still going strong, but most have a much lower-profile (i.e. they won't be advertising on the big game anytime soon.) Click the link to see their ad from the 2000 game.
E-Trade (Multiple ads as sponsor of the halftime show.)
Facebook users are far more likely to click on ads for entertainment, media sites, and blogs than for other kinds of ads.
This chart from a recent Webtrends survey of more than 11,000 Facebook advertiseements measures clickthrough rates (red) and cost per click (blue) for different categories of ads. There's a huge jump in clickthrough rates for the last two categories -- Media & Entertainment and Tabloids & Blogs. In other words, stuff that's fun to discuss with friends.
Health care ads are the least successful, followed -- somewhat surprisingly -- by ads for Internet and software products.
Once again, a rogue application is spreading virally between Facebook users pretending to offer you a way of seeing who has viewed your profile.
As we've described a couple of times before, plenty of Facebook users would *love* to know who has been checking them out online.. but unfortunately scammers are aware of this, and use the lure of such functionality as a way to trick you into making bad decisions.
Messages spreading rapidly across the Facebook social network right now say:
OMG OMG OMG... I cant believe this actually works! Now you really can see who viewed your profile! on [LINK]
If you're tempted to click on the link you're taken to a webpage which encourages you to go a little deeper and permit an application to have access to your Facebook profile.
But do you really want complete strangers to be able to email you, access your personal data and even post messages to any Facebook pages you may administer?
If you've got this far then you really shouldn't go any further. Scams like this have been used to earn commission for the mischief makers behind them, who have no qualms about using your Facebook profile to spread their spammy links even further.
Because if you do continue, you'll find that your profile will be yet another victim of the viral scam - spreading the message to all of your online Facebook friends and family. And no, you don't ever find out who has been viewing your profile.
Ever wondered how many people fall for a scam like this? Well, the figures can be shocking. This current campaign is using a variety of different links - but via bit.ly we can see that at least one of them has already tricked nearly 60,000 people into clicking.
I've informed the security teams at both bit.ly and Facebook about these links, and requested that they be shut down as soon as possible.
Always think before you add an unknown application on Facebook, and ask yourself if you're really comfortable with ceding such power to complete strangers. Rogue application attacks like this, spreading virally, are becoming increasingly common - and do no good for anyone apart from the scammers behind them.
If you've been hit by a scam like this, remove references to it from your newsfeed, and revoke the right of rogue applications to access your profile via Account/ Privacy Settings/ Applications and Websites.
Here's a YouTube video where I show you how to clean-up your Facebook account:
And don't forget to warn your friends about scams like this and teach them not to trust every link that is placed in front of them. You can learn more about security threats by joining the thriving community on the Sophos Facebook page.
The online advertising world continues to be challenged by ne'er-do-wells as Click Forensics released results from its latest quarterly, deep-dive into the company's fraud detection data. The Company identified challenges with display advertising where "a pop-up or pop-under (...) rotates brand advertisers' banner ads every 10-15 min in an effort to seemingly boost impression figures." Read the release.
CEO Paul Pellman discussed the latest on malware and malvertising.
AdExchanger.com: How is the malware scheme you describe reaching websites - through display ads from exchanges, specific ad networks? Any ideas on how it can be prevented?
PP: The Click Forensics Malware Lab has been finding two generic types of malware. The first, more common version, is actually installed on the visitor's machine as a result of some other seemingly innocent download. It can be spread via e-mail attachments or through lots of "freeware" that people install on their machines. Once installed, these Botnets can take control of browser functions or simply open pop-unders to display ads for nefarious ad networks. The best way to prevent these is for visitors to be diligent and use updated antivirus software from Symantec, McAfee, and others.
The second type is not really malware at all, but is the one more commonly talked about in AdExchanger circles. Namely, visitors to ad supported sites get served all sorts of ads that they never see, whether in pop-unders, zero-by-zero iFrames, or invisible pages. The generic term for these schemes is "ad stuffing." Advertisers can protect themselves from both types of fraud by employing ad verification and/or audience verification platforms.
What IS the malware? Any trends there?
Much of the malware we found recently came from different types of toolbars. These are browser plug-ins that purport to assist with search or provide some other value for the visitor (weather, sports scores, etc.), but in reality are also hijacking browser activity for the benefit of the author. One toolbar we found turned organic search results into paid clicks by routing searches to a parked domain site and channelling clicks through several ad networks. It's very difficult to trace which are complicit in the fraud and which are innocent participants.
From a marketer's perspective, would using frequency caps or buying on a CPC basis might lessen the impact of inflation impression?
Frequency caps might help a display advertiser minimize the impact of these schemes, but it can't defeat them completely. As far as converting everything to CPC, it might work in the very short term but, as we well know, click fraud becomes an issue. The best protection is the diligent monitoring of campaigns and the use of an audience/ad verification platform.
I didn't see you mention malvertising versus malware in your release. Do you distinguish between the two?
We use "malvertising" to refer to ads that send visitors to a place that is bad for them. The ad itself may not be infected, but its intention is to trick the visitor into doing something damaging. For example, the ad on NewYorkTimes.com a little over a year ago warned visitors to click through to a site where they could "update their virus protection." Of course the download included all sorts of malware, but the ad itself was more accurately described as malvertising.
The overall click fraud rate in Q4 2010 was 19.1 percent which was lower than the Q3 2010 all-time high of 22.3 percent, but higher than the 15.3 percent rate for Q4 2009, according to the latest report from Click Forensics.
Click Forensics Malware Lab identified a new malware scheme targeting display banner ads. The program performs a pop-up or pop-under and rotates brand advertisers’ banner ads every 10-15 min in an effort to boost impression figures.
In Q4 2010, the countries outside North America producing the greatest volume of click fraud were Japan, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Sweden and France, respectively.
“While the overall click fraud rate dropped last quarter for CPC advertising, we saw the emergence of new schemes focused on display advertisements,” said Paul Pellman, CEO of Click Forensics. “We are investigating the malware-driven attacks in more detail, but early evidence points to an impression inflation scheme. It’s something we will examine more closely and report on later this year.”
Image: fudymaFaceboo is introducing a new feature called "Buy with Friends." The idea is basically to increase purchases of virtual goods (via Facebook Credits) by making it easier to advertise it to your friends. And when the virtual good is connected to some sort of deal, your friends can take part in that deal if they buy as well. (Forbes)
For now that's mostly for virtual goods linked to Facebook games, but it's not hard to imagine that kind of social buying dynamic to expand to other areas like social commerce and group buying a la Groupon. We'll see if that happens.
On February 2nd around 4 a.m., the Internet will run out of its current version of IP addresses. At least that’s what one Internet Service Provider is predicting based on a rate of about one million addresses every four hours.
Every device that is connected to the Internet gets a unique code called an IP address (it looks like this). The current system, IPv4, only supports about 4 billion individual IPv4 addresses.
As PC World’s Chris Head explained in a blog post yesterday, some of these addresses are reusable. The problem, however, is that their one-time use counterparts will eventually lead to the complete depletion of IP addresses.
Hurricane Electric’s doomsday campaign encourages other Internet service providers to transition to that system. Fortunately, the Internet Society‘s Wiki assures us that IPv4 and IPv6 can coexist during the transition despite being largely incompatible. Software and hardware developers are working on transition mechanisms, and most operating systems install support for IPv6 by default.
Since many of us still have some canned food and bottled water stacked up in our basement from the Y2K era, we should be OK either way.
Recently a friend sent me a note asking about Facebook and expressing concerns for her family and online privacy in general. I am asked about this a lot and it is something to be concerned about. Two years ago I did a seminar providing an overview of the (then) emerging social media world and suggesting some basic privacy steps. Most of the information was focused on keeping kids safe online. Surprisingly, way back in 2009, most of my friends were not even on Facebook! You should see them now :)
I followed the session with a blog post that included some additional resources:
I thought I would take the opportunity to provide some updated information and resources around Facebook, social media and online privacy. In general, Facebook has done a much better job of providing tools to manage privacy. The problem is that these settings rarely default to a reasonable level and they can be very confusing to get set correctly.
On Facebook, start by being selective with your "friends". I may be the only person in America but I can assure you, I know every one of my 190 Facebook friends! I blogged about this a few years ago and generally follow this filter for social media:
The first resource I wanted to share is an app that I like from ReclaimPrivacy.org (article):
ReclaimPrivacy.org is an app is a that runs while you're logged in to Facebook and looks over your privacy and profile settings to make sure your settings are configured to protect your data from prying eyes, advertisers, or partners who use apps and games to collect information about you. The scanner comes in the form of a bookmarklet that you click once you're logged in, and a frame will open at the top of your Facebook screen that shows you which settings are configured securely and which areas have information about you available to the public. It works fairly well and is a good starting point.
Another excellent resource comes from Nick O'Neil (Twitter, Facebook). Nick has written a book (article and link below) that provides great insight into basic Facebook privacy settings.
In addition to Facebook privacy you also need to be concerned with your personal information being spread around the web by sites like Spokeo, WhitePages.com and MyLife. These sites are information aggregators. Spokeo recently caused a privacy stir and Fox News (and many others) covered the story:
Unfortunately while you can easily opt out of these sites individually (Spokeo instructions and Google privacy) they share and sell data to each other. This is not illegal (at least not yet). They are using information from tax appraisal districts, state information, public records and open social sites like MySpace, Facebook and Twitter.
Kim Komando offers her advice on Spokeo (sorry for the commercials!):
... and on Facebook privacy, pretty basic stuff but useful.
If you're still not scared take a look at the "State of Cybercrime" report. It details the explosive growth of malware and spyware. Even if you take every reasonable protection online, if your computer becomes infected your information can be stolen via malware. Sorry to be "Debbie downer" :)
It is a difficult task to stay on top of your personal privacy. The internet has enabled quick sharing, mining and aggregation of your data. Start with Facebook and check search for your information online often. The reality is that if you don't want someone to know something about you (ie phone number, address, pictures of kids, location...) don't put it online. I suggest staying away from Facebook location services. Other services including Foursquare and Gowalla are still early and can be dangerous.
I would, however, say that you CAN protect yourself on Facebook. We should not be locking ourselves in a closet. I enjoy social media and love being on Facebook, Twitter, TripIt, LinkedIn and Yelp. But I am conscious of my settings and what I am sharing. You should be too.
Tom Cuthbert
10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know1. Use Your Friend Lists
I can’t tell you how many people are not aware of their friend lists. For those not aware of what friend lists are, Facebook describes them as a feature which allows “you to create private groupings of friends based on your personal preferences. For example, you can create a Friend List for your friends that meet for weekly book club meetings. You can create Friend Lists for all of your organizational needs, allowing you to quickly view friends by type and send messages to your lists.”
There are a few very important things to remember about friend lists:
You can add each friend to more than one friend group
Friend groups should be used like “tags” as used elsewhere around the web
Friend Lists can have specific privacy policies applied to them
I’ll touch on each of the things listed above in more detail later. A typical setup for groups would be “Friends”, “Family”, and “Professional”. These three groups can then be used to apply different privacy policies. For example, you may want your friends to see photos from the party you were at last night, but you don’t want your family or professional contacts to see those photos.
Using friend lists is also extremely useful for organizing your friends if you have a lot of them. For instance I have about 20 friend lists and I categorize people by city (New York, San Francisco, D.C., Tel Aviv, etc), where I met them (conferences, past co-workers, through this blog), and my relationship with them (professional, family, social, etc).
You can configure your friend lists by visiting the friends area of your Facebook.
2. Remove Yourself From Facebook Search Results
My mom is a teacher and one of the first things she asked me when she joined Facebook is how she could make sure her students couldn’t see that she was on the site. Understandably my mom doesn’t want her middle school students to know what she’s up to in her personal life. There are numerous reasons that individuals don’t want their information to show up in search results on Facebook, and it’s simple to turn off your public visibility.
How to Remove Yourself From Facebook Search Results Now that you’ve decided that you would like to remove yourself from Facebook’s search results, here’s how to do it:
Under “Search Visibility” select “Only Friends” (Remember, doing so will remove you from Facebook search results, so make sure you want to be removed totally. Otherwise, you can select another group, such as “My Networks and Friends” which I believe is the default.)
Click “Save Changes”
By default, Facebook makes your presence visible to the network you are in. Frequently, people aren’t aware of their visibility, so this is one of the first settings that users wish to modify. By selecting “Customize” from the search visibility drop down you can make your settings even more granular.
3. Remove Yourself From Google
Facebook gets A TON of traffic from displaying user profiles in search engines. Not all of your profile is displayed though. Currently the information displayed in the search profile is limited to: your profile picture, a list of your friends, a link to add you as a friend, a link to send you a message, and a list of up to approximately 20 fan pages that you are a member of.
For some people, being displayed in the search engines is a great way to let people get in contact with you, especially if you don’t have an existing website. Facebook also tends to rank high in the search results, so if you want to be easy to find, making your search profile can be a great idea. Many people don’t want any of their information to be public though.
By visiting the same search privacy settings page listed in the previous step, you can control the visibility of your public search listing which is visible to Google and other search engines. You can turn off your public search listing by simply unchecking the box next to the phrase “Create a public search listing for me and submit it for search engine indexing” as pictured in the image below.
4. Avoid the Infamous Photo/Video Tag Mistake
This is the classic Facebook problem. You let loose for a few hours one night (or day) and photos (or videos) of the moment are suddenly posted for all to view, not just your close friends who shared the moment with you. The result can be devastating. Some have been fired from work after incriminating photos/videos were posted for the boss to see. For others, randomly tagged photos/videos have ended relationships.
At the least, a tagged photo/video can result in personal embarrassment. So how do you prevent the infamous tagged photo or video from showing up in all of your friends news feeds? It’s pretty simple. First visit your profile privacy page and modify the setting next to “Photos Tagged of You”. Select the option which says “Customize…” and a box like the one pictured below will pop up.
Select the option “Only Me” and then “None of My Networks” if you would like to keep all tagged photos private. If you’d like to make tagged photos visible to certain users you can choose to add them in the box under the “Some Friends” option. In the box that displays after you select “Some Friends” you can type either individual friends or friend lists.
5. Protect Your Albums
Just because you’ve uploaded photos doesn’t mean that you’ve accurately tagged every photo correctly. This setting is more of a reminder than anything else. Frequently people will turn of their tagged photo visibility to certain friend lists yet keep their photo albums public to the world. If you are trying to make all your photos invisible you must do so on an album by album basis.
There is a specific Photos Privacy page from which you can manually configure the visibility of each album (as pictured below). This is an extremely useful configuration option and I highly recommend that you take advantage of it. This way you can store your photos indefinitely on Facebook yet ensure that the only people that can view your photos are the ones who you really want to see them.
6. Prevent Stories From Showing Up in Your Friends’ News Feeds
Oh, did you really just break up with your girlfriend? I’m sorry to hear that. I’m sure all of your friends and business contacts are also sorry to hear that. I can’t tell you how many awkward relationship status changes I’ve seen. The most regular one I’ve seen recently is when an attractive female ends their relationship and numerous guys hop on the opportunity to console her.
I’ve also seen the end of marriages, as well as weekly relationship status changes as individuals try to determine where their relationship stands with their significant other. My personal policy is to not display a relationship status, but many like to make a public statement out of their relationship. For those individuals, it can be a smart move to hedge against future disasters.
There are a number of ways to control how your relationship status is displayed. The first thing that most people should do is uncheck the box next to “Remove Relationship Status” in the News Feed and Wall Privacy page. In the rare instance that a relationship does uncomfortably end, you can avoid making things more uncomfortable by avoiding a friend notification about it.
Second, your relationship status falls within your “Basic Information” section of your profile. You can control who can see your basic information next to the “Basic Information” setting on the Profile Privacy page. Keep in mind that other relevant profile information like your gender, birth date, networks, and other settings are visible within your basic information section.
Making your basic information completely invisible to friends probably isn’t a good idea, but removing the news feed stories about relationship changes most likely is.
7. Protect Against Published Application Stories
This one is a little more tricky to manage but I’ll explain the issue at hand. Frequently when you add an application, a news feed item is immediately published to your profile. One way to get instantly embarrassed is to visit the “Have Sex!” application (found here). This application has no purpose besides telling your friends that you are interested in having sex with them. Without taking any action, the application will post a news feed story to your profile which says the equivalent of “Nick just published to the world that he is having sex!”
This is surely something that none of your professional contacts if any of your contacts are interested in seeing (honestly I’m a bit confused about that application, but that’s a different story). That’s why it’s important to monitor what takes place after you install an application on Facebook. Once you install an application you should visit your profile to ensure that no embarrassing notification has been posted to your profile.
More often then not, nothing will be posted but there are many applications on the platform unfortunately that publish stories without you knowing it. There are two ways to avoid having this happen: don’t visit applications or scan your profile every time that you do. Ultimately you shouldn’t be concerned about applications that you’ve built a trusted relationship with but any new applications could potentially post embarrassing notifications.
8. Make Your Contact Information Private
I personally use Facebook for professional and personal use and it can frequently become overwhelming. That’s why I’ve taken the time to outline these ten privacy protection steps. One of the first things I did when I started approving friend requests from people that I hadn’t built a strong relationship with, was make my contact information visible only to close contacts.
The contact information is my personal email and phone number. It’s a simple thing to set but many people forget to do it. Frequently people we don’t know end up contacting us and we have no idea how they got our contact information. Your contact privacy can be edited right from your profile. If you have chosen to enter this information, you should see a “Contact Information” area under the “Info” tab in your profile.
If it displays, you simply click “Edit” and then a screen like the one pictured below will show up.
For each contact item that you have in your profile you should set custom privacy settings (as pictured below) so that contacts that you aren’t close to don’t have access to your phone number and/or email. It’s a small change but it can save you the hassle of being pestered by people you don’t know well. Also, protecting your privacy is generally a good practice to get in the habit of doing.
As a side note, this is a great area to take advantage of friend lists. By getting in the habit of grouping your friends, you can ensure that you are navigating Facebook safely through privacy settings that are attached to your friend lists.
9. Avoid Embarrassing Wall Posts
Just because you use Facebook for business doesn’t mean your friends do. That’s why once in a while a friend of yours will come post something embarrassing or not necessarily “work friendly” and it can end up having adverse effects. That’s why Facebook has provided you with the ability to customize your wall postings visibility. You can also control which friends can post on your wall. There are two places you can control these things.
Adjust Wall Posting Visibility
Within your profile page you can control who can view wall postings made by your friends. To do so, click on the “Settings” icon on the wall in your profile page. Next, find the box pictured in the image above and adjust the setting which says “Who can see posts made by friends?” I’d suggest using a strategy similar to the one outlined in the previous step regarding contact information.
Control Who Can Post to Your Wall In addition to controlling who can view wall postings published by your friends, you also want to control which friends can post on your wall. Not everybody needs to do this, but occasionally you simply want to prevent some people from posting on your page. If you visit the Profile Privacy settings page, there is a section labeled “Wall Posts”.
From this area you can completely disable your friends’ ability to post on your wall. You can also select specific friend lists that can post on your wall. Personally, I don’t really care who can post on my wall but I can understand the need to control who can see those wall postings. If you want to limit who can post wall posts on your profile, this is where you can do it.
10. Keep Your Friendships Private
While it’s fun to show off that you have hundreds or thousands of friends on Facebook, some of your friends don’t want to live public lives. That’s why it’s often a good policy to turn off your friends’ visibility to others. I’ve had a number of individuals visit my profile and then selectively pick off friends that are relevant to them for marketing purposes, or other reasons.
Whatever the reason they are doing it, just know that they are … it’s part of what makes Facebook so addictive: the voyeuristic nature. Also, your friends are frequently visible to the public through search engines and exposing this information can ultimately present a security risk. To modify the visibility of your friends, visit the Profile Privacy page.
Navigate down to the setting which says “Friends” and then modify the setting to whatever is right for you.
Conclusion
These are just ten ways that you can protect your privacy on Facebook. While there are a few other small things to keep in mind, these ten settings are most important. Keep in mind that while you may have turned off the visibility of many profile sections, there is no way to prevent all photos or videos from being visible if friends of yours make the images visible.
The best way to prevent embarrassing items from showing up on Facebook in the future is to not make bad judgements in your personal life. We’re all human though and being completely paranoid about every choice you make is probably not the best way to live your life. Be aware of what privacy settings are available and be conscious of what your friends may be publishing about you.
While you may not want to configure all of the privacy settings outlined, simply knowing how to do so is a great step in the right direction. By following the 10 settings listed above you are well on your way to an embarrassment free future on Facebook!
How much does it cost to buy a stolen credit card number on the black market? What about renting a botnet or setting up a fake online store designed to steal user identities?
Cybercrime involving stolen credit card numbers, money laundering, botnets and other black-hat activities is a huge business online. A new report [PDF] from PandaLabs uncovers the going price for some of the most popular kinds of cybercrime, and most Internet users would be surprised at the numbers behind common forms of online crime.
For example, you can purchase bank details for accounts with confirmed six-figure balances for $80 to $700. You can find someone to design and publish a fake online store for between $30 and $300. A credit card-cloning machine costs $200 to $1,000, and an actual fake ATM, which steals valuable credentials from anyone who uses it, can be bought for a mere $3,500.
According to a statement from PandaLabs, “This cyber-criminal black market caters to buyers’ needs just like any other business and functions in similar ways.”
“Since there is a great deal of competition in this industry, the rule of supply and demand ensures that prices are competitive, and operators even offer bulk discounts to higher-volume buyers,” the report continues. “They will offer free ‘trial’ access to stolen bank or credit card details, as well as money back guarantees and free exchanges.”
Most sellers and buyers remain relatively anonymous in these transactions, however, conducting transactions over IM apps and making and accepting payment through services like Western Union, Liberty Reserve and WebMoney.
The report also states that, while exact metrics are lacking, the business of cybercrime appears to be more prolific than ever.
“Although we don’t have precise data,” the report reads, “we believe that this nefarious business has expanded with the economic crisis. Previously it was in no way easy to locate sites or individuals dedicated to this type of business, yet now it’s relatively simple to come across these types of offers on underground forums.”
Stains of malware are also on the rise, particularly ones designed to steal bank details. Currently, trojans account for 71% of all new malware, up from 49% in 2005. And 99% of the time, malware is intended to targetWindows operating systems.
“Five years ago,” the report states, “there were only 92,000 strains of malware cataloged throughout the company’s 15-year history. This figure rose to 14 million by 2008 and 60 million by 2010.”
For consumers who wish to protect themselves from this kind of cybercrime, take the following common-sense precautions:
- Sign your credit and debit cards as soon as you receive them.
- When paying by card in a brick-and-mortar store, make sure your card is always in view.
- Destroy any physical correspondence that includes your name, address, Social Security details or account numbers; and don’t let mail sit in your mailbox for too long.
- Save and destroy all your ATM receipts or destroy them.
- Clear browsing data, including cookies and temporary files, after making an online purchase.
- And of course, never save or write down your passwords, keep your antivirus software up to date and only shop online at trusted sites.
I’m a fan of the board game Monopoly. As a kid, my dad and uncle would beat me consistently. It is not in the Cuthbert blood to "let" someone (above the age of 6) win at a game! I'll never forget the first time I won and knew that it was for real. The game teaches basic business concepts but to win, you have to be a risk taker! I've enjoyed playing with my son recently... and no, I don't let him win! But then, I don't need to!
What is your favorite Monopoly game piece? According to the "Monopoly Game Piece Theory" the Monopoly piece you prefer is very telling of your personality. I have used Battleship for years but been Wheelbarrow more recently... not sure what this says about me!
Battleship: You are very confrontational, and a little mean. However, you are also gifted in the arts. This combination is why many of your paintings or poetry or musical compositions or whatever sometimes come out sounding angry and mean-spirited. Basically, when you're not such an asshole, you're a good person.
Cannon: You like the cannon? Really? Why? Anyway, you are very outgoing, and always ready to raise your hand in class. You are also extremely interested in Civil War reenactments. In fact, you are obsessed with them to the point where you can't even play a board game without wanting to be reminded of them. Actually, you're kind of creeping me out.
Dog: Because my personal game piece of choice is the little dog, it would be biased of me to discuss what choosing the dog says about your personality. With that said, people who chose the dog are fantastic, fantastic individuals.
Horse & Rider: Music is very important to you (if not, just pretend it is). Also, you are very nature-orientated and concerned about the environment. You're also very political, even though you never seem to really know what you're talking about.
Iron: Your area of interested is sports, and you love to compete. Or you at least like to watch sports and competitions. Or at least you think about them sometimes, like when you're trying to get to sleep on a hot night in June. Yeah, you like them.
Race Car: You are a friendly and popular person who is generally good at reading peoples emotions. However, you are often afraid to voice your opinions. This is probably because a lot of your opinions are kind of stupid.
Shoe: Liking the shoe means that you are naturally generous and giving toward your fellowman. Additionally, you are an excellent writer. It's a shame you smell a little bit nasty.
Thimble: You are a grandmother. There’s no other explanation. Also, you’re not that good at Monopoly.
Top Hat: Your sense of humor is appreciated by your friends, and you have a way of being the life of the party. However, you need to focus more on your long-term future. I mean, what the hell are you going to do with your life? Are you just going to sit on the couch all afternoon? Jesus Christ, go get a job. And vacuum the goddamned living room like I asked.
Wheelbarrow: Your individuality is important to you--that's why you pick a piece that nobody else would even consider using on account of how stupid it is. In contrast, you are fairly smart; it's too bad you always act like kind of an idiot.
Apple's iPad business has only been around for 9 months, but it has already generated almost $10 billion in revenue for Apple.
Specifically, Apple shipped 14.8 million iPads last year, generating $9.6 billion in revenue. Last quarter alone, it shipped 7.3 million iPads for $4.6 billion in sales. That's amazing. And what's more amazing is that it's almost the same amount of revenue as Apple's almost-27-year-old Mac business, which just put in its best quarter ever, generating $5.4 billion in revenue. But perhaps what's most remarkable is how fast Apple is still growing overall. At $26.7 billion in sales last quarter, Apple still grew 71% year-over-year. Crazy.
Is this the shape of things to come? The number sold is now approaching 500,000! I have to imagine that this deal is better for LivingSocial than it is for Amazon. Clearly people will sign up for LS who are not currently members. Wondering why Groupon couldn't pull this off? It's because Amazon invested $175M into LS and they want a return!
A little more than a month after Amazon invested $175 million in the startup, LivingSocial is offering users a deal to purchase a $20 gift card to Amazon.com for $10.
The deal is available to LivingSocial members in all 170 markets and runs from now until 8 a.m. ET on Thursday.
More than 230,000 vouchers have been purchased two hours after the offer went live, meaning that the deal has already generated $2.3 million in gross sales for the startup — not bad, especially given that members are limited to one voucher per person.
On Friday, Facebook announced that it will allow application developers to request access to a user’s address and mobile phone number. Although the company is making strides to point out that the request is optional and must be explicitly granted by the user, the feature is already drawing criticism from privacy advocates and security experts.
Historically, Facebook applications have been able to request certain bits of information about a user. This information can include basic tidbits, like a person’s name, gender, list of friends and other publicly viewable information. More recently, Facebook has also allowed applications to request access to a user’s e-mail address. An application may then use this data to better serve the user.
On its developer blog, Facebook stresses that access to this data is governed by Facebook’s Platform Policies. These policies are supposed to ensure that user data is only used for legitimate purposes. Of course, that’s easier said than done.
As Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos points out, some of the hysteria surrounding this new feature is perhaps being blown out of proportion. “This change isn’t as drastic as it might first appear, because users will need to give permission for third-party Facebook applications to access this data,” he says.
That doesn’t mean that the feature is without its foibles. Cluely continues, “It still sounds like a recipe for disaster, given the prevalence of rogue scam applications already on Facebook — all of which benefit from apparently being blessed by the Facebook name and brand.”
In fact, our real problem with the new feature is that it can be used by developers regardless of their intentions. Rogue Facebook apps continue to spread like wildfire and now those apps will potentially have access to even more user information.
Clueley makes the suggestion that only approved developers should have access to information like phone numbers and addresses. We agree. While we’re sure there are legitimate use cases for giving an application access to such information (though we can’t think of that many offhand), if Facebook is really concerned about its users privacy, it should impose stricter standards on app developers before giving them keys to the kingdom.
Furthermore, the notion that the feature is opt-in seems disingenuous. This might be accurate, but in most scenarios, requests for this kind of information are going to be made during the initial sign-up/install process. In other words, users are forced (and usually programmed) to allow the permissions request if an app is to be used. At the very least, for apps that don’t absolutely rely on needing a telephone number or address, there should be an option to allow partial access to public information, while still keeping phone numbers and addresses private.
The comments on the Facebook Developers blog entry are overwhelmingly negative — and many of those negative responses are from developers. Many are advocating that users remove their phone number and address data from Facebook.
That’s not a bad idea — although it seems to be an extreme response to a problem that realistically shouldn’t exist in the first place. If Facebook would take a harder stance on rogue applications, allow more granular permission types and do more to ensure that developers actually respect their platform policies, maybe users would feel less squeamish about offering up their personal information to the service.
Axiomatic article of the day... but interesting! The Internet Is Ridiculously Huge SAI: SILICON ALLEY INSIDER | JANUARY 13, 2011 http://pulsene.ws/IY6bTech company Pingdom just released some numbers about the internet in 2010. And in case you doubted it -- the internet is huge.
Some highlights:
107 TRILLION emails were sent in 2010.
There are 255 million websites...
...and 88.8 million .com domain names.
1.97 billion internet users worldwide.
152 million blogs.
25 billion tweets sent in 2010 (!).
600 million users on Facebook.
2 billion videos watched PER DAY on YouTube.
More than 3 billion photos uploaded per month on Facebook.
BGR just confirmed that all iPhones great and small will soon be getting the Personal Hotspot feature, although the actual implementation will be carrier specific. Considering Verizon’s move to offer the service, however, I suspect AT&T will follow suit almost immediately.
Groupon will be using this money to acquire competitors, invest in ramping the "feet on the street" and hire executive talent. While it seems like a huge amount for a company that is not a pure play technology, people are not cheap. It's a crowded space and they must leverage their leadership position now. It has become a drag race and there will be far more losers than winners. Unfortunately, many of "traditional" advertising companies selling to local businesses are asleep and won't know what hit them.
January 10, 2011, 4:48 PM
Groupon Raises a Record $950 Million in Venture Capital
Jan. 11, 1:25 a.m. | Updated Clarified the name of the Russian firm that invested in Groupon after Groupon corrected its press release.
Groupon, the site that sells daily coupons for local businesses, has raised $950 million from investors, the largest amount raised by a start-up.
The investment follows Google’s $6 billion bid for Groupon, which fell apart last month. The list of new investors in the company include some of Silicon Valley’s hottest names, like Andreessen Horowitz and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
Groupon, which is just over two years old and based in Chicago, has quickly catapulted into the ranks of the top tech companies. By selling coupons, like ones that offer $20 worth of books for $10 at a local bookstore, it gives small businesses a way to advertise and find new customers without spending money upfront.
“They’ve cracked the code on a formula for how to basically give access on the Internet as a marketing channel for offline merchants,” said Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz and a veteran of Silicon Valley. “It’s a very, very big deal because there are a lot of offline merchants that have not been able to use the Internet as a marketing vehicle.”
Mr. Andreessen said Groupon can play the same advertising role for small, offline businesses, like dry cleaners and cafes, that Google’s AdWords has played for online businesses.
“That’s why Google was interested,” he said.
Some analysts have questioned whether Groupon, whose revenue has been zooming upward, can continue to grow at the same rate. Local businesses usually heavily discount their products on Groupon, so they may not want to sell coupons more than once or twice, and some businesses have complained that they lost money on Groupon and that the people who bought the coupons did not become repeat customers.
But in an interview last week, Rob Solomon, Groupon’s president, said there were so many small businesses worldwide that Groupon can continue to grow rapidly, expanding beyond businesses like restaurants and yoga studios to law firms, for instance. He also said the company planned to offer other services to small businesses, like tools to manage their relationships with customers. These include running promotions themselves.
The record-breaking amount of money that Groupon has raised gives the company the ability to expand into those new areas — and to cash out earlier investors who may be getting impatient after the company walked away from Google’s buy-out offer.
For the venture capital firms, the investment is a way to get into one of the fastest-growing companies. Kleiner Perkins, which made a name for itself last decade with investments in Google and Amazon.com, has been slow to social media, but is turning that around with recent investments in Twitter and Groupon.
Mr. Andreessen said he considered Groupon, Facebook, Skype and Zynga — all companies in which his firm has invested — to be the four most promising companies in this era of Web start-ups, comparable to Google, Yahoo, eBay and Amazon a decade ago.
Other investors include Battery Ventures, Greylock Partners, Maverick Capital, Silver Lake, Technology Crossover Ventures and DST, the Russian investment firm that previously invested in Groupon.
Last summer I convinced my dad to buy an iPad and he loves it! When I was visiting him at Thanksgiving, we were comparing notes on apps and reviewing the newly released IOS 4.0. The one big flaw, at least from our perspective, was the limitation on printing. We found an app that solves this problem quite well. My dad has been kind enough to write a blog post for me to share this information with you. Thanks dad!
Steve Jobs introduced the Apple iPad January 27, 2010; apparently the only way to print files was by emailing to a computer with its attached printer. Then in September 2010 Apple announced that AirPrint Wi-Fi wireless printing and multitasking capabilities would be a part of the November 2010 release of the free iOS4.2 software update for the iPad, iPhone (except 3G), and iPod Touch [1]. This article reviews the various ways the AirPrint feature has been adapted to make printing from those devices more efficient.
Cloud web-based file hosting system Dropbox [2] was launched in 2008 to enable any Internet user to store and share files and folders and incidentally to print from an iPad. Although Dropbox requires a second step to print from a computer to an attached printer, it will have another role later in this article. The cloud-based approach is also used in the new HP Photosmart eStation e-All-in-One, which includes its email address so mail can be routed to it through ePrint, another cloud-based printing system. This HP printer has an exclusive arrangement with the AirPrint feature on Apple’s hand-held devices when they are all are connected to the same Wi-Fi network [3]. The 2-GB Dropbox is free, but the eStation is $400 and has received a qualified review [4].
I have had a brief but very satisfactory hands-on experience with the $9.99 Printopia Mac PC app; it is not an iOS app for hand-held devices, but a Mac PC preference pane functioning as a print server [5]. When downloaded to your Mac, you will see it in Apple/SystemPreferences/Other with an expanded options window:
Printopia lists all printers connected to your Mac PC by both its USB ports and its local Wi-Fi network. Then you can choose which can be accessed from your hand-held devices, including Dropbox and Send to Mac choices. The latter sends the print job as a PDF or image file to your Mac’s Document/ Printopia folder. When Dropbox is installed on your Mac PC, a blue icon appears on the Menu Bar shown to the right. Click the icon to open the Dropbox folder, access the website, get help, and change preferences.
The iPad apps Mail, Photo, Safari, iBooks, and third-party apps with built-in printing will display a Print Option when the Arrow icon (or other path to print) is tapped as in the figure on the left below. When the Print button is tapped the Printer Options box appears as shown on the right. When your iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch is connected to the same Wi-Fi network as your running Mac, you can choose a printer other than that shown (Send to Dropbox is shown here).
If the Mac PC is not powered on or is set to sleep, it also may show “Select printer.” Then pressing the printer button will show a full screen saying “Looking for printers...” and then “No printers found.” Otherwise, a tap on the Printer button enables selection from a scrolling list of printers made available from the Preferences Pane on the preceding page. (Send to Mac has been selected as an example).
The Printopia app has worked well for me if my iMac Apple/SystemPreferences/Energy Saver has Wake for Ethernet ON and Put the Hard Disk to Sleep When Possible OFF.
Also, I found another app, FingerPrint [6], that appears similar to Printopia, but I have not tried it.
All these nicknames have been cooked up by fans and media members, not the members of the team itself ... you know, because giving yourself a nickname is usually frowned upon. But no one told that to LeBron, who informed everyone of a new one after last night's 96-82 victory in Charlotte. From Ira Winderman for the Sun-Sentinel:
James, on the Heat's ability to pack the house even in Charlotte, "We call ourselves the ‘Heatles' like the Beatles."
Cool name, guys, especially because "Rolling Heatones" doesn't really flow off the tongue. I can't wait to hear new singles like "I Want to Hold Your Early Termination Option" and "Sgt. Spoelstra's Lonely Hearts Club Band." Oh wait, I have another: "Riley Raccoon."
Matt Moore of NBA Facts & Rumors has already done an excellent job matching the Heat to their Beatles counterparts, and it's both easy and difficult. James is a decent John Lennon and Wade is a solid Paul McCartney, but Chris Bosh is a reasonably awful fit for George Harrison and no role player is quite as goofily consistent (yet still not entirely useful) as Ringo Starr. In other words, this nickname is best because it uses the name "Heat" pretty well, not because it fits the team perfectly well.
Then again, Miami could make it better by winning several championships and changing the face of basketball for all future generations. At that point, they'll come close to matching the Beatles' influence, if not their popularity. And then LeBron can finally admit that he thinks he's bigger than Jesus.
I can’t tell you how many people are not aware of their friend lists. For those not aware of what friend lists are, Facebook describes them as a feature which allows “you to create private groupings of friends based on your personal preferences. For example, you can create a Friend List for your friends that meet for weekly book club meetings. You can create Friend Lists for all of your organizational needs, allowing you to quickly view friends by type and send messages to your lists.”
Just because you’ve uploaded photos doesn’t mean that you’ve accurately tagged every photo correctly. This setting is more of a reminder than anything else. Frequently people will turn of their tagged photo visibility to certain friend lists yet keep their photo albums public to the world. If you are trying to make all your photos invisible you must do so on an album by album basis.
