Showing posts with label Pop Ups. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pop Ups. Show all posts

February 19, 2012

Big Phish, Small Phish

Phishing is an attack whereby someone pretends to be a trustworthy entity, but is really trying to get your personal information in order to steal from you or an organization.
Phishing is a type of social engineering where fraudsters try to deceive and spoof their victims by sending email or instant messages (or even by calling) and pretending to be a legitimate private or public sector organization. They then either request personal information, provide links to fake websites, or even create unauthorized pop-ups from legitimate websites to get you to give them your personal data.

Additionally, phishing emails can contain attachments that infect recipient's computers with malware, creating a backdoor to control or compromise a system and its information.

In all of these cases, the intent of phishing is impersonate others and lure consumers into providing information that can be used to steal identities, money, or information.
The word phishing alludes to the technique of baiting people and like in real fishing, fooling at least some into biting and getting caught in the trap. 

In this fraudulent type, perpetrators pretend to be legitimate financial institutions, retailers, social media companies, and government agencies in an attempt to get you to divulge private information like date of birth, social security numbers, mother maiden names, account numbers, passwords and more.
Once criminals have this valuable information, they can commit identity theft, break into your accounts, and steal money or information.

Spear-phishing is a derivative of this scam that is targeted on specific people, and whaling is when the scam is perpetrated on organization executives or other high profile targets,  which can be especially compromising and harmful to themselves or the organizations they represent.
The first recorded phishing attack was in 1987.  Over the years, the prevalence of these attacks have steadily increased. According to the Anti-phishing Working Group (APWG), there were some 20,000-25,000 unique phishing campaigns every months through the first half of 2011, each targeting potentially millions of users.  Additionally, as of March 2011, there were as many as 38,000 phishing sites.  The most targeted industry continues to be financial services with 47% of the attacks.
There are a number of ways to protect yourself against phishing attacks.
  1. Delete email and messages that are unwarranted and ask for personal information
  2. Do not click on links, instead go directly to a website by using a search engine to locate it or copying the link and pasting it into the browser
  3. Configure your browser to block pop-ups
  4. Use anti-virus, firewalls, and anti-spam software
  5. Set up automatic security updates
  6. Input personal information only into secure sites, such as those that begin with "https"
  7. Only open attachments when you are expecting them and recognize where they are coming from
  8. Check financial statements upon receipt for any fraudulent activity
  9. If you are caught in a phishing scheme, notify law enforcement and credit reporting authorities immediately
  10. Always be cautious in giving out personal information
Whether you consider yourself a big fish or a small fish, beware of those trying to catch you up on the Internet--hook, line, and sinker.

Share/Save/Bookmark

August 14, 2011

Images, Alive And Profitable

"There are nearly 4 trillion images on the Internet and 200 million new ones being added each day," according to Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) of Luminate.

Luminate (formerly Pixazza) has the vision of making all those images interactive through image recognition algorithms and human-assisted crowdsourcing to identify objects and tag the images with content.
They "transform static images into interactive content," according to the Luminate website.

The way it works:

1) Icon--look for the Luminate icon image in the lower left corner of the image that means the image in interactive.

2) Mouse--mouse over the image to choose from the interactive image apps.

3) Click--click on the images in the photo to shop and buy it ("Get The Look"), share information (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, email), or navigate (click on contextual hyperlinks from Wikipedia and other sources).

According to Forbes (27 July 2011), Luminate already "has more than 4,000 publishers, 150 million unique visitors per month, and more than 20 million products catalogued."

The image-tagging platform provides context and information for consumers and revenue generating opportunities for producers--so it is a win-win for everyone in the marketplace!

By connecting end-user Internet images on the front-end with advertisers and commerce on the back-end, Luminate has found a way to integrate web-surfers and industry--no longer are advertisements on the web disconnected as pop-ups, banners, or lists from the Internet content itself.

Right now, there are apps for annotations, advertisements, commerce, and social media. Luminate plans to open up development to others to create their own for things such as apps for donations for disaster relief images or mapping and travel apps for images of places.

Luminate, as a photo-tagging and application service, is advancing our experience with the Internet by creating a richer experience, where a photo is not just a photo, but rather a potential gateway into everything in the photo itself.

In my view, this is a positive step toward a vision of a fully augmented reality, where we have a truly information-rich "tagged environment", where everything around us--that we see and experience--is identified and analyzed, and sourced, and where the images of the world are alive no matter how or from what angle we look at them.

Lastly, my gut tells me that Google is heavily salivating over where this company is going and future developments in this field.

(Source Photo: here)

Share/Save/Bookmark

April 6, 2011

Ads Here, There, Everywhere


This is wild--Adzookie, a mobile advertising company that puts location-based ads out on cell phones, is doing some unbelievable advertising of its own...

They are offering to paint people's houses and even pay their mortgages every month that you let them have their brightly colored billboard painted onto the side of your house.

In less than a day, they got applications from 1000 homeowners (and even one church)!

Is this a sign of the tough economic times or what?

A number of important lessons here:

1) In case we already didn't learn from Google, advertising is really big business--my G-d, this company will pay your mortgage for you just to advertise on your house. (okay it is a big advertisement and all...)

2) Advertising going online, is old news; the new news is that it's going mobile, big time. Folks, the ads are following us. Wherever we go, the ads will be there. From print to TV to billboards on the side of the road and at bus stops, to the Internet and to our smartphones--there is no escape!

3) People will do almost anything for money (this is an old lesson revisited)--even make their "home sweet homes" into the laughing stock of the neighborhood--or do some people actually think this looks cool?

4) Technology is an enabler to make our lives more convenient (news, shopping, etc.) and a richer experience, but it also lets those obtrusive advertisements pop up or crawl across the computer screen when/where NOT desired. As technology is part of virtually every facet of our lives, the potential for advertising here, there, and everywhere can really go overboard. Perhaps, the time is ripe for additional privacy settings on our computers/phones, so that we could block ads (when we want to) and have the equivalent of a "do not call list" for those pesky ads that just never seem to give up--like the Energizer Bunny--"they just keep going and going and going."

When it comes to technology (and the rest of our environment), I believe that we have to be able to control the flow--whether it's information or advertising.

Even too much of a good thing, can be a real eye sore.

Share/Save/Bookmark