Strive Notes

A friend of mine opened her Hotmail account this week to find a bunch of bounce back messages that indicated her full address book had been spammed and all her contacts had been deleted.
What an embarrassment and a hassle.

She was quite sure that no one could have access; no one knew her password. So how did it happen then? Had someone used some sophisticated software to break the code to get in? Probably.

I asked her a few questions and the likely cause quickly revealed itself. She posts her email address on Facebook. Her date of birth is also posted on Facebook. She’d been on Twitter on her recent birthday discussing the celebrations. Her password was her date of birth. So you can see how the hacker got the information required to get into Hotmail.

It could have been worse when you think that people often use the same password on multiple sites, such as their bank, credit cards and shopping sites. Thankfully my friend did not use her date of birth on any other account. But her innocent participation in two of the most popular social networks left her, and her contacts, at risk.

It could happen to anybody really, and the ramifications to both an individual and the employing organisation can be profound. However, here are some simple steps you can take to protect yourself, your systems and your business.

Here are some tips on keeping your passwords safe:

-Pick a password that is meaningless. Not your address, your mother’s maiden name nor the name of your dog. A hacker can find this information almost effortlessly, especially if you’re on Facebook, MySpace or Twitter.

-Use a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, symbols and numbers. This complicates things for hackers.

-Choose long passwords. The longer, the better, because it’s more difficult to crack.

-Don’t use the same password forever. One good idea is to make a routine of changing it the first day of each month.

-Never use the same password on multiple accounts. Use a different password for each online account.

-Never write your passwords down and never give them out to anyone.

On the surface these last two points, combined, might make the task seem somewhat unmanageable when you consider that today it’s not uncommon to have 20-30 or more website accounts.

But you don’t have to commit to memory dozens of constantly-changing passwords. There are some very clever software products out there, many of them free, to help you generate random passwords and remember them.

I like Roboform. Developed by Siber Systems Inc. it’s available for many web browsers, but mainly supports Internet Explorer, Firefox and Netscape and there are versions for many hand held devices too. It does not yet support Apple Macintosh nor Linux system, but there are lots of products out there which do.

Thinking back, I wrote my first ever article on avoiding hack attacks way back in 1992, when I was producing a staff newsletter for a large corporation. The advice has changed little since then. You just need to use good common sense and avoid succumbing to human nature.

But if your Hotmail or other email account is compromised, the very first thing you should do is change your password to something stronger.

Then you should immediately run both virus and spyware scans to make sure the hacker hasn’t left anything nasty or malicious behind. Check that your auto responder and email signature have not been tampered with and no spam messages have been added. Then don’t forget to let your email providers support team know about the problem.

If yours is not an isolated incident, they might need to take steps at their end to plug a security hole. And, no matter how tempted you are to find out who has victimised you and your contacts, don’t click through to the site the spammer is flogging.

You already know it’s not legitimate; there is no need to risk further viruses or give spammers a good payday.

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1. Steve Rubel and his colleagues at Edelman have put together a white paper on the role of search engine visability in reputation management. The main contention is that increasingly, search engines will have a critical impact on how brands are perceived. It’s well worth the read, especially the information regarding the importance of benevolence online.

2. Guy Clapperton takes on Harvard in Twitter Hyped? It seems that Harvard’s research revealed that a huge majority of people have created a Twitter profile and never use it after day.  Guy says that this is normal with new technologies, and predicts that Twitter will, indeed be pervasive.

3. It’s no secret that I’ve recently become fascinated with podcasts. So I was delighted to find Bryan Person’s  The Daily Boo, a short podcast about online communications and media.  This week he spoke to Donna Papacosta about the business of podcasting. She sees the use of podcasting on the rise among corporate clients who benefit from the long tail effect and the power of human voice.

4. I loved this post entitled Why I hate bloggers, not only because it’s a beautiful example of linkbait, but because Lisa Barone is just so wonderfully crabby.  She writes, “A blog won’t make you any less boring, it will just emphasise the fact that you are.”  Ouch! But the comments go on and on.

5. Doug Goldstein has written a funny post about why every marketer should take a journalism class.  Humour aside, he’s right in that marketers should be prepared to dig a little deeper when thinking about what strategies and tactics should be employed.

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There seems to be a theme about ‘giving it away’ in the PR blogosphere this week.  I guess it’s a sign of the times, but what about those green shoots we keep hearing about?  Either way, here’s my top 5 blog posts from the past week.

1. Lloyd Gofton has a go about ‘devaluing PR’.  He says, “PR, as an industry, needs to wake up to a whole host of challenges, and the last thing we need is to be destroyed from the inside. Have we really been demoted to scrabbling around fighting each other for an ever decreasing pool of clients?” I hope not Lloyd.

2. Emily McDaid also says we shouldn’t be giving our services away.  She’s recently had to pitch against some one whose price tag was zero.  Don’t worry Emily.  Remember: no cost equals no value.  This is not a sustainable strategy.  Your client will be back before long with hat in hands.

3. Mitch Joel seems  a bit more optimistic with his ‘Six steps towards a new economy’ post.  He says that digitisation, new business models, nomads, customer care, contact and analytics will become key PR drivers as we work our way out of the recession.  I agree that all these will play a role. But the single biggest change will be that the  ‘mass communication’ dream will finally become a thing of the past.  Recognition that each individual is part of community will be come clear, and this will impact everything we do.

4. The Bad Pitch Blog makes the top 5 again this week with Get the picture or get lost.  Kevin Dugan explains, “Visuals decrease our word count and increase our effectiveness. And in a Web 2.0 society it’s become cheaper and easier to make our efforts über visual. The evolution of news and search is making this visual leap essential.”

5.  Tom Reidt is running a series of posts on reputation measurement where he revisits the fundamentals. In part 5 he says, “If PR is to be considered a management function, it has to earn its right to it. The principal way it can do that is through measurement, by demonstrating its direct contribution to an organization’s goals and by using verifiable evidence to base its decisions upon.”  I couldn’t agree more.  So why do clients still insist on AVE as a measure of PR’s value?

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This is the main finding of an independent, global study into the state of Web 2.0 use, policies and security conducted by security software vendor Websense.  The report is based on a global survey of 1,300 information technology managers across ten countries, asking about their perceptions of Web 2.0 in the workplace, testing their understanding of these technologies and assessing their organisations’ level of security preparedness.

Click here to read the rest of this Tech Talk column.

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The Isle of Man Junior Chamber of Commerce welcomed experts from the Island’s private and public sectors speaking on “The Economic Outlook” yesterday. Zahed Miah, member of the Junior Chamber’s executive council (centre) welcomed a large crowd of members and guests to the breakfast gathering.

Steve Carse, (left) economic advisor to the Isle of Man Government predicted that the Isle of Man’s economy will not be as badly impacted by the downturn as our neighbours and competitors. RBS International Director Conor Grant (right) discussed the seven steps necessary for global economic recovery. Both men predicted better times by 2011/12. 

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As it’s a bank holiday I’ve got some extra time to read up.  Here’s my list of what I liked.

1. Dave Fleet asks if your organisation has multiple personalities in this thoughtful post on customer service and social media.  Twitter, blogs or any online interaction can’t plug holes in your customer service provision.  Work on the essentials first, then worry about which communications channels you should use.

2. It’s a long one, but the  Shel Holtz post on the continuing need for professional journalism is well worth the time it takes to read.  In it Shel explains why ‘the crowd’ will never replace professional journalism. He says, “they will co-exist, complement one another, and ultimately produce a new ecosystem of news in which both forms of reporting play an integral part. “

3. In this excellent post Geoff Livingston revisits  the principles of  ‘How to win friends and influence people’ and explains how they can be applied in social media.

4. Leo Bottary has some good advice about bridging the gap between analysis and recommendations when formulating a communications strategy.  In this revved up world, sometimes it’s helpful to be reminded of the fundamentals.

5. I found this post about returning calls on the Bad Pitch blog interesting.  It implores us PR people to have the courtesy to return a phone call when a message is left.  Is this really a trend? Do PR people deliberately not return calls? I can’t imagine that professional communicators would be that rude.

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I’m not one to blow my own horn (erm…well maybe I am guilty of that on occasion), but I have to admit I’m pretty darned pleased that Strive Notes has again made the PR Week’s Best of the Tech Blogs listing this week.  I’m especially pleased to be in such great company. Two bloggers who I read regularly and follow on Twitter also made the cut.

Dirk Singer’s post about circling the wagons certainly rings true; I think we might just be starting to see those ‘green shoots’ that people keep going on about though.  Paul Stallard’s comment about ‘rich media’ clips reflects Strive PR’s experience too. We’ll definitely check out the Radiomonitor service that Paul suggests.

It’s no secret that I love PR Week; I’ve written about it before. Editor Danny Rogers and his team crank out excellent coverage of the profession and the UK industry week in, week out.  Keep up the good work folks.

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The BCS  Isle of Man Section meets this week for a short AGM.  Once business is completed, Chris Davies, chief operating officer of Intelligence Limited will discuss the ‘implications for project management in an uncertain Island economy’.

Chris has more than 25 years experience of the IT industry in a variety of roles including hardware and software development, sales, marketing and project and corporate management. He has worked for both public and private companies and has a wealth of experience of projects of all sizes. Chris is currently working with the Isle of Man Government and other clients providing strategy, programme and project management consultancy.

He will consider how project management disciplines operate in an Isle of Man environment and how these translate from global governance models. Chris will also look at how  Island’s IT industry and project management is affected by the current economic situation.

Claremont Hotel on Thursday 21st May 2009. Doors open at 17:45. Everyone is welcome.

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Here’s some cool stuff  I saw in the PR blogosphere this week.

1. These two ladies have put together an excellent list of UK-based Mommy bloggers.

2. Bernard Lunn analyses journalism 2.0 and offers some insight into how keep quality high and monetise content.

3. Steve Rubel asks if Twitter could replace email as the way to pitch journalists.  I think the answer is yes, in part.  I’ve been doing a bit of it lately, but it’s challenging to fit a complicated tech story into 140 characters. You can use Twitter to whet the reporter’s appetite though.

4. Susan Getgood offers us a long and detailed explanation of what blogger relations really is.

5.  Paul Stallard has published a great interview with Guy Clapperton, a UK freelance reporter.  One gem that is so true:  “…if you’re going to write succinctly about a subject and make it clear what you’re writing about you’re probably going to be SEO’d up to the eyeballs without realising it.”

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Organisations are looking at the social network platform seriously as a channel for marketing and other mass market communications.  And of course they’d be crazy not to when you consider how it’s free, easy and effective, right?

Well, not really.  These are common misconceptions about social media.  It has the appearance of being free, but takes considerable time if you are going to do it well. Most social networking platforms are easy to use, but leveraging them to achieve organisational goals takes skill and experience. And as for being effective? They can be, but the effect is not easy to measure.

Click here to read the rest of this Tech Talk column.

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Manx-born Simon Collister, a recognised UK expert on eDemocracy, is speaking to  the Isle of Man Social Media Club’s Third Thursday breakfast meeting at the Claremont hotel in Douglas, 21 May, 2009, 7.30 a.m.

Thanks to sponsorship from Charterhouse Group International the event is free and everyone is welcome.

The Isle of Man Social Media Club, with the motto, ‘If you get it, share it’ aims to expand media literacy, share lessons learnt, encourage adoption of industry standards and promote ethical online practices.

Simon Collister grew up in Ramsey, and has held leadership roles in digital and social media in world-leading public relations.

The Isle of Man Social Media Club (SMC) meets on the third Thursday of each month for an informal discussion on the developments in the world of social media. On occasion they hold Super ThirdThursday meetings, more structured events usually involving a guest speaker. Everyone is welcome and there is no cost to attend.

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The British Computer Society Isle of Man section continues to offer up great events for Island residents who work in IT and anyone who just likes to use computers. Last week, the group held one of the most popular events so far this year: Microsoft’s Huw Turvey’s preview of Windows 7.

More than 50 people were on hand to learn about the new operating system, that is being heralded as faster, more reliable and easier to use than its predecessors.

The BCS Isle of Man section’s chairman is Mike Coleman.  He said: ‘We’ve had a successful year so far and continue to be in great shape. We run many more events than most BCS branches; we often attract 50 to 60 people, so it’s clear that people are interested in what we offer.’

Click here to read this Tech Talk column.

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