davidpoulos.com

Tag: E-mail

  • Economy Down, Scammers Up

    Economy Down, Scammers Up

    Over the last few years I’ve seen quite a bit of questionable e-mail come through my in-box, and most of it goes right back out to the Recycle bin. The pleas from various quarters of the globe to “give me millions in exchange for your help in parking this money in your account for a few months” type, the “I’m the ousted prime minister of a small nation and have gotten out of the country with millions but need your help to get it into the US” type, the I’ve inherited millions from my Irish uncle but need your help to get it into the US” type, and a host of other scams, including so-called “phishing” sites, e-mail that drives you to sites that look like a bank, and they ask you for your account information to “verify” your account – actually a bogus site set up to capture your banking info.

    It all sucks, and plays to our greed. One business I know of got their event registration system gamed and hacked by some folks in Nigeria, who registered for events using a fake card number, and then registered for a refund, which would be paid for with a real check out of the company’s account – small change one at a time, but as a block, it adds up to some real money. That company had to go so far as to set up a special escrow account for all Nigerian registrations, that would be sequestered from the rest of the funds until all the credit cards cleared, and refunds issued only from that account.

    As the economy goes through it’s ups and downs, scams like these seem to proliferate when things are just starting to get a little brighter. They seem to work best when there’s a little glimmer of hope for those who receive them. They play on our “get rich quick” mentality, one that pervades the lower income brackets, where one big score can break you into a new lifestyle very quickly, so if there’s a tiny fraction of a chance of it being legitimate and paying off, folks will take the risk.

    It may seem a little Pollyanna-ish of me, but what if those Nigerians used that insight into the human psyche, their ability to manipulate emotion with words ( in a non-native language, no less) and their skill at finding lists that respond, for good rather than evil? What if those guys applied those skills to some of the languishing products or brands out there dying for a boost in sales, how effective could they be? What if they took the time used to concoct these schemes and set up the infrastructure to run them, and used it to brainstorm a way out of the housing crisis, solve the oil spill problem, or the employment problem?

    America is the land of opportunity, and someone ought to provide these folks an opportunity to put their skills to good use for the good of the country in general. They of course would have to be monitored and supervised very closely, but so do half the employees I’ve ever worked with. Maybe a government marketing and scheming think tank ought to be set up, to harness the brain power currently residing in our prisons. With roughly 5% of our adult male population currently incarcerated, there’s much to be learned and shared behind those walls, and we’re wasting a resource that our nation could be using to advance our position in the world. If those folks are smart enough to figure out a way to game a system the size of the banking system, or the stock market, then problems like renewable energy, low-income housing, tax reform and national debt ought to be a piece of cake.

    Write and tell me your best idea for fixing a problem you’ve recognized that would need government backing to carry out, and I’ll collect them and publish the most likely one’s here for all to see.

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  • Think Twice Before You Hit Send

    Think Twice Before You Hit Send

    Everyone makes mistakes – I don’t care who you are in life, you’ve made a mistake or two along the way, it virtually unavoidable. In fact, making mistakes is often the hall mark of successful individuals – you learn more from making mistakes than from succeeding the first time out. The real trick is not only to learn from them, but also to avoid making them in future. Making the same mistake multiple times shows a lack of self-understanding, wondering why things go wrong as a result is the definition of insanity!

    One mistake I see many younger business associates make is to put something in writing and deliver it to a recipient before reading it and considering the impact on the recipient later. In the old days, if you had an unfortunate experience or got caught in some less than optimal circumstance, you could fire off a letter to the one who initiated this slight, real or imagined. This involved sitting down, composing the thought. Then you had to find a piece of paper, an envelope, a stamp, and physically write the vehement tract in longhand, place it an envelope, seal it, stamp it, and post it. All this took time – time to consider, reconsider, and with that many steps, many chances to halt the process, and reduce or avoid the impending damage altogether. It took effort to vent on paper, and usually only the intended recipient got to see the result.

    Today, with the advent of e-mail, the opportunity for electronic lunacy looms large. Many people spend entire days tucked safely behind a computer terminal, reading, texting, tweeting, e-mailing, posting on social media sites – communicating to be sure, but communicating what? It’s now much easier to fire off a venomous missive at the drop of a hat, with no real editor involved, either internal or external. A few keystrokes, a few clicks of the mouse, and off it goes, wounding and excoriating all in it’s path. And, in true millennial fashion, once its out there, it stays there. It resides on at least two server drives, yours and theirs, as well as all the one’s in between, and can easily be forwarded, used as defacto evidence, either for the authorities or in an internal investigation. And, it carries with it an IP address that leads right back to you – no such thing as an anonymous e-mail hate letter.

    Even routine business correspondence sent to the wrong place or copied to the wrong address can cause trouble. A quick note to a co-worker about what a jerk the boss was in today’s meeting (a bad idea to begin with, never commit such things in writing, it will always be read by the wrong person eventually)can easily end up in the wrong hands with a simple click that’s a bit quick, thanks to automatic address lists, group e-mail, and a host of other technological corner-cutting to make our electronic lives even quicker and easier.

    To avoid all of this, there are three simple rules:

    1. Read all e-mail at least twice before sending, starting with the subject line, word by word, slowly and carefully.
    2. If you wouldn’t say something to a person’s face, don’t write it in an e-mail, tweet, Facebook post or IM.
    3. Check all e-mail addresses carefully, and verify before hitting “send”

    Take a moment, think about what you’re writing, think about the impact it can have on other’s, and ask yourself what you would do and how you would feel if you received this message in your in-box. If there’s any way your message could be taken the wrong way, misconstrued, misinterpreted or taken the wrong way, edit, edit, edit. It’s free, it’s fast, and can save you hours of grief and tons of trouble later. 30 seconds of review now can save hours of explanation and hard feelings later, not a great bargain if you ignore it.

    Read before you hit send – the office life you save could be your own . . .!

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