Thursday, November 17, 2011

1621 Double Trust

I was listening to a radio ad the other day for a company that touted their website, where you could download stuff to double your computer speed by getting all the malware off it. That same malware that got on it because people went to websites they knew nothing about.
And it occurred to me—nefarious behavior is now so common on the web, and it's so easy to fake positive reviews cheaply, that reputable companies have no alternative. They have to spend real money advertising in traditional media.
Using radio, cable, TV, and print reduces the scam factor because it's more expensive and therefore more trustworthy. Not that scams don't occasionally appear in traditional media, they're just more expensive to pull off, and require the scammer to take more of a financial risk than constructing an elaborate and nearly free website littered with fake free testimonials.
Not only that, other free approaches, like becoming your friend on Facebook or following you on Twitter, are cheap and easy ways to feed you bogus information. Beware of friends of a friend. Or mysterious tweets.
Facebook and Twitter users who over-post are now finding when they come home from well-tweeted vacations that their homes have been robbed. These same folks take the precautions of having their mail held at the post office and stopping the paper, but then tweet to all and sundry that they're lolling away the days in Cabo.
And when they send pictures with GPS Geo-tags on them it's even easier for burglars to time their return.
As a great man, I believe his name was Bobby, once said, "Where there's a human endeavor or technology, there’s a criminal mind to exploit it."
You wonder if Mark Zuckerburg has a fencing operation on the side...
America, ya gotta love it.

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