Last week my wife told me she’d received this message from our bank:
Mrs H then replied with ‘N’, following the instructions.
A few minutes’ later her phone rang, and we put it on loudspeaker on my desk. Continue reading Have you ever had a text message warning from your bank about a recent transaction?
There has been an increase in scam/ phishing emails recently. And the biggest challenge is that they are looking increasingly genuine.
Someone in my immediately family clicked on one of the text messages, and we ended up having to change our debit cards.
Here are some that I’ve received in the last couple of weeks.
Stay alert for the following signs.
This is the hardest to avoid. When I received the Thrifty phishing email below my immediate response was “I can’t believe I have to pay an overage for a car I rented last Summer“. I was almost tempted. The O2 text message below managed to convince my close family member because we were on holiday at the time and they thought “I don’t want my mobile to be disconnected while I’m away“. These emotional reactions cause us to stop thinking and start clicking.
Here’s how phishing emails create that emotional reaction.
Very few companies need an immediate payment. The phrases “Don’t miss out!” and “valid until...” create urgency, which creates the emotional reaction in the point above.
As always, if it’s too good to be true, it isn’t. This too, creates an emotional reaction for you to stop thinking and start clicking on those phishing emails.
Banks and government agencies usually make a point of not including any links in their email and directing people to their official website. They recommend opening a web browser and making you typing in their web address, not clicking on a link. In the scams below:
Always be super, super careful about checking links because there are ways for companies to make a link look genuine to the naked eye.
Please be careful out there!
Here’s a summary of interesting stories I’ve seen over the last week. I try to concentrate on the stories which aren’t necessarily mainstream.
Conor Nickerson, from Canada, has spent a lot of time and effort adding himself into his own childhood photos. He’s pasted himself, as an adult, next to the original himself, as a child. He’s achieved some great results. You wouldn’t have even noticed the editing without knowing beforehand. It’s a good, creative marketing trick, and I hope he got some business from this. I hope it doesn’t become a trend. https://www.boredpanda.com/guy-photoshopping-childhood-photos-conor-nickerson/
Porsche in Atlanta has launched a new subscription model for their range of cars. For $2,000 a month, you can get access to a range of Porsche cars each month. And as with all good Internet subscription models, there’s a Premium version that gives you access to more cars including some GTS models. Continue reading Weekly new round up 26 October 2017
Here’s a summary of interesting stories I’ve seen over the last week. I try to concentrate on the stories which aren’t necessarily mainstream.
Let’s start with some good news! ING ran a trial of contactless charity donation boxes. The trial resulted in average donations doubling old-fashioned cash collection tins. I think the new donation box design could be improved, but it still encourages generosity to charities. bit.ly/2ykXaMC.
Apple is close to launching their person to person payments service. It’s purely proprietary – which means only Apple users will be able to send and receive payments. I predict Apple Pay Cash will have a bigger cash stockpile this time next year than many high street banks. This is because users will keep their received cash on their device, simply because it will be easier than transferring it into a bank account. https://t.co/agcKxKigJx Continue reading Weekly interesting news round up
Time to look back on the annual predictions from 12 months ago…. how many of those crystal ball predictions came true? Continue reading Review of 2016 predictions
I’m in Romania this week presenting a variety of speeches, including the keynote of MobOS entitled The future of mobile. It’s been a challenging speech to prepare for – and was considerably harder than I originally thought. Not least because in technology terms, “the future” means different things to different organisations. One organisation might think some future of mobile concept is way-out-there while another may have already been using it for a year.
I promised the audience to post the script of the keynote here…
I’m going to talk about four areas on the future of mobile – context, the number of devices we use, mobile user interfaces and the central hub concept. That will set some foundation for some ‘left field’ concepts that we have for the longer term future of mobile. Continue reading The future of mobile
This is the sixth year of my digital predictions for the forthcoming twelve months (see here for 2015).
Many more industry commentators and research analysts are now releasing their predictions, but they don’t mark their work at the end of the year (last year I scored a woeful D) and their ‘predictions’ are actually trends.
So here goes for what lies ahead in 2016:
In 2016 we’ll see a new three companies go eye to eye on their product offerings: Microsoft’s Hololens versus Facebook’s Oculus Rift versus Google’s Glass and Cardboard products.
In 2016 the new version of Google Glass will be released, specifically focussed on enterprises. Microsoft will be releasing Hololens to developers from Q1 2016. And Facebook will also be releasing Oculus Rift in Q1 2016.
The ultimate winner of these multi-billion dollar investments will be customers. Devices will still be well into four figures, and we’ll see some incredible implementations from gaming to enterprise. Continue reading 2016 digital predictions
One of the most popular blog posts I’ve written recently was about the Internet of Things and Insurance, in readiness for a panel at the Insurance Technology Congress 2015 event in September.
Since the blog post I’ve received some feedback asking about other aspects of IoT which I’ll cover here. Specifically they fall into two buckets – security, and more clarity around the definition.
Like many areas of IT, one could argue that the IoT has already been around for decades, but now it’s receiving more market awareness.
At the 1989 Interop conference, Dan Lynch and others created the first Internet Toaster which was connected to the Internet (via TCP/IP) and could be controlled (well, the power was controlled) remotely. It was a proof of concept that really anything could be on the Internet. Continue reading Challenges ahead for the Internet of Things
Since the week before Easter I’ve been extremely busy – there was the holiday period, followed by a big family celebration, and then last Friday I managed to fall off my bicycle and break some fingers. In short… it’s been quite hectic.
During the family celebration I heard a brilliant quote from a friend, Yehuda, an IT Solution Architect, who had travelled from Israel to join us for a week. We were discussing how IT projects have become either prescriptive (detailed requirements) or business focussed (with high level requirements and leaving the solution to the supplier partner). He tells this to all his customers:
Tell me either what you want to do, or how to do it, but if you tell me both – go and do it yourself.
How did my 2014 Digital Media predictions from last December turn out?
2014 has been another interesting year in the digital world. The end of a terrible recession has forced most companies to place digital at the heart of their strategy. #Fintech has become a recognised term for banks, insurance companies and other financial services organisations trying to update their systems to become ‘digital‘.
1. TV will change
Last December I predicted Ultra HD will become production ready, 3D TV will disappear and we’ll start seeing transparent TVs on the market. Continue reading Review of 2014 predictions