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Identity Theft Gets More Personal

Consumers are increasingly letting the online world into their confidence. The amount of personal information shared in blogs and vlogs, resumes, pictures of friends and family, PayPal™ transactions, Facebook™ bios, even tweets about what you just had for lunch, mark a collective new level of online over-share. The vast majority of this activity is harmless, safe, and downright fun.

But as social networking and modes of communication proliferate, so do opportunities for scammers to glean bank numbers, birthdates, passport information, and even lunch recommendations. Meantime, scammers are getting increasingly subtle and sophisticated in their approaches. Gone are the days of the widespread virus-starter seeking a moment of fame. Phishing and vishing “artists” too, are fading as consumers become increasingly aware of the wide nets they cast. Today’s identity thieves are getting much more personal. Their approaches use more information specific to you, and target you more unobtrusively through new transmission methods.

Many recent online scams have played on the fact that we trust that the person on the other side if the connection is legit. As opposed to regular phishing attempts, where emails attempting to get personal information are typically distributed en masse, “spear phishing” is an attack aimed at specific targets.

“We’ve had a handful of [spear phishing] cases,” said Jay Foley Executive Director of the non-profit Identity Theft Resource Center in San Diego, CA. “One of the most interesting was a high tech company attack.”

In this particular spear phishing attack, said Foley, somewhere between 200 to 2,000 CEOs received an email claiming to be from the United States District Court in San Diego. The email said that the company was being subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury in San Diego in 48 hours and that more information was contained in an attachment.

Understandably, nobody thinks an urgent subpoena is a joke; ditching a grand jury subpoena could get you in serious legal trouble. So some of the CEOs did what was natural: they opened the attachment. But, as Foley explained, “You click on the attachment and it launches a Trojan horse application that sends out all sorts of information.”

Earlier this year, phishers spammed inboxes with messages claiming that there was a problem with the recipients’ iTunes™ account. A link in the email opened a fake iTunes billing update Web page, which asked for a Social Security number, credit card number with security code, and mother’s maiden name. The page was so poorly-designed that seeing it would’ve sent Apple™ CEO Steve “I Hate Buttons” Jobs into convulsions, but imagine an unsuspecting teenager getting the email and freaking out over losing his precious Radiohead tracks.

Similar attacks have been reported by job seekers excited by receiving targeted emails about opportunities for which they are especially well suited. The excitement turns to suspicion when the fictitious employer asks for unusual information, such as their cell phone carrier or social security number.

So who’s making the attacks, and where do they come from?

“We know two things about them,” said Foley. “First, they’re breathing. Second, they know how to use a computer.” Unfortunately, the anonymous nature of the attacks makes it difficult, if not impossible, to find out who is behind them. Remember, the new breed of scammer is not looking to get famous – they’re looking to get rich.

The Associated Press reported recently that 27-year-old Michael Tyrone Thomas was arrested in Texas for allegedly stealing a computer file with the names and Social Security numbers of 1,132 University of California, Irvine students. Thomas was working for an office that handled the health insurance policies for the university’s graduate students. According to police, Thomas then filed fake tax returns for 163 of the students.

Many of the scams originate from outside of the U.S., according to Foley, the majority of them from Nigeria, Romania, Indonesia, and Russia. While it may not be possible to know who carries out all of the attacks, Foley said that the scams themselves tend to have a few common characteristics.

First, there’s a sense of urgency. They say that “your account will be frozen in 24 hours,” or “unless you do this, the FDIC will freeze your bank account because of irregularities. You have until midnight to respond.”

Second, there’s a great motivation to respond, like keeping your bank account open, or being able to access your downloaded music. Or, in the case of subpoenaed CEOs, not going to prison for skipping out on a mandatory court appearance.

Third, and this is probably key in detecting scams, is that they don’t make a lot of sense. If anybody is going to receive a court summons, they’re going to be served in person, not by email. And places like your bank, Ebay™, or PayPal™ already have your credit card number, so they have no need to ask for it again. They also know your name, so no email from a legit online company will begin with “Dear Sir,” “Customer,” or any generic title.

Aside from defending yourself against these new approaches to glean your information, consider the new means of transmission available that may expose you to thieves.

Many cell and smart phones are now connected to the Internet and just as vulnerable as any computer. So, by extension, are their Bluetooth devices. Keeping personally vigilant while using these devices, including making sure security updates are current, is important. This is why Apple recently drew ire for lagging behind in providing security patches for over 13 documented vulnerabilities in the iPhone™, including code execution holes in Safari™, that left users improperly protected from malicious sites and malware.

Wireless transmission offers another increasing threat. If you’re using the free wi-fi service at the nearest greasy spoon, be wary of sending sensitive material. Thieves have been known to park their cars near free hot-spots, gleaning information.

Even RFID (the little chips embedded in modern credit cards) theft is on the rise as it becomes more common for payment cards and passports. Identity thieves can purchase small RFID receivers online, reprogram them using instructions downloaded from YouTube™, and steal information by getting within 10-50 cm of your wallet.

In this new and more social world of online interaction, where your life is online for all to see and new devices help you put yourself out there more conveniently than ever, it can be more difficult to tell the friends from the foes. Thieves are likely to either seem like they know you, or to never have any interaction with you at all, and more rarely fall somewhere in between. The best advice is to remember that, while it’s perfectly safe to share what you had for lunch with the world, there are still a few pieces of personal information best kept personal.

• There’s actually only ever been one fruitcake in the world
• I took a wrong turn at a pie
• You should see what they do to cranberries
• I see dead fruit
• What exactly AM I?
• Why do people treat candied fruits like hot potatoes?
• Flavor is overrated
• The idea of fresh fruit grosses me out
• Sure wish I was rum soaked right now
• I Am a Weapon of Mass Disgustion
• We’re like the SPAM of desserts
• Send me to someone you love like a distant cousin
• I am separated 6 degrees from Kevin Bacon
• I aspire to edibility
• Tough crowd
• Drink enough eggnog and I’ll taste fine
• Calling this a cake is like calling a brick a…cake
• I was born a sweet plum. Or was it a lugnut?
• Hey, you could have uglier doorstops.
• Wait, you’re not actually thinking of EATING this, are you?
• You’re probably not THAT hungry.
• I am truly the gift that keeps on giving.
• Mmmmmmystery food!
• If you had any kind of courage, you’d make fun of pumpkin pie.
• Fruitcake: neither fruit nor cake. Please explain.
• I wasn’t so much baked as just sort of left to solidify.
• Oh sure, pick on the fruitcake. REAL brave.
• This holiday season, give the gift that says “ha! gotcha!”
• No real fruit was harmed in the making of this cake.
• I’m too old for this
• Who you callin’ fruitcake?
• knock knock
• Friends, Countrymen, Candied Fruit.

Integrated: Re-birth Of A Buzzword

Don’t Hate This Word Because It’s Beautiful

By Josh Kelly, FINE Design Group

Unsupervised words decay over time. For instance, nobody’s been watching as the word “integrated” erodes into the verbiage equivalent of a once-great magician who now plays The Pocono’s and shills Prime Rib dinners. It makes shameless appearances as an agency cross-sales tool, validating the sorcery of coordinated marketing tactics that kinda sorta fit together somehow.

Let’s bring it back to its previous glory. Let’s do it such that, by the end of this article, it turns out thoughtful, strategic design services are very important. You will leave feeling your dollars are well spent in this department – perhaps you should even spend more. No slight of hand here; you get the agenda right up front.

I can be so overt because a long-forgotten, powerful premise supports me. Integrated marketing, and its corollary, integrated design, is based on an irrefutable truth that was perhaps never widely understood: integration refers to an effect, not a cause. Put simply, the audience does the integrating, and design helps them do it.

Whether you decide to proactively manage the process or not, your customers coalesce visual cues, experiences, impressions, and all sorts of information into a set of associations regarding your company and its products. The goal of building a brand is to effectively use these associations to secure a piece of your customers’ cranial real estate so that each time you talk to them you don’t have to say things like “Hi, my name is COMPANY, I sell PRODUCT, and there are lots of REASONS you should trust me more than COMPETITOR.”

Also, building a brand enables you to be wildly successful charging $5 for a cup of coffee.

Design is a principal tool in manifesting your brand’s core attributes and messages. It goes well beyond nice logos. The appearance of your website, packaging, advertising, retail locations, collateral, and any other contact points at your control all come together to create the visual point of reference to which your customers attach non-visual information. Design literally creates the focal point for integration.

Yet despite the military efficiency marketing lingo suggests (“targets”, “tactics”, “campaigns”), no company gets to fully dictate what happens in their customer’s minds. A well-conceived and, perhaps above all, consistent design approach is among the few variables a company can actually thoroughly control. Without this reliable air cover, the rest of the brand-building process is risky, dependent upon factors like the demeanor of front line employees, competitive product innovation, even the price of raw materials.

Sometimes it’s instructive to imagine that every contact you have with all your customers takes place through one guy, a salesman named Joe. This would significantly reduce the complexity involved with managing customer impressions. But the pressure on Joe would be tremendous. He could do everything right, but if he shows up for meetings with Fortune 500 companies sporting a mullet haircut and overalls, then scribbles his phone number on squares of toilet paper as a leave-behind, well, your company may not get the business. Don’t let the complexity of managing many more variables than just Joe dissuade you from providing customers strong, unified, visual evidence.

At best, failure to create and apply appropriate design standards through all contact opportunities means a failure to establish a common visual platform for customer relationships. At worst, it fosters a negative context. The important thing to understand is that failing to decide is a decision in itself. Either you (or your designated agency) must step in and manage design proactively, or your customers will do it for you. And they probably don’t care about your company or its products as much as you do.

It’s okay to value some marketing expense based on click-throughs or calls to your 1-800 number. But if you’re not simultaneously valuing the contribution to brand equity, building an asset that pays dividends when the phone stops ringing, you are wasting dollars. Reinventing your look and feel with every package, site, or print ad you do, for instance, is a good way to shift your company toward a purely infomercial model. Your product development roadmap should perhaps re-focus on handy kitchen gizmos, portable exercise devices, and no money down real estate courses. You’d still need strong design, but it would only require a 30-minute shelf life.

So we can rescue this downtrodden word from its near-death state and apply it to the important work of using design to manage touch points that impact customer’s integration process. Or, we can make up fancy new terminology (“unified design theory”, or “symbiotic perceptual amalgams” have a certain drama, but I vote for something timeless like “smart and consistent design”). Either way, the choice is between a conscious decision with potential long-term benefits or the idle hope that your outreach might result in more than just another contribution to ambient noise.

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Josh Kelly is a Principal at FINE Design Group, a design and communications firm with offices in San Francisco and Portland. FINE combines technology and strategy capabilities with traditional design expertise to help clients differentiate and dramatize their brands through web, print, and corporate identity projects.

Weaving. Like Integrated Marketing, Except with Straw.