For Christmas, I’d like to send something warm and fuzzy to my existing and prospective clients, something that reminds them of me and elicits positive emotions. It should be unique, risqué; pricier than a mouse pad but cheaper than a bottle of Penfolds Grange – I know! I’ll get them a kitten!

Silly, isn’t it? Considering sending a tiny, little, cute, fluffy kitten to someone who probably isn’t interested in taking on the responsibility of a new pet. Even sillier would be to package the kitten up in a tough bag and pop him in the post. It sounds farcical, doesn’t it? But replace a kitten with a goldfish and, suddenly, it all becomes just an oversight, an error of judgement.

From advertising blog, Mumbrella, reported on December 6:

“The CEO of the body tasked with promoting Adelaide and South Australia has apologised after a marketing stunt resulted in dead goldfish ending up at media agencies around the country… The goldfish were sent out by Advantage SA and co-brand Advantage Adelaide to media agencies across the country. The message was: “Be the big fish in a small pond and come test the water.” A number of the fish were dead by the time people took delivery.”

These promotional items, ahem, fish, probably died of shock or searing water temperatures en route to their destinations, but the people responsible for this negligence have suffered no consequences (aside from some very unfavourable PR).

This story got me thinking – okay, seething first, then thinking – at what point and for what reasons do we deem a life worthy of protecting? And why is it allowable to bulk-buy animals for promotional activities?

According to the RSPCA, there is mounting scientific evidence to suggest that fish are ‘sentient animals capable of experiencing pain and suffering’, but it would appear that the suffering of a vertebrate is subordinate to that of a mammal – go figure.

So, what’s the moral of this story? Well, it’s simple really:

Pets are not promo items.

Nor are they:

Unsolicited Christmas presents; birthday presents; make-up gifts; break-up gifts; anniversary gifts; wedding centerpieces; handbag stuffers or toys for the kids.

This Christmas, please give the gift of compassion to our animal friends. Give them a voice, support the fight for their rights, lobby for their protection and, most of all, love the ones who are in your care to bits.

To join the chorus of people against animal cruelty or to donate much-needed funds to support the fight for animal rights, please join the Animals Australia Action Network: http://animalsaustralia.org/action/

As a society, we are doggedly pre-occupied with the notion of privacy and the perceived threat the Internet poses to it. We are obsessed with making sure our information is safe; guarded about what we’ll share; suspicious of how much information an organisation like Google can collect about us. It seems to me that the hysteria around the issue is much greater than the threat it poses.

When we set-up Facebook pages, contribute to the Google cloud, upload video to YouTube, register for Twitter accounts, blog, add our CVs to LinkedIn and publish our photos, we re-write the rules on our privacy.  

Whether you lock down your information or not, other people are talking about you; publishing photos that you’re in; quoting your work… It’s life - happening 24/7, online. We need to treat our personal profile as many brands now treat theirs and accept the fact that we are no longer in charge of our profile, we can only manage it. Good or bad, that's the reality.  

I understand concerns about security, but this is a distinctly different issue to that of privacy. Society-at-large needs to take the risks of disclosing financial information, their physical address etc. very seriously and educate themselves on what to look for to make a credibility assessment of the sites they're visiting. But, I mean, the uproar over ownership of Facebook photos, and data being provided to advertisers. What’s the big deal? Isn’t it better to be served relevant advertising than a slew of ads for penile augmentations? At least Facebook is transparent about the information it shares. If users don't want that information to be shared, don't contribute to the network. Facebook is not a public service; it's a corporate entity!

I find the panic around the information Google collects just as perplexing. We have flocked to Google in droves to use the tools they have created which afford us unprecedented efficiency and collaborative benefits. These tools require information (search, gmail, documents...) and now we're overwhelmingly preoccupied with the ramifications of providing so much information to one organisation. Let's look at the worst-case and unlikely scenario for us as individual users if all the information we contribute to the Google cloud actually becomes compromised. Your emails, all your search terms, your documents... all of it, exposed. You're also photographed on street view to add insult to injury and they hand it over to the FBI! It sounds like the plot of a Hollywood film. Particularly in light of the fact that all information is made anonymous after 9 months and logs of search engine cookies after 18 months.

I find it slightly narcassistic that we have such an inflated sense of self that we believe anyone would seriously care about the details of our personal life. And if there's something you are terrified of disclosing it, I agree with Google CEO Eric Schmidt, 

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."

There is a strong exception to this rule though and that is in relation to cyber bullying. The fate of 18 year-old Tyler Clementi, who committed suicide early this month because his roommates posted a secretly taped sex video of him on YouTube that outed him as gay, is still playing on my mind. Cyber-bullying is one of the most serious and insidious issues we face as a society as we move in to our online future. The only way we can prevent this kind of issue from occurring is by ensuring that invading another person's privacy and bullying them online is dealt with even more harshly than it is offline due to the viral nature of the medium.

But, overall, I can’t help but ask: What’s the big secret? Will someone please let me in on it?

Does anyone else think it’s high time we re-defined the term ‘privacy’?

SIXT Car Rental put in five Wi-Fi networks at Hamburg airport to priomote their car rental specials. They made headlines from the Wi-Fi network names like 'Stop Surfing. Start Driving! The SIXT airport special: A BMW 3-Series from 159 Euros!'; then, when the user clicks on the network, a special SIXT microsite pops up promoting the offer and displaying an airport location plan that shows the user exactly where SIXT is in relation to their current position.

This idea is inspired! A simple and affordable way of communicating a marketing message using guerilla marketing. It was also brilliantly targeted. Their target audience is professionals and they are the people most likely to be accessing Wi-Fi netowrks at the airport.

2 - 3 October 2010, various venues

GEOFFREY ROBERTSON / ALAN DERSHOWITZ  / TARIQ ALI / ERIC KAUFMANN  
LENORE SKENAZY / P.W. SINGER / WALEED ALY / STEVE BIDDULPH
CORDELIA FINE / CLIVE HAMILTON / LINDY HUME / REBECCA HUNTLEY  
JOHN KEANE / HUGH MACKAY / DAVID MARR / ROSS GITTINS
ANDREW LEIGH  ANNE MANNE / PAUL MCGEOUGH / JOHN QUIGGIN / MARCUS WESTBURY

Sydney Opera House today announced the return of Festival of Dangerous Ideas, set to take place over the long weekend from 2 - 3 October, 2010.

In its second year, Festival of Dangerous Ideas 2010 aims to once again stimulate conversation, provoke debate, excite and (hopefully) enrage audiences, covering some of the unspoken, unmentionable and invariably thorny issues of the modern world.  

From a debate between two of the world’s most extraordinary legal minds, Geoffrey Robertson and Alan Dershowitz on the scandal of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, to an argument for a “free-range kids” movement, the Festival of Dangerous Ideas will cover the big issues alongside the things that matter in everyday life.

Over two days, a host of speakers – from thought-leaders to the stirrers, academics to bloggers - will present their original arguments on such dangerous topics as: Why the Religious Will Inherit the Earth, What We Can Learn from Terrorists, why We Are All Climate Change Deniers, that The Pursuit of Happiness is Making Us Miserable  and Australian Husbands are the Worst in the World and Why it is Women’s Fault.

In association with the St James Ethics Centre, Sydney Opera House has invited some of today’s most relevant thinkers to share their views including international guests; Geoffrey Robertson, Alan Dershowitz, New York columnist, Lenore Skenazy, author of Wired for War P.W. Singer,  British-Pakistani writer-filmmaker, Tariq Ali, author of Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth, Eric Kaufmann and creator of the blog Stuff White People Like, Christian Lander alongside Australians; Paul McGeough, John Keane, Clive Hamilton, Steve Biddulph, Cordelia Fine, Marcus Westbury, Andrew Leigh, Rebecca Huntley, Hugh Mackay, Anne Manne, John Quiggin, David Marr, Lindy Hume, Ross Gittins, Waleed Aly and more.  

Tix here: http://bit.ly/bPBMLi

How many times a day do you wonder if you've spelled that word correctly, or formed that sentence in the right way.... Proof readers cost a fortune, so most of us just wing it. That's why this new site is so exciting (particularly for boring wordy nerds like me!)

Grammarly (www.grammarly.com) is being touted as 'the world's most accurate grammar checker'.

 

Love it!

The next three weeks cannot go by quickly enough. The attempts by Abbott to discredit Gillard are as grating as her patronising, monotone voice.

Where is the choice? Where is the voice of my generation (the oft-maligned Gen Y)?

I don't speak for all of us, I know, but from my experience, we are comfortable with diversity, we don't care who marries who and we are really, really frightened about the planet our kids will inherit if we don't pull our socks up and work out a plan to stall the earth's carbon-fueled thermostat.

So who is representing us?

Sure, our population is aging, but our vote must mean something. With all the deficit-reducing schemes that are being announced day after day, I just can't escape the feeling that the most serious cut-back that's arisen during this election has been our right to choose.

(Oh, and our right to watch the news without being subjected to 30 minutes of the beige brigade crashing classrooms and plaguing the nation's shoppers).

Is it just me, or do you feel like you're outside the 'target market' for this election campaign too?

Email scams are getting more and more sophisticated all the time. Here’s a bit of a refresher on what to look out for to ensure you don’t get caught by a phisherman.

I just received this email:

I am Mrs Irina Gutavo a Cancer patient, i was informed by my doctor that i have a few weeks to live, I hereby give to you my £20 Million Pounds to set up a Charity Organization to help people that are in needs.

Please respond for further instructions.

Sincerely.
Mrs Irina Gutavo.

Admittedly, I receive these kinds of emails all the time, but this time I got to wondering…. ‘Do people really fall for this stuff?’. I mean, they must if I keep receiving email after email after email telling me that I have inherited vast wads of cash and that I’ve been carefully selected to take up the most lucrative investment opportunity of all time.

Then I remembered… I was nearly caught out once. I had advertised my car on carsguide.com.au and got a bite from a prospective buyer who seemed legit. We traded emails (his was a Hotmail account) and we got to the point where the deal seemed signed and sealed. As what seemed like a bit of an afterthought, the buyer contacted me to ask  if I could arrange a transfer of $400 through Western Union to pay a representative to pick up the car as the buyer said he was overseas and the person he has initially arranged to pick it up was unavailable – okay, fair enough. In the interim, he sent me details of his payment through Paypal and asked if I could wire the $400 to the representative before his money hit my account. It was at this stage that I (thankfully) spotted the scam. The Paypal remittance looked authentic but was sent from an odd-looking email address, so I looked up ‘carsguide scam’ and found that I was one of countless people who had been (or nearly been) swindled.

Cyberthieves are getting more and more sophisticated all the time and it can be difficult to spot the scams, so here’s a bit of info to help you identify the most common scams and assess whether or not an email is dodgy.

Common scams (according to The Australian Communications and Media Authority)

Common scams to beware of and avoid include:

1. ‘Nigerian’ scams – which appear to come from overseas and ask you to send money in return for a large lump sum being transferred to your bank account
2. ‘pump ‘n’ dump’ stock scams – which are sent as spam emails claiming to be from a successful investor who has made huge profits investing in a particular stock, and needs to offload some of it
3. ‘internet dumping’ – where some ‘free’ adult sites download automatic internet diallers that clock up a huge phone bill without your knowledge
4. work-at-home schemes, lottery wins and prizes that require you to send money before claiming them
5. pharmaceutical scams – offering ‘amazing’ products that claim to boost your health, appearance or virility.
6. phishing emails that are sent from falsified or ’spoofed’ email addresses. Many phishing emails often claim to be from a bank, online retailer or credit card company. These emails direct recipients to a website that looks like the real website of a retailer or financial institution, which is designed to encourage the visitor to reveal financial details such as credit card numbers, account names and passwords or other personal information.

How to assess if you’re the recipient of a dodgy email:

1. If the email is from a ‘free’ email account (hotmail.com, live.com, yahoo.com) treat it with suspicion. In the example I opened the article with, the name given was Lady Irina Gutavo, but the email given was gutavodynasty@live.ru (Windows Live, Russia). In fact, the sender’s email address is usually the first sign that somethings not quite right. If an organisation is emailing you, be mindful that legitimate institutions that send out emails to their customers generally send them from an email address that’s associated with their website.
2. Be wary of an email that tells you to forward the correspondence to everyone in your address book.
3. Look for a name and contact details. Is there  a phone number for someone you can reach out to to discuss whatever the email is offering you?
4. Is the sender SCREAMING AT YOU or adding lots of exclamation points!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!? If so, it could be very well be dodgy as legitimate businesses don’t tend to communicate this way.
5. Is the email more persuasive than informative?
6. Is it offering something that’s too good to be true?
7. Is there a sense or urgency or high priority to the email, i.e. limited offer, important information, act now, get rich quick or was it sent as ‘High Importance’?
8. Is there an offer of free money in exchange for personal information? – If so, you’re likely to have a scam on your hands.
9. Hover over any links that are provided – does the URL matches what’s displayed in the email? If not, it may be a case of link manipulation, a tactic used by phishers to create bogus (and often very convincing) sites for the purposes of stealing your personal information.

A few more useful tips:

1. Ensure you don’t fall prey to a phishing scam by checking off the list of tell tale scam signs above before you click any links!
2. Virtually any email chain letter you receive (i.e., any message forwarded multiple times before it got to you) is more likely to be false than true. You should automatically be skeptical of chain letters.
3. Do a search to see if the organisation they are purporting to be from exists and if the claims they’re making are factual.
4. Hoaxers usually try every means available to make their lies believable — e.g., mimicking a journalistic style, attributing the text to a ‘legitimate’ source, or implying that powerful corporate or government interests have tried to keep the information from you.

Take that, Mrs Irina Gutavo! (unless, of course, you really do have 20million pounds to give me…)

Sarah

DANCE OFF!