Security | Internet Marketing Blog

Hack attack: how to protect and prepare your company

Another day, another hack.

From Sony to the IMF, the internet is starting to resemble the wild wild west as hackers assault high-profile companies and organizations.

by Patricio Robles 15 June 2011 15:41pm 1 comment

Why misleading your customers is a bad strategy

Cloud file storage and syncing service Dropbox is arguably one of the hottest startups in Silicon Valley. It recently hit two big milestones: 25m users, and 200m files saved each day, and appears to have a very bright future.

But it also has a bit of explaining to do following a change to its Terms of Service.

by Patricio Robles 21 April 2011 17:42pm 5 comments

How to do e-commerce right

With online sales predicted to top £11bn this Christmas, it's incredible how many retailers still offer websites that are mere online catalogues and don’t allow you to shop.

In fact, even some high street chains are only now taking their first steps in e-commerce.

by Kevin Gibbons 16 December 2010 10:20am 6 comments

Five lessons from the Gawker, McDonald's data breaches

What does online gossip rag Gawker have in common with fast food restaurant chain McDonald's? In the past several days, both have fallen victim to hackers who gained access to user databases.

The Gawker hack, in particular, has garnered a lot of attention because the hackers seem most interested in humiliating the popular blog. They have released the emails and passwords of more than 1m of Gakwer's registered users.

by Patricio Robles 14 December 2010 14:13pm 1 comment

Marketers are downloading data on 100 million Facebook users

Facebook's privacy woes continue. This week a man harvested and published the profile details of 100 million Facebook users. If that weren't bad enough, he then made the file available for free download. You'd think that a lot of companies would be interested in acquiring such data. And you'd be right.

But this is less a case of nefarious marketing tricks than a factor of Facebook's privacy settings. And things are only going to get worse as Facebook grows.

by Meghan Keane 30 July 2010 18:25pm 22 comments

Is Norton SafeWeb a danger to etailers?

Online florist Arena Flowers recently fell foul of Norton, with its SafeWeb product flagging its website as unsafe for users due to an issue with the site's WordPress blog.

The problem was fixed promptly by Arena Flowers, but the process of contacting Norton and getting the warnings removed was far from perfect, and could have had a serious effect its sales and reputation.

by Graham Charlton 16 July 2010 10:47am 8 comments

Five reasons not to like Facebook's 'Like' button

If the numbers are any indication, publishers really like Facebook's new Like button. But should they?

For obvious reasons, Facebook is attractive to publishers, and it wants to keep it that way. It provides publishers with plenty of tools that they can use to bring Facebook-driven experiences to their websites. The Like button is one of the newest offerings for publishers but there are several reasons publishers may want to think twice about putting it on their pages.

by Patricio Robles 03 June 2010 08:59am 7 comments

Privacy, security and the social web

Two words are increasingly surfacing in discussions of an internet that becomes more and more social each day: 'privacy' and 'security'. The reason: the social web seems to be increasingly eroding personal privacy and introducing new online security concerns.

Many groups believe that something needs to be done, and it appears that governments are starting to eye action of their own. But is it too late?

by Patricio Robles 07 May 2010 09:01am 2 comments

The Blippy breach: implications for commerce

Last week, Blippy, a Twitter for purchases, created quite a stir when it was revealed that the company had exposed the credit card numbers of several users.

The company's co-founder, Philip Kaplan, sought to downplay the severity of the mistake but as more and more individuals cozy up to the growing number of services that encourage 'oversharing' of financial-related information online, a number of parties involved with commerce will be affected.

by Patricio Robles 26 April 2010 09:00am 2 comments

Is the Chatroulette fun about to come to an end?

Chances are you've heard of Chatroulette, the clever website that pairs users up for random video web chats. It's one of the hottest websites on the internet right now.

It reportedly receives upwards of 500,000 visits each day and its creator, Andrey Ternovskiy, a 17-year-old high school student in Moscow, is now being courted by some of the world's most recognizable technology investors, including Russia's DST, which owns stakes in hot American social networking companies like Facebook and Zynga.