Author: Andrea Monti

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When Security Becomes Service Disruption: the Banca Popolare di Bari Case

The message reads: For security reasons, this ATM doesn’t provide cash between Friday, 16,30 and Monday, 09,00. We are sorry for the inconvenience.

This way of looking at IT Security reminds me of those Security “Managers” who were use to advise to unplug the Ethernet cable at the daily close of business, to put it back the very next day.

Security can’t be a way to make the customers’ life more miserable. The challenge of a Security Manager is exactly the opposite: let customers doing their business while keeping the environment safe.

 

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Does Your Privacy Actually Matters To You?

An article published by the New York Times addresses the possible outcomes of the announced changes in the US privacy legislation that allows a free sales of people’s Internet “life”, and advise to use TOR, VPN or similar tools to “protect the right to privacy”.

I actually think that the best privacy protection tool is to comply to what the latin poet Orazio said: Nescit vox missa reverti (Once you said something, it is useless to say “I didn’t want…”) Or, to put it short, “what you want to keep secret, don’t tell Google” 🙂

Kidding apart I think that the privacy hysteria led us much beyond any logic thinking.

Like a Pavlovian reflex, as soon as something is announced that might slightly interact with us, a rant shouts out: hey! This infringes my privacy!

Sure, Google and companies are snooping into our private lives, but it is every single of us that allow for that. Google (Facebook & C) are companies that seek for profit, and since there is no free lunch, somebody has to pay the bill (in terms of personal data.)

I don’t like this status quo but I have to face actuality: if we care about our privacy, we should start using these tools in a more aware way, by selecting what we want to share. We can’t throw our life into the wild and then complain that somebody else took it away.

So, privacy protection starts from ourselves.

Do we have a right not to be “blamed” for some specific interest or personal inclination (as soon as it isn’t criminal?) Absolutely. But the Internet it is not the only place where we can cultivate our personal interest. It is an oxymoron to call for privacy protection when we are withdrawing this right in the very moment we hit “search” on Google. I may dare to say that on the Internet, as in public spaces, there is no “reasonable privacy expectation”.

What scares me more is the State surveillance because in this case I have neither a technical nor a legal protection to enforce. I can avoid to give Facebook some information, and I don’t care if Amazon gives somebody else my shopping history (dind’t buy bombs or mass-murder weapons to be shipped to Middle East) but I can’t stop a spook to dig into my life.

So, “shouting fire” every time something goes remotely “personal” is the best way to pollute the notion and the value of privacy.

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How (not) to Do Permission Marketing

A few days ago I’ve got an email written in a friendly tone, where a company providing education services tried to sell me a seminar on Sport Law.

Ususally, I don’t answer SPAM, but this time I’ve decided to run an experiment. So I wrote back saying:

Dear Sir,
If you want to use direct marketing techniques to advertise your business, you’d better be more careful.
To offer a Sport Law seminar to a Sport Law professor shows that you use a mailing-list without actually knowing who your targets are.
The outcome is that an action that borns as “direct” marketing, dies as SPAM

I didn’t get an answer to my reply, thus confirming my initial suspect and giving me the chance to do a broader musing about the Direct Marketing idea.

To go? for a friendly and personal style at the first contact implies that, first, a follow up should be taken into account by the sender and, second, the “personal” tone should be maintained. By doing so, the? recipient get the feeling that the company actually wants to deliver a tailored service.

On the contrary, “playing friend” without keeping the promise produces the opposite effect: the sender, the product and the company are labelled as entities with no actual interest in building a personal rapport with the perspective customer.

Thus, if a company doesn’t give its targets the attention required by Permission Marketing techniques, it shouldn’t pursue this option, because – as in this case – such kind of companies would be immediately equaled to sellers of (various colours)pills, hair fertilizer, and miraculous investments. That, at least, don’t try to lure us into believing that they actually care about us.

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“Blame the algorithm”: the new mantra of social irresponsibility


Computer says no! is the mantra that one of Little Britain’s most famous characters, Carol Beer, the artificially-intelligent banker repeats every time a customer asks her an out-of-the-ordinary question.

Those who – like me – are old enough, have lost count of how many times a clerk working for a public or private entity answered alike – in terms and tones – Carol Beer. Computer says no, it is computer’s fault; the computer does not allow this task to be performed… these reactions are but a way to partake the  software designers (and their masters) from the liability of having built a crappy software. A machine that in its stupid rigidity would not allow doing what the user is asking—an extremely convenient way to ensure that nobody pays for the inefficiencies, delays and follies of bureaucracy. Continue reading ““Blame the algorithm”: the new mantra of social irresponsibility”