Everyone knows that financial institutions are behind the times with technology and are way too paranoid to participate in social media. But it seems like they aren't paying enough attention to social media and the trend to publish more and more information publicly that use to be private.
If you're friends with someone on Facebook and LinkedIn and troll through their Twitter and Flickr feeds, you'll find that you can answer most of the typical "security questions" for financial institutions. They picked obscure questions such as, "What was the name of your first pet?" and "What street did you live on in your first house?" thinking that they would be difficult for someone other than you to figure out. But these days most of the questions are pretty easy to figure out for a social media sleuth.
This problem is just going to get bigger and bigger. With hundreds of millions of people using social networking it is clear that its not just a fad. The generation of tomorrow will grow up without many of inhibitions that we have about sharing information about ourselves publicly. Today your photos, your day to day activities and your relationships with others are available to the world through Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter. The trend is to share more not less, so what else will be shared tomorrow?
I think this is a real concern! This is ripe for abuse and needs to be addressed proactively by financial institutions before clever social media criminals expose this common vulnerability for rampant identity theft.
So what can you do to protect yourself? Lie. Come up with alternate answers to the common security questions such as "what is your home town?" and always use the fake answer that only you know (after all, you've always wanted to be from the Bronx, haven't you?). That way even your mom can't figure out your security questions.
Jason, an entrepreneur, takes a very introspective view of how he wants to respond to adversity and who he wants to be as a person. He says the three main causes of startup failure are poor execution, a poor idea or external factors (in this case the market) and advises startups to focus on execution and make the most of the down time by being lean and acquiring good talent.
Fred Wilson, a venture capitalist, explains the view of a well-funded company with cash reserves of its own and experienced investors with deep pockets to draw on in tight times. He points out that companies who are not profitable or growing could have trouble, but that companies that are doing well shouldn't have trouble because VC's have deep pockets and will invest more capital to help weather the storm.
Ron Conway, a prolific angel investor, looked from the perspective of entrepreneurs about to take the plunge and raise angel money. He cautioned them not to quit their day jobs until they have secured funding for at least one full year of operating capital. 
Every year, SXSW puts up all of the great panel submissions and lets the community vote on which ones are best. They combine this data with their own advisory panel and staff to select the final panels.
Did you ever notice that people on cell phones talk really loud but people on landlines often whisper into the phone? I've heard that the reason is 
Everyone seems to agree that email is great. There are many types of communication that I prefer to receive via email over other channels such as postal mail, the telephone, fax, carrier pigeon, etc. I love how at the Apple retail stores they will email my receipt to me instead of printing it out (save a tree!). I get much less postal mail now that all of my financial institutions and utilities have "paperless billing" options that send monthly statements by email. Judging by the popularity of these services, I'm not the only one who feels this way. 
Recent Comments