Online banking scams increase

Online banking scams jumped 44% to £33.5m in 2006 according to an article in the Financial Time today, mainly down to phishing incidents even though frauds in total reduced by 3%.

Our friends, Fairwinds Partners recently wrote a article on phishing which is very interesting.

Court throws out blogger’s appeal

Following on from the Court in Turkey shutting down YouTube a Court in Cairo has thrown out an appeal by a blogger convicted of insulting both Islam and President Mubarak of Egypt, returning Abdel Karim Suleiman to complete a four year prison sentence.

I’m really not sure what this says about the Internet or the Digital World generally but it shows legal systems are still trying to understand the internet and bloggers can’t say what they wish and hide online, in certain countries.

Salesforce Unexpected Shutdown

Last week Salesforce.com the Software as a Service (SaaS, previously known as Application Service Provider) shut down a partner site for some planned maintenance. The problem with this seems to be that Salesforce.com think they informed their partners of this, while their partners think they did not!

While this raises the obvious questions of communication and making sure you tell everyone, or at least your partners (they are your customers after all), what is going on, it also raises a very serious issue for the partners.

This issue is very simply, if you put critical applications in the hands of third parties you have to ensure the service you receive is very clearly defined in a Service Level Agreement (SLA) and known to everyone involved in the process. While everyone will make a mistake and every application system will have a glitch at some point, it is how you manage this that counts. It’s also prudent to make sure you have a back up plan.

This back up plan should be proportionate to the risk involved: if you risk losing everything then it’s worth investing in a serious back up plan or a full business continuity plan, if it’s just some data that you already have on an alternative system, then you are probably fine.

It’s good to learn from other people’s mistakes so that we don’t make the same mistakes!

YouTube access banned in Turkey

Access to the video-sharing website YouTube was suspended yesterday in Turkey.

A Court ban was imposed after hearing that clips dubbed former Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and Turks as homosexuals had appeared on the site. Apparently insulting Ataturk, the founding father of modern Turkey, or “Turkishness” is an offence which can result in a prison sentence.

While this opens a number of issues over freedom of speech it also demonstrates the futility of such action and the power of the internet.

The internet is an immensely powerful channel for marketers and brands but it knows no boundaries, so although YouTube cannot be accessed in Turkey it can still be accessed by the rest of the world, at least until YouTube removes the offending video.

Looking at this in reverse the take away is that, while previously local marketers could do their own thing in the confidence that it would only have an effect in that market, this not true of the internet. Something done in “isolation” by a marketer in one country has an effect, good or bad, on the rest of the company or brand, intentionally or not!