3 Common Facebook Myths -- Debunked

Every now and then, you may notice that a Facebook friend's status updates have turned ominous. The messages instruct you to copy and paste a certain phrase into a post on your own wall or risk that your content may be hijacked by Facebook. Here are three recent myths that, with the help of Snopes.com, have been proven false.
1. Facebook Privacy Notice
Variations of this one seem to crop up every few months, and many intelligent people fall for it. It says something like: "As of [date] at [time a.m./p.m., time zone], I do not give Facebook or any associated entities permission to use my pictures, information or posts, both past and future. By this statement, I give notice to Facebook it is forbidden to disclose, copy, distribute or take any other action against me… The content of this profile is private and confidential information. The violation of privacy can be punished by law. All members must post a note like this. If you do not publish a statement at least once it will be tactically allowing the use of your photos, as well as the information contained in the profile status updates."
According to Snopes, this myth has made the rounds online for more than a year. While it's true that anything you post online may live on forever, Facebook does not own your content. Your use of Facebook does, however, give Facebook a non-exclusive, royalty-free license to use any content you post that's covered by intellectual property rights (such as photos or video) without having to pay you for it. You may limit these rights by controlling the privacy and app settings on your account (check out Facbook's legal terms here.)

Facebook's terms of service are essentially a "take it or leave it" contract – you either accept the terms or don't create an account. In other words, you can't singlehandedly modify the terms of a contract by simply posting a statement without the other party's consent.
So although this one's a myth, it's not a bad idea to review the terms of service and privacy policies that govern your use of social media platforms (and adjust your privacy settings), which can change at any time.
2. Your private posts will show up in public search.
This myth feeds on peoples' fear that their private information is being blasted across the internet and is visible to strangers, and crops up when Facebook unveils changes to the site. It looks like this: Users are encouraged to take action on their friends' individual profiles or risk deletion for posting private information. This is false. Facebook provides tips for those who wish to control who sees their profile via their privacy settings, and suggests reviewing and/or removing tags for photos in which you appear that others may have uploaded.
3. Giraffe photo virus.
You may have noticed your friends’ profile pictures replaced by photos of cute giraffes recently. Initially, the ruse was circulated as a riddle and, if the person didn't guess correctly, they were supposed to replace their photo with a picture of a giraffe. Then, word spread that the giraffe photos were infected with a virus that would enable hackers to control your computer or damage your smart phone. Snopes.com and other urban myth-busters put that rumor to rest quickly, noting the hoax was based on a 2004 warning about JPEG images linked to a malicious code, which was fixed by Microsoft nine years ago.

How to Ensure Your Technology is Secure, Stable and Scalable

Your business operates in the digital economy where success is predicated on your ability to compete in a high-velocity environment. Selecting, deploying and maintaining the right technology platforms will determine whether your business will thrive.
There are four primary areas you should focus on to maintain the efficacy of your technology foundation:
1. Security
Data is at the core of every business and your inability to protect it will be the end of your business. Outside of more regulated industries like finance and healthcare, security is unfortunately not one of the top priorities. For a company that operates on tight margins, investing in security is seen as non-revenue generating, serving merely as a risk-mitigating insurance policy.
Would you be able to convince your CEO to invest $100,000 to prevent the 10 percent likelihood of a cyberattack resulting in $1 million in damages? Or, is it easier to make the argument for a $100,000 investment which has a 75 percent chance of generating $150,000 in revenue? Flipped around, the former has a 90 percent chance of throwing $100,000 down the tubes, and the latter has a 25 percent chance.
The problem with applying an expected value analysis to security is that there are too many qualitative variables required in the assessment. What you should acknowledge on is that a security incident is a low-probability, but high-cost event. And it’s possible for that cost to be catastrophically high. Can you really quantify the cost of exposing all of your customer data?
2. Stability
If your technology doesn’t work when you need it most, what good is it? When a new customer tries to buy something from your website and it doesn’t work, it’s very likely that you’ve lost him forever. The most timely and unfortunate example is HealthCare.gov.
The digital centerpiece of the Affordable Care Act is supposed to permit Americans to sign up for health insurance online. The problem with the website is that, since it launched, it has intermittently not worked for users, displaying a multitude of cryptic errors or transferring invalid information to healthcare providers.
The lesson here is that the consumer has very little patience for a lousy online experience. In our digital economy, we have come to expect websites to work with the certainty of flipping a light switch or starting a car. When Gmail goes down for several minutes, there is a collective aneurysm on Twitter. A population that reacts like this is not going to tolerate substandard technology, so you better make sure your digital infrastructure works all the time.

3. Scalability
Your business objective should be growth and the digital infrastructure supporting your operations must be able to scale and accommodate the resulting increase in demand. If you have an infrastructure that is based on physical servers, you’ll need to be extremely accurate with your load estimates. In this situation, it’s better to overestimate the potential impact of increased business, than to underestimate. In the digital world, when you find yourself faced with the latter, you have no recourse in the midst of a traffic surge.
Imagine a three-lane highway that has three cars driving down it. Once you add a fourth vehicle to the mix, you start seeing congestion. At the end of a football game, ten thousand cars get added to the highway, and the result is a major traffic jam. Physical servers are fixed assets like highway lanes, which function perfectly under normal conditions, but are unable to expand and meet high demand.
4. Sustainability
Your ability to ensure security, stability and scalability at a single point in time is critical, but it’s more important to be able to sustain this over the long-term. The apropos and often overused analogy here would be that it’s a marathon, not a sprint, because you need to serve your customers today, tomorrow and in the future.
The digital business environment is fluid and dynamic, with regular traffic peaks and valleys. The nature of viral content is that it is unpredictable. Like a tsunami, it’s difficult to spot until it’s too late to respond -- when it’s about to break on your shores. Handling the scale of a massive traffic spike and sustaining that over a period of time is how you can take your company to the next level. That surge is likely exposing your brand to a massive new consumer base.
Digital infrastructure is the foundation on top of which many of you will build successful businesses. The potential for, and magnitude of your success is contingent upon the quality of this foundation. It has to be secure to protect your critical assets and data. It has to be stable and provide expected functionality for your customers. It has to be scalable to respond to the increasing demands of your success. And, it must sustain these traits over extended periods of time.
As an entrepreneur, your business should succeed or fail based on the merits of your ideas, not the technology used to support your operations. Your digital infrastructure should be secure, stable, scalable and sustainable, allowing you to focus on your core business.

Tech Trend for 2014: The Risk in BYOD Offices

Tech,

It's enough to make a company lose its app-etite. From January to July of this year, 718,000 malicious and high-risk apps were distributed on the Android mobile platform alone, according to JD Sherry, vice president of technology and solutions at computing security firm Trend Micro in Irving, Texas. That's more than double the number of Android-based malware apps discovered in all of 2012.
This is the new open-door reality that gives nightmares to IT chiefs--and it's only getting worse. Already, more than half of the U.S. adult population connects to the internet through a smartphone or tablet, and 60 percent of businesses allow employees to access company networks via their personal devices under a strategy known as Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). Why? The efficiencies offered by a mobile work force are too great to pass up, and moving the cost of access to the employees is too juicy a cost savings to ignore.
Android apps accounted for 79 percent of all smartphone malware last year, according to security firm F-Secure. But Apple's iOS isn't entirely in the clear. While Apple doesn't release malware figures, Sherry points to 2012 reports that a handful of products that had made it through the App Store approval process turned out to be carrying nefarious software.
The potential for damage this brings to a business with a BYOD policy is something Rizwan Hussain knows all too well. As vice president of sales at AllRounds, a Bay Area startup that provides private capital analytics and automation, Hussain managed a team of reps who were constantly on the go. In order for his employees to hit their sales targets, they needed constant access to the AllRounds IT infrastructure, which allowed them to do everything from e-mailing prospects to issuing contracts.
"The problem I have with BYOD is security," Hussain says. "Most personal devices have a range of user-installed apps. How am I supposed to know if any of them are malicious and can hurt my network? Then there's the whole storage issue. Where exactly is our company's data being stored when some-one uses their own device, and what about the security risks if someone loses their phone or it's stolen?"
Forward-looking IT pros are in the process of mapping out a new set of rules for BYOD. This can start with implementing a companywide policy that addresses acceptable and unacceptable device use and provides details of excluded apps, data ownership and scheduled IT access to the device for updates. Those same pros are also pushing for encryption of all files stored on or accessed by a personal device, either through the phone's encryption program or through a third-party app such as TextSecure or RedPhone. Another option is to mandate that employees use a tool like Divide, which creates a fully functioning workspace within the device that provides government-grade security and protection for the business.
Defensive maneuvers aside, Sherry warns that the big question with BYOD is not if your employees' phones will be infected but when.

5 Ways Tech Is Stopping Theft

Even if you have the most brilliant social media strategy and are constantly bringing new faces through the door, it will be hard to stay profitable if unpaid merchandise walks out behind them. New technologies are helping businesses decrease their losses by either preventing crimes before they happen or catching shoplifters in the act. However, it is essential to select the right product for your industry and business model as well as actively use the technology in your day-to-day operations.
Here are five technologies that can help you prevent shoplifters:
1. Video analytics. This software can be paired with security cameras allowing retailers an innovative, real-time way to analyze your surveillance. It identifies and detects when suspicious activity occurs, such as a customer walking out of the store with unpaid merchandise, and concealment of goods on the sales floor, and allows merchants to go directly to the incident on video, saving hours of monitoring and reviewing. “You can also integrate the technology with a point of sale system to catch financial losses at the register, such as an employee making bad choices or a cashier working in cahoots with another thief,” says Garth Gasse, director of assets protection for the Retail Industry Leaders Association.

2. Anti-push out technology. In the “push out” scam, a shopping cart is loaded with goodies and “pushed” right out of the store. Anti-push out technology is a modification of existing technology that prevents shopping cart theft from lots. With this loss prevention technology, underground wires are installed around the perimeter of a store parking lot and a device on the shopping cart locks the wheels when the cart crosses that perimeter. The technology can be redeployed to prevent push-outs by embedding wires at the store's front doors and locking up cart wheels that have not been pushed through checkout, says Bill Alford, president of International Lighthouse Group and member of the ASIS National Loss Prevention committee.


3. Facial recognition software. Stores using video surveillance can benefit from integrating facial recognition software into their video program. When someone enters the store, the software compares the person to known shoplifters in the database. If a known shoplifter enters your store, facial recognition software sends an alert to the smartphone of your manager or your loss prevention agent. “The best part about this technology is that it can prevent shoplifting from actually occurring by allowing a manager to approach the person and ask them to leave,” says Alford. He says that the facial recognition database can be used to track repeated visits to multiple locations and the facial recognition technology can be especially helpful for merchants targeted by organized crime rings. To most effectively use the software, merchants would need to take photos of people caught shoplifting in their store.

4. Mobile point of sale. With a traditional point of sale system, the cashier is stuck behind the cash register, giving potential shoplifters plenty of opportunity to head out the door with a shirt or piece of jewelry. But a mobile point of sale system allows your employees to be on the store floor, which often discourages theft because clerks are mobile and thieves feel they have less opportunity to steal. This system is especially useful for large stores or those that often have one person working alone, who can't monitor all areas. “However, it is essential that all staff using mobile point of sale technology have security training before engaging with perpetrators,” says David Feeney, IT director of integrated solutions AlliedBarton Security Services. For best practice, he suggests having a professional security guard is nearby to limit staff involvement with the shoplifter.

5. Smart display system. A new and emerging technology, these systems allow high-theft merchandise to be openly displayed rather than be locked in a cabinet. “If several items are taken from a cologne display, the smart display system triggers a flag that immediately sends a preventative message via email or text to a loss prevention person in the store who may be able to stop theives before they leave the store,” Alford says. An audible alert can also sound. He recommends this product for stores with a theft problem targeting specific items, especially health and beauty care items, baby formula and perfume.