This morning I was scrambling with a bit of last minute packing before heading out for a few days at a business event in Clearwater Beach, Florida. I grabbed my various electronic devices, and quickly checked my email. When I did, I saw this email with the subject, “Account Re-Activation (Please Reply)”

Dear Webmail Account Users,

Webmail Regional Mail server Technical Support.

It was obvious to me that this is a “phishing” email, but people fall for these expeditions every day. Help people by showing them why email like this is a scam designed to steal their email credentials. What do you see in this?

Here are a few of the things I see…

First, and foremost, it asks for my account information in the plain text of an email. That’s what got me thinking: do people actually fall for this? They must!

Never email a password to anyone. Ever.

What else do I see in this? Well, it’s not written to me personally, but to a generic title. Any real business with my account information would auto-fill my name, at least.

How about a webmail company who doesn’t ask me to login to my account to make a change? Or at least to use a web page for this interaction?

Of course, the mistakes in the English in the email are keys, too. As are the “From:” address and header, which I haven’t included here.

What do you see? How will you warn your friends?

Last week I was sitting in my office working away on a client’s iPhone app when my iPhone’s text message bell alert rang. I picked up my phone to see my daughter’s text message: “Free iPad event?” After an exchange, I learned that my Facebook account had sent her an event request with a link to a rogue quiz site that was offering quizzes for the amazingly low price of $19.99 a month. I also started getting emails from other friends who were getting the invitation from me.

So, I got mad.

First, I deleted the event. Then, I posted to my wall about it. And then, I went on the warpath.

You see, I am very careful about my Facebook account. While I explore aspects of Facebook as part of my research for clients, I am aware of the dangers and am diligent in working through the possible issues. But, I got caught. So, I went looking for the source of the issue.

The first thing I learned is that I am not alone. There is even a Facebook group that has grown up to oppose it. But, no one seemed to know how it was done, so I began to investigate.

Given the invitation text and the targets, I figured out that it had to have come from an application with access to my account. I dug through my entire list of applications, eliminating many that were either old or that I don’t use. But, it’s important to understand that Facebook makes this process far more painful than it needs to be. If only Facebook would make a note on the wall posts, event invites, and other items noting what application was used to create it, we could track down the reprobates who build these cheap cheats. Twitter even does it:

Twitter displays the source of the Tweet below the text

So Twitter, with its informal nature, trumps Facebook in one of the most important aspects of security: transparency.

In my next few posts, I’ll outline what you can do to scrub your Facebook account in a way that will make it much more hardened against this kind of attack. However, with the limited transparency of Facebook’s system right now, there is only so much you can do.

It’s been beautiful here in Boulder for the past week. Cool in the evenings, sunny during the day, with the occasional thunderstorm to brighten up the afternoon. During this week, I’ve had a great exchange with Stephanie George, my brilliant friend who helps businesses to see their current business situation through objective eyes, offering business development and strategic consulting.

One of her emails to me yesterday was so perceptive that I’ll share it with you in its entirety in this post. Her insights are right on. The rest of this post (with minor edits for the change of medium) is from her:

I think that we also need leadership. The two quotes were right on and – they came from leaders. Leaders do not have to be the President alone, Leaders emerge at all levels. I think it would be refreshing for a bold, non-partisan heavy hitter to enroll some outstanding legislative leaders, the President, and the media to stop cramming fear and uncertainty down the public’s throat.

Bad news sells better than good news, so the media may be challenging to enroll on a wholesale basis. Also, I don’t think a pollyanna outlook would sell well.

It’s not just a policy or a budget patch that we need to crank the engine and that’s all that I’ve heard proposed from our legislative and executive branches so far (red or blue). There is no Unity. Remember “Together we stand, divided we fall”? That’s what’s missing. There is too much interest and money to be made in dividing up the sentiment and no one working to unify it.

A mortgage broker actually told me once that he didn’t care if the market went up or down, as long as there was some sort of change, he would make money. His interest was not in seeing an overall rising of the tide or in others successes, but in keeping things off balance, because it kept creating opportunities for him to make money.

I think that Bush actually tried to connect everyone on the war – it worked immediately following 9/11 and in WWII, but when there is dishonesty as the foundation (WMDs anyone? then one after another different reason for making war was brought forth, none of them more substantial than 4th grade retribution), the rest of the construct falls apart. And when our leadership cannot be trusted, people lose confidence. As long as our bodies of leadership snipe at one another endlessly, it firstly, seems utterly arrogant and self-righteous, and secondly, does not engender faith in their ability as a corporate body to get on the same page.

I know that I have simplified foreign, economic and political policy in there. It’s not a simple problem. However, on confidence:

I don’t stand on there being THE ONE omniscient leader; all of our elected officials have the freedom be the leader that we need. However, they would need to give up personal hubris.

So, that’s top-down confidence.

How about bottom-up confidence? Enroll and empower everyone to develop their own confidence. Probably creates a bigger tide than waiting for the top-down to get it done.

Educating everyone we meet that who they are is bigger than their circumstances; they are not defined as a possibility in the world by their checkbook balance or net worth or job or their diploma. Joy, confidence and happiness are not a function of any material detritus they manage to assemble in their lifetimes. Acknowledging one’s own true personal power is at the source of confidence. It is not someone or some thing outside of us, it is in each of us. (Cue Marianne Williamson quote: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”)

Maybe we should bring back that old Skin Bracer commercial with Jack Palance telling us all that Confidence is sexy. That’s it! We need a new marketing campaign for Confidence! Confidence is Sexy. (Editor: As I mentioned to Stephanie in a follow-up email, Palance had it right in City Slickers, too.)

I went through the Harn Museum of Art a week ago and they have on display a series of public propaganda posters from around 1924 – 1936. How about some National Confidence propaganda – lots of it – that is not one diva or guru’s pocket lining? That’s not tied to some partisan agenda? That doesn’t come out of Obama’s mouth or John Boehner’s mouth?

This morning, one of my good friends–a brilliant and insightful business analyst you should know–asked me what I thought about the latest McKinsey Quarterly newsletter article entitled, “Where are the jobs.” Given the questions that I have had on this, I’ll share my thoughts that came from my response to her:

he key job growth will come from small businesses, including innovations in retail (did you see this article about 4Food?). And the only way to get businesses in those sectors to grow is to free up money that is not being used to pay them right now: consumer’s money and larger businesses’ money that is used to buy products and services from these smaller businesses.

What is going to free those funds? Confidence.

Yeah, I know it’s not the whiz-bang idea that everyone thinks we need, but it really is what we need. Confidence. It was the key difference between two speeches from a generation ago:

“The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us. For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years. Two-thirds of our people do not even vote. The productivity of American workers is actually dropping, and the willingness of Americans to save for the future has fallen below that of all other people in the Western world.

“As you know, there is a growing disrespect for government and for churches and for schools, the news media, and other institutions. This is not a message of happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning.” (that was Jimmy Carter’s infamous speech, that entirety of which is here… how familiar does that sound and how true (again) today?)

Compare it to this:

“If we look to the answer as to why, for so many years, we achieved so much, prospered as no other people on Earth, it was because here, in this land, we unleashed the energy and individual genius of man to a greater extent than has ever been done before. Freedom and the dignity of the individual have been more available and assured here than in any other place on Earth. The price for this freedom at times has been high, but we have never been unwilling to pay that price.

“It is no coincidence that our present troubles parallel and are proportionate to the intervention and intrusion in our lives that result from unnecessary and excessive growth of government. It is time for us to realize that we are too great a nation to limit ourselves to small dreams. We are not, as some would have us believe, doomed to an inevitable decline. I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing. So, with all the creative energy at our command, let us begin an era of national renewal. Let us renew our determination, our courage, and our strength. And let us renew our faith and our hope.”

That, of course, was Ronald Reagan’s first inaugural address, and it’s no less true today.

After that speech, the country went on a tear that lasted a couple of decades.

The facts are that creativity fuels innovation and innovation fuels the economy. Without confidence, there is no creativity.

What can the government do? Stop the spending, drop the taxes, create a predictable environment for innovation to be free to develop. Otherwise, the innovation gets spent trying to get around governmental interference.

What do you think?

There are a number of very specific reasons that this worldwide economic situation persists, primarily, as I wrote earlier, due to the very poor decisions and lack of clarity from politicians. While we do live in a worldwide economy, the United States remains that primary engine of that economy. For that reason, what happens in the US leads the rest of the world in a particular direction. Right now, that direction is aimless wandering.

For more evidence of the repercussions of the unpredictable environment that the US government has created with its fast-changing taxes, fees, and laws, realize that the 500 largest non-financial corporations are holding more than 10% of their assets in cash according to a recent Wall Street Journal article. That’s about a trillion US dollars sitting on the sidelines. It’s not hiring new staff, developing new products, or buying new capital. It’s sitting there doing nothing.

Why? Because the management of those companies doesn’t know what they are going to have to do next as the US government changes the rules yet again. So, they hold on to the funds just in case they might need them to handle yet another “great idea” from government bureaucrats who have never had to make payroll or delivery a product or produce a service that customers value. They are utter unequipped to understand — much less implement — effective solutions to economic issues involving the complex interrelationship of business.

The first thing to do is to promise and then deliver predictability to the market, and not just for interest rates. Interest is not the only expense that businesses have to plan to address, so predictability must extend to the other areas such as regulation, taxes, fees, and other mandates. When that happens, those funds will find their way into investment, turning into jobs, investment, and an economy on the rebound.

Until then…? A continuing malaise.

Earlier this past week I was in my home office working on a new iPhone app for a client when my phone rang. On the other end of the line was a northeastern accent that I recognized right away. Last winter, this friend and I had spent the better part of a day skiing around Copper Mountain. He and his family were visiting from New Hampshire, and I had the joy of showing he and his two boys some of my favorite secret stashes on a day that still had some powder to be found.

As I answered the phone, he asked me how I was doing, and I mentioned to him the wonderful Colorado weather. “Yes,” he said with a wistful longing in his voice, “the boys still talk about that day with you at Copper. That was a great day!”

Yes, it was. But, that’s not why he called. You see, he’s a Vice President of Marketing at a major corporation and he was calling to find out if I’d have time to take on a small project for him. We chatted for a few minutes so I could get a basic understanding of what he needed. “Yes,” I said, “that’s something that is a good fit for me, and I’d really like to work on it with you.”

…and like that, it was a done deal.

We had our kick-off call the next day, and I’ll be working with him over the next few weeks to build content for marketing one of their product lines as they launch a new set of communications.

Decisiveness.

It can really make a difference for you and your business. It’s going to help him with their process, we’ll get a lot done, and their customers will get some great insights into their products.

Your decisions are best in this order:

1. The “right” decision
2. The “wrong” decision
3. No decision

Today more than ever the adage applies: You can’t steer a ship that isn’t moving. Make a choice. Get moving. And adjust as you go along.

As I sat finishing breakfast at our kitchen table yesterday morning with the Colorado sun filling the back yard and the kids enjoying their last few days of “freedom” before they head back to school next week, I caught up on my news reading using my iPad. I use Feeddler, an RSS (Real Simple Syndication) reader for iOS together with the Wall Street Journal and Guardian Eyewitness apps to stay current with news and insights from my favorite content sites. I thought about how this was so different than it has been for me until just recently. I no longer need to go to my desktop computer or pull out my notebook computer to check my favorite web sites; I just pull out my iPad.

Not only that, but because Feeddler uses Google Reader to sync what I’ve read, I can use Feeddler on my iPhone and my iPad or Google Reader or one of the Google Reader compatible applications to stay up-to-date throughout the day.

Of course, I also use the iPad to stay current with email, some web browsing, and my eBooks, too (mostly using the Kindle app). I even use it for a bit of Bible reading and study using Logos.

As a result, what I have noticed is that my iPad, this small, lightweight device, has become the center of my reading world. It’s like I’m carrying my entire stack of books, magazines, newspapers and websites with me all the time. I am beginning to see very clearly just how much the iPad has simplified my life. And this from a guy who definitely wasn’t sold on the idea of an iPad for my own personal productivity.

Pretty interesting…

Earlier this week, you may have read my post on Why “Net Neutrality” is Wrong. In it, I illustrated the reasons for network management control of the network, and also mentioned how most of the politicians involved just don’t get it (and believe me, I got email about the video linked to my “idiot politicians” statement!). Today, Larry Downes of The Technology Liberation Front breaks down the Google/Verizon model legislation and outlines the irony of who is complaining about it in his excellent article Deconstructing the Google-Verizon Framework. When you read it, you’ll begin to see the disingenuous nature of so many knee-jerk reactions to political gamesmanship.

It’s a good read.

The bottom line remains: if we are to have all of the applications that we want to have on the Internet, we need to protect it from being controlled by political whims and wanna-be political engineers. The challenges are far greater than can be solved by political debate, and most of what we’re seeing these days makes it clear that actually solving problems is beyond the ken of most in political life. Note that I don’t call them “leaders.” That’s on purpose. I have too much respect for true leadership.

I wrote earlier about the PDF vulnerability in iOS that impacts every iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. Yesterday, Apple made an update available to fix the vulnerability.

If you own an iOS device, be sure to update it as soon as you can. If you don’t see the update as soon as you plug your device into iTunes, select your device in the sidebar and click “Check for Update” to get the update.

The Check for Updates button on iTunes

This morning, travel itinerary site TripIt launched a new integration with Gmail. Now, instead of forwarding your itinerary messages to plans@tripit.com as you have done in the past, TripIt will scan your mailbox for you and import those items into your TripIt account.

To create the link, login to your TripIt account and look in the upper right corner of your landing page for the big orange button:

TripIt's Gmail Integration Setup

This is so clean that it’s a reason to move your itinerary emails to Gmail just to get this capability.

Check it out!