No sooner had I read a story in the SMH about Smishing – a form of Phishing via SMS – then I got a call from my mother telling me she’d won $120,000 on lotto via an SMS.
Of course she didn’t believe it, but what both she and I found insidious about this particular attempt to get money for nothing, was that it happened directly after the $90 million lotto draw last night. This suggests a whole lot went out last night, so if you receive an SMS telling you that you have won this modest amount of money, you haven’t. A couple of things to remember, if you have won lotto, the people who run the competition will call you, not SMS or email. This scam is interesting, because these guys are not going after huge amounts of money, just $1000, unlike the Nigerian scams where they try and get your bank details. Still money is money, and these guys claim to be from Thailand where AU$1000 can go a long way. As technology has advanced, so have the scams to try and part you from your hard-earned cash. But there is an upside – we can tell you about them just as quickly. And, you know, if you’ve heard this once during your lifetime, you’ve heard it 1000 times, but it’s worth repeating – if it sounds too good to be true, 99.9 percent of the time it is. If you are unsure, ignore. If it is a genuine email, they will contact you again, but even then I would double-check the source.Gadgets On Kerri-Anne
Clip courtesy of the Nine Network Australia
I had a lot of fun on the Kerri-Anne show the other day, showing off the new gadgets, including a TomTom IQ Routes, the Buzz Box and a waterproof Canon Powershot compact camera.
Getting the Jump on Technology Has Its Advantages
I got to thinking the other day about how when certain new ideas in our market get a head start, they manage to get a virtual monopoly. Take the Microsoft operating system. Sure, it wasn’t the first out there, but thanks to Bill Gates, it has dominated the O/S market since its launch. Having tie-ins with PCs has helped, even though some of the Windows operating systems have been dogged by bugs. People buy it because they don’t know any different, or cant’ be bothered trying out other systems, or don’t have a choice if it is preinstalled on their PC.
Another example is the iPod. Once digital music superseded the discman, Apple’s iPod was up and running and every other player has been trying to play catch up since. It’s not just a case of having a product that people like, it is giving new iterations extras, so that by the time the competition does catch up, they are one step ahead by offering more features and functionality. Being first in the cue doesn’t necessarily mean the most success. Yahoo! was launched a good two years ahead of Google. It managed to get a huge slice of the search engine pie, but over the past 10 years Google has dominated in the lucrative western world markets – in some cases by as much as 70-80 percent. Microsoft’s recently launched Bing search engine is claimed to be making inroads in some areas, but again, it is due to the company giving it more features than Google is currently offering. These days, the speed of change can either hinder or help a company. The lead times between a new product, and something else coming along making it passe is getting shorter. What will make a company a market leader, it not only a funky new product, but one that not only has technology that the competition doesn’t have, but the ability to build on it in a quick timely fashion, and therefore keeping one step ahead of rivals.