Lost CDs - not the whole story

There seem to be a number of red herrings in the CDGate scandal. Firstly we are asked to believe that a 23 year old clerical officer was (a) able to and (b) did download the primary database onto a CD and send it to the audit office.

Has anyone asked how he did this. Is there a button on their system saying 'download to a CD'? I hardly think so.

Secondly it seems some senior staff were copied on emails.

Irrelevant.

It is common practice in large organisations to copy director level on everything for just this purpose - to protect someones backside. As a result senior staff get bucketloads of mail every day. If they read it all I would be asking why are they being so unproductive as 99.99% has no business in their in-tray. Sort of internal spam.

Better questions are:

1) Who asked this guy or gal to send the data on - pesumably his/her direct supervisor.
2) What exactly did they ask him/her to do
3) Who else was involved in creating this disk

I think we would be getting closer to finding out who should get fired.

VBV - cause for concern

I got called out to a meeting with a client on Saturday evening, and it turned out at the bottom of it all was this: They had turned on Verified By Visa a few weeks ago, and on Saturday morning the MD of the company plus the designer tried to make a paid registration and just plain couldn't figure out how to get past the VBV screen.

If you have ever tried this you will understand this, as it is a text-book example of bad useability. Initial indications are that the level of registrations has halved since they switched it on.

I know that some firms are being pressurised by their banks to implement VBV but am very concerned about the effect this will have on business. A partner company in the US has told me that it has pretty much died over there.

Big brother is watching you

Next time you tell people about your ski trip on your social networking site, don't be surpised if a ski supplier advertisement pops up. It is called hypertargeting and Myspace, facebook etc are all going in for it. They will use all sorts information about you, including messages and interests to target you with advertisements.

Good thing? I don't know, it seems sort of spooky but I guess we will get used to it. It is only a computer after all, it is not as if a human is eavesdropping on our every move.