Recently Nicole Perlroth, who covers cybersecurity and privacy for the New York Times, sat down to be interviewed by one of her own colleagues. The interview covered some ground on how readers can protect their own data. Let me list her main recommendations. Wherever possible, I will provide my reasoning on why she may have recommended a particular step:

DOs AND DON’Ts ON PERSONAL DATA PROTECTION

Do not hand over email or Birthdates to retailers.

My take: This may sound a bit harsh. Sometimes retailers may wish to forward a copy of the purchase receipt to your email ID. At other times, they may want to start your Rewards Programme account. There is no denying the convenience. But the worry is can retailers keep your ID safe? Very often, an account or card verification process may start with you being asked to verify your email ID. If someone had harvested your email ID from a retailer, you are providing an easy first step for the criminal. A workaround would be to start a separate email ID just to service retailers, which you won’t link to anything else.

Stricter standards should apply to providing Birthdates.

My take: Sometimes a retailer may ask for your birthday to offer special discounts. The intention may be harmless. But if the retailer doesn’t keep your data safe, you will be unnecessarily exposing yourself to cyber criminals. There’s no workaround here. Simply avoid providing your birthday details to a retailer.

Don't use debit cards unless you are at a bank. Use your credit card when you can, instead of your debit card.

My take: This appears to be another harsh prescription. But she may have recommended this because there’s more protection for credit card misuse from the card issuer. In debit cards, you withdraw money directly from your bank account. It is more of your risk than that of the card issuer. Therefore, the protection offered may also be less.

Do not use self-checkout systems at merchants, because those are often the first place hackers will scan.

My take: The self-checkout system seems to be a feature in the West than in India. In self-checkouts, staff supervision is less. This may have drawn the attention of criminals to such checkout lines. This year’s breach at retailer Home Depot in the US, involving stealing of personal data of 56 million customers, began by criminals infecting the company’s cash registers with malware. So checkout lines are very vulnerable to attacks by criminals.

Use long, complex passwords. Do not use the same password across multiple accounts.

My take: Too many studies have come out about the unfortunate popularity of useless passwords. Time spent in creating strong passwords will save you a ton of trouble.

In her book Online Reputation Management for Dummies, Lori Randall Stradtman has given a simple way to create strong and safe passwords.

I recommend it. Here are the steps given by Lori:
<<
1.)  Brainstorm for a minute on a sentence or phrase that has some special meaning to you.             (However, try not to choose one that’s really popular right now.) For example:

• A favorite song lyric

• A line of poetry

• A movie quote (my favorite).

Let’s use ‘All we are is dust in the wind’ as an example.

2.)  Convert your phrase into an acronym. We’re using ‘All we are is dust in the wind,’ so the           acronym is ‘awaidinw.’ It’s just the first letter of each word.

3.)   Substitute at least one letter with a number. With ‘awaidinw,’ it may look like this:

• awa1d1nw (the letter i is replaced with the number 1)

4.)   Substitute at least one letter with an upper-case letter. Our password in progress could            look  like this:

• awa1d1nW (the last letter, w, gets capitalized)

5.)   Substitute at least one letter with a symbol. Our password in progress could look like                this:

• @wa1d1nW (the first letter, a, is replaced with @)

Congratulations! You’ve just created a password that’s 1.34 tresvigintillion more times, or               1.34  trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion times stronger than your chance of winning           the lottery. Please don’t use this particular one! Now that I’ve described, created, and                     published this password, it is no longer a strong choice. Come up with your own!
>>
Got it? Now go ahead and create your own passwords using this method, but make sure you do not use the same password for many accounts.

Use two different web browsers — one for email and bank account, the other for eCommerce and general web browsing.

My take: No comments.

Switch on two-factor authentication wherever u can.

My take: This is as simple using a debit card and its pin while doing an ATM transaction. The right debit card is the first step, and the right pin is the second step. Many email service providers now allow two-step or two-factor authentication. Make use of it to keep your account secure.

For instance, to authenticate your Gmail Account, simply sign in and go to your Accounts section by clicking on the link seen under the icon in RHS top.

Once there, please click on Security and then say Enable to 2-Step Verification. Enter your mobile number and click for the 6-digit verification code from Google to your mobile phone.

Once you have entered the code, your computer is verified for the particular Google Account. Only when you log in from another unverified computer will you be asked again to authenticate using the code sent to your mobile phone. You can also add other computers to the safe list. Please add this additional layer of safety to your email accounts as an insurance.

Put masking tape over the webcam on your computer.

My take: You may be surprised to hear this recommendation from the cybersecurity expert at The New York Times, but I am voting for it. There have been too many instances of criminals hacking into webcams and leaving people in grief. Laptop manufacturers sneaked in this ‘innovation’ without taking buyers into confidence. It pays to be careful. Cover the webcam with a masking tape whenever you are not using it.

Someone can use stolen data for identity theft and tank your credit score.

My take: Credit scores are very important for individuals in developed countries. In India too, credit-rating agencies no play an important role in assessing the loan-worthiness of individuals. Keep your credit cards and online identities safe. Let no one misuse it and cause harm to your reputation as a trusted borrower.

Hackers are actively selling medical records on the black market. Someone mayyou’re your medical identity and pollute your lifetime medical records.

My take: This advice is more relevant to consumers in developed markets where medical records have been extensively digitized.

Recommended tools by Nicole Perlroth:

Wickr, a mobile app that encrypts and self-destructs messages.

Silent Circle, software which allows encrypted phone calls.

My take: These tools could be more relevant to developed markets.

e.o.m.

HOW OLD PRINT HABITS TRIP THE NYT’S DIGITAL PUSH

Internal schisms at The New York Times over the firing of its executive editor Jill Abramson has led to the leakage of a crucial document on Digital Innovation. The document, which was prepared by a high profile team after months of interviews and research, is an invaluable tool kit for the arsenal of anyone interested in Digital Media.

We continue with our learnings from the document.

• The vast majority of The New York Times’ content is still published in the evenings, following the traditional practice of print journalism. This is despite web analytics consistently coming out with the finding that the publication’s digital traffic is busiest early in the morning.
• Again, the newsroom targets ambitious stories for Sundays because on that day the publication has its largest print readership. But online, weekends bring the slowest traffic.
• Coming to the length of stories, the 700-800 word story is considered the sweet spot for print. But print has limited shelf-space, whereas the scarcity economy doesn’t operate online. So why not experiment with more long-form content online?
• The report notes that newsroom leaders spend a lot of time reading stories from other outlets, whereas few are studying their digital strategies, viz., presentation, social presence, search optimization, navigation, and mobile strategy. Even few are looking at the smartphone apps of competitors. The authors found that several stories invited readers to post comments even though the iPhone and iPad apps of the NYT do not allow users to comment!
• The scarcity economy of the limited shelf space of print is affecting digital operations in other ways too. NYT receives quality submissions for Op-Ed articles from hundreds of contributors. But at any given time only a few of them can make it to the print edition. The report notes that many otherwise relevant articles are thus lost merely because the print edition cannot accommodate them. It has, therefore, suggested that these articles may be uploaded to the website where space isn’t a constraint.
• The authors of the report found it amusing that the publication’s content management system, known as Scoop, organizes content in its mobile apps according to web sections, even though the readership of both are different. This can lead to dysfunctions, like when the Business Day columnists, who are a draw with the mobile audience, are organized at the very bottom of the Business Section in the mobile apps just because it is uploaded straight from the web sections. Interestingly, despite this process, graphics made for the NYT’s website still cannot upload to the mobile versions.

While the NYT is saddled with all these legacy print traditions, its competitors are increasingly organizing their operations around digital-first strategies. As Digital First Media said when it announced its Project Unbolt, “Newspapers are still largely print newsrooms with digital operations bolted on”. The authors of the report found this a relevant observation for the digital operations of the NYT as well.

(The series continues. Other installments in this series can be found at the following links: Part 4, Part 2, Part 1)

Internal schisms in The New York Times over the firing of its executive editor Jill Abramson has led to the leakage of a crucial document on Digital Innovation. The document, which was prepared by a high profile team after months of interviews and research, is an invaluable tool kit for the arsenal of anyone interested in Digital Media.

THE SCALE OF NYT DIGITAL OPS       

TRIVIA: NYT DIGITAL OPS
The New York Times produces more than 300 URLs for unique stories every day.
In its archives, NYT has 14, 723,933 articles, dating back to 1851.
Less than 10% of NYT’s digital traffic comes through social media.
Both the website audience as well as smartphone app audience of The New York Times is shrinking.
The pull of the website home page is also declining. Only a third of the nytimes.com readers visit the website’s Home Page.
The report says Home Page views as well as minutes spent per reader are dropping by double-digit percentages.
NYT’s Twitter account is run by the newsroom. Its Facebook account is run by the business side.
Many NYT journalists learned social promotion from their book publishers.
Only a fraction of the stories are opened for comments. Only 1% of readers write comments, and only 3% of readers read the comments.

(The series continues. Other installments in this series can be found at the following links: Part 4, Part 3, Part 2)

Last year when Jeff Bezos was interviewed by Charlie Rose for his 60 Minutes TV show, one of the key takeaways from it, besides the sneak preview offered on Air Prime, Amazon’s forthcoming drone-based home delivery service, was Bezos’ defence of his business practices, especially with regard to the book publishing industry.

He said, “The internet is disrupting every media industry. The future is happening to book selling. Amazon is not happening to book selling.” Responding specifically to the complaints about Amazon, Bezos said: “Complaining is not a strategy.”

I was reminded of this today when I made a casual review of several eBookseller sites, which sell a wide selection of eBooks for buyers around the world. One can very well say that when it comes to sale of eBooks, they are indeed competitors to Amazon.

Why are eBook sellers losing money from potential customers?
I did a very basic comparison of these sites to the Kindle eBooks section of Amazon.com. It was shocking to see these sites leave money on the table because they haven’t got their search function right.

Why are they doing it? If they don’t take care of their own interests, can these sites then complain against Amazon for its competitive instincts?

I adopted a simple methodology. I opened The New York Times fiction bestseller list for eBooks from a couple of weeks ago. I had already downloaded this sometime ago for a comparative study. I went there again and randomly picked up a few bestsellers.

First stop, Diesel eBooks (diesel-ebooks.com). I searched for the eBook Innocence (by Dean Koontz), a current NYT bestseller. This is what I got:

It was not there in the first page of 20 results. In fact the first page is entirely filled with adult fiction eBooks, many of them offered free. Please note that the search defaulted to bestselling.

I made the same search in the Amazon Kindle eBookstore to get the following result:

The NYT bestseller was returned as the top result, with Sort by Relevance as the default search method.

I went back to Diesel, and this time searched for the full title plus the author name. It turns out that the eBook is actually available in Diesel eBookstore, and that too at least for Indian buyers, at a much discounted price to that of Amazon:

On digging further, I found that the title is returned as the 25th result in Diesel when you just search for ‘Innocence’.

Twenty-fifth result! Just imagine. No why would any eBookseller offer a full page of adult eBook fiction as the search results page for Innocence, and return a free eBook as the top result? Shouldn’t its internal search default to relevance like Amazon’s does, and give weightage to an eBook listed as a bestseller by the prestigious NYT ? Scott Redford of Diesel, are you listening?  

Why is eBooks.com ignoring Linda Lael Miller? 
Next stop, eBooks.com. I searched for Linda Lael Miller. Her work Big Sky Secrets is currently an NYT bestseller.
But you wouldn’t know if you searched for her name in eBooks.com:

So I went to Amazon and did the same search:

They know a thing or two about relevance. The search for Linda Lael Miller returns her current NYT eBook bestseller as the top result in Amazon, and not the 20th result as it’s in eBooks.com. Now, how many people abandoned their search for Big Sky Secrets in eBooks.com because it didn’t list it as a top offering from the author?
Shouldn’t the search algorithm of the site be changed to give some weightage to the NYT bestseller list? Stephen Cole of eBooks.com, are you listening?

Why can’t eBookmall.com not search for full title and author? 
See what happened when I searched for the full title and author name at ebookmall.com:

I turned disappointed to Amazon.com even though as a matter of fact, I want small eBooksellers to thrive, and want to purchase eBooks from them, even at a slight loss in price. But it seems they are not interested in helping someone like me.

Amazon recognised the search for the full title and author name of the bestseller, but was not very truthful when it told me that only the hardcover was available. On clicking the result, I could find the Kindle eBook version as well.
So Amazon is not perfect, but still it takes you where you want to go.

I returned to ebookmall.com and performed one more search. This time, just for the eBook title. It turns out the eBook was actually available there:

My message to the promoters of eBookmall is simple. You’ve got work to do to review your search function. Otherwise, you are losing out on potential sales.

Infibeam too has to improve 
What about India? Infibeam (infibeam.com), co-founded by former Amazon employee Vishal Mehta, offers a good selection of eBooks. But here too, I found that they could improve upon their search function a bit more.
Look what I got when I searched for Laura Lael Miller in Infibeam:

Her current bestseller Big Sky Secrets returned as the 30th result. That needs improvement. EBooksellers have to give additional weightage to NYT eBook bestseller lists in their search algorithms and increase public awareness that they do sell these eBooks in their stores. Otherwise visitors to your sites will return disappointed, and you will continue to complain against Amazon.com. Remember, as Bezos said, “Complaining is not a strategy at all.”