Cybercrime: Discover how many times your luck has run out
Are you feeling lucky today? No, that’s not the right question. The better question is: Are you feeling brave today? I say this because luck has nothing to do with the outcome of what I’m going to ask you to do, however, you’ll need pretty steely nerves to take my dare. (Faced with potentially bad news, many people just turn their backs or plug their ears.) Here’s what I’d like you to do: Head over to Have I been pwned, and no, that’s not a typo (I’ll explain in a moment), Next, enter the main email address you use on the Internet, then go back in time and enter some of your older email addresses. Have I been pawned will show you if your email, password, and other pieces of personal information have been stolen through one or more known data breaches and distributed on the dark web. Please note that the database here only includes information from known data breaches. Unfortunately, these breaches often happen without the responsible parties knowing for months or even years. An unsavory ‘stuffing’ Now let’s put your results in perspective. When cybercriminals get their hands on your information they start a process called “credential stuffing.” This is simply taking the addresses, usernames, passwords, and “stuffing” them into logins around the web. They have programs that do this automatically so they can stuff thousands of login credentials into thousands of websites in a matter of moments. So if you use the same email address/username and password to log into Disqus that you use for your bank, the bad guys can hack your bank account. (By the way, I specifically mentioned Disqus here because in October 2017 they announced a breach that exposed 17.5 million login credentials. When did the breach occur? Back in July 2012. Thank you Disqus .) How to protect yourself I hope that you’re sufficiently terrorized at this point and perhaps even thinking about never using online services again. However, we know that that’s not the answer and fortunately there is a good solution to this problem: Password managers. As you probably recognize, credential stuffing only leads to successful hacking when people use the same password on multiple websites. And, if you’re trying to keep track of your passwords by some old-fashioned system, such as depending on your memory or sticky notes, you tend to rely on one or two passwords. With a password manager, every site you frequent can have its own password and trust me, a password-manager-created password will be much longer and more “unguessable” than anything you can come up with on your own. I just asked my password manager to create a password 12 characters long and here’s what it gave me: grj7defK/YPz. I personally know many extremely Internet-savvy experts who still aren’t using a password manager, so that makes me think that among average users, password manager usage is minimal. Believe me, once you adopt one, you’ll wonder how you ever survived without it. Okay, now for the origin of the word “pwned” as I promised above. In the online gaming world, when someone loses, they say that he has been “owned.” However, because P and O are neighbors on the keyboard, this often results in a typo creating the word pwned instead of...
read moreJoin me for magical mystery tour of website analytics and SEO!
Do you like a good mystery? If you do, come with me on a little journey. I won’t take much of your time and along the way we might solve an online mystery you’ve experienced. I was reviewing a list of websites that had referred visitors to my site and I found that a few visitors had come from a Yellowstone area travel website. I recognize most of the referring websites on the list, and of course sources like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are always at the top. But I wondered why and how were visitors coming to my site from this travel website. I clicked on the link to find the backlink to my website. I examined the page and found nothing; there was no link to my site from this page that presumably sent visitors to my site. I wondered how are people traveling from a Yellowstone area travel website to SusanSolovic.com if there is no link connecting the two sites? After doing a little research I found the answer: the Yellowstone area travel site hadn’t sent any visitors to my homepage. Zero. Zip. Nada. The “statistic” in my analytics that told me a couple of visitors had come from that site was plain wrong. My analytics had been “gamed.” But what is worse is that I fell into the trap set by these bogus “visits.” I clicked the link back to the Yellowstone travel page in my attempt to find the reference to my website. In other words, while I originally thought the travel site had boosted my visitors, I had, in fact, boosted the visitors to the travel site; the Yellowstone site had pulled the old switcheroo on me. The folks at the Yellowstone travel site may not even understand the situation. Here’s what I believe has happened: The good people leading tourist groups at our premiere national park probably signed up with an agency (right now there are some based in China that are doing this) that promised to increase their web traffic. The agency then makes various websites (and Google analytics) believe that traffic is coming from the Yellowstone site. Finally, a curious website owner (like me) clicks on a link within analytics to find the referring link. Ta-da! The Yellowstone travel site has one more visitor to its homepage. This is one black hat SEO tactic that is being used today. There are others done by agencies that will send ghost visits to your site that will register on Google analytics and make it look like your traffic is surging. Unscrupulous website owners will then use this increased traffic to make their site look good to advertisers. That’s not what the Yellowstone travel site was doing. I believe they just wanted to pull more visitors into their site. The problem is that the kind of visitors that come by a tactic like this are not interested in the product or service the website sells. It’s better to have 10 qualified prospects a day visit your site than 1,000 random web surfers who end up on your homepage through some digital slight of hand. This situation can be avoided if you remember some universal truths: There is no such thing as a free lunch. You have to earn qualified prospects. When it seems...
read moreLost job results in double income? It happens.
Have you ever hired a handyman to take care of projects around your house? Home handyman is a quintessential small business, and often home-based as well. I recently heard a handyman success story that illustrates some important business principles. A friend used a handyman for a range of construction and fix-it projects at his home. The handyman was good and could take care of almost anything that came up. They had a casual relationship and the handyman could usually find time to squeeze in jobs on short notice. This, however, changed recently. The last time the homeowner needed help, the handyman had a tight schedule so he couldn’t just “drop by.” They set up an appointment that worked for both sides. When the handyman came by to do the work they started talking and my friend was curious why the handyman’s schedule seemed more inflexible than it had been. It turns out that the handyman’s wife had lost her job and taken over his scheduling and other administrative tasks. This simple “addition” to the handyman’s “staff” doubled his income – and it doesn’t take up all of his wife’s time. There may have been a time when the handyman considered adding a scheduler, but he probably thought to himself, “I can’t afford to hire someone.” In fact, he couldn’t afford NOT to hire someone. Here are some of the important business and economic principles to glean from this story: Division of labor. Businesses are always more productive when they divide up tasks so people can concentrate in a defined area. It works in automobile manufacturing and it works in the service industries as well. In other words, delegate. Time management. Parkinson’s Law says that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Undoubtedly the handyman gave himself more than enough time to do a job “just in case” something came up. His wife has been more disciplined. Looking at Parkinson’s Law from the positive side, you can conclude that people will complete jobs within the time you allow them. People find ways to get things done when they have to. This is the essence of productivity improvement. Recognize your strengths. This handyman is very skilled and provides excellent service. However, scheduling and administrative tasks aren’t his strong suit. It’s great that his wife has taken over these responsibilities, but the work could just as easily have gone to an assistant. Consider his lost revenue while he spent his valuable billable hours doing work a lower paid assistant could take care of. Implement systems. While the handyman was great at building decks, he wasn’t good at constructing an efficient job schedule or administrative systems and routines. Now that his wife has brought systems and order to his business, if she wants, she can hand it off to someone else and find a job to replace the one she lost. Here’s one more important observation: The smaller your business, the greater impact working with these principles will have. Our handyman was a one-person operation. Adding a part-time scheduler doubled his income. This is how small businesses grow and the easiest growth comes from the first few improvements you make. Fail to do these things and you are simply leaving money on the...
read moreHow to post your local business video to Google Maps
Whether you love or hate Google, you must admit that it’s a company that doesn’t let the grass grow under its feet and we’re really seeing that with its Local Guides program. For the local small business community, Local Guides can be extremely powerful. I discussed the basics in this post, but almost as soon as I pushed my keyboard away, Google added another twist: videos. As a quick summary: Local Guides are the Google version of Amazon’s “Top Reviewer.” Individuals sign up to become Local Guides and then they post reviews and verify information about local businesses. With the addition of videos, Local Guides can post short (10-second) videos of local businesses to Google Maps. Videos can be added via the Google Maps website using a desktop computer or when using the Android Google Maps app. As of this writing, the iOS Google Maps app doesn’t support uploading videos. By the way, if the video is on the user’s camera roll rather than shot straight from the maps app, it can be a bit longer – up to 30 seconds. There’s one more interesting wrinkle to this development: some local businesses will be able to upload videos themselves. Google is currently testing out this feature and I think that eventually they’ll roll it out for many small businesses. Check your Google My Business account to see if you’ve been okayed for posting a video. And, if you get the green light to post a video, consider making something with higher production values: hire a videographer. Let me ask you a crucial question: Do you know which of your customers or clients are Google Local Guides? If you do, great. If you don’t, you need to develop an unimposing way to find out. When you identify Local Guides, ask if they know that they can post videos using the Android Google Maps app. Suggest they try out the feature at your business. There’s no question that Google is doing everything in its power (and it’s quite powerful) to be the universal gatekeeper of local business information (watch out Yelp). This makes a lot of sense in light of the rising reliance on mobile devices; when on-the-go, users fire up their smartphones to gather local business insights. It’s critical that local business owners fully appreciate what’s happening. Be an early adopter. Don’t let this pass you by because playing catchup in the Internet Age is very...
read moreThis week in small business: Immigrant success, CEO secrets, easy money making tips
Be inspired by the success of two former busboy immigrants and learn the secrets of successful CEOs. Those are just a small taste of what’s on offer in this week’s collection of curated content. Tank up to finish 2017 strong and burst into 2018 revived and ready to go. Leadership, management, and productivity Get your day off to a fast start, check out Sarah Snyder’s 7 Key Physical and Psychological Morning Rituals for Successful Start-Up CEOs. Laura Emily Dunn sits down with Lisa Malat, VP of Operations and CMO, Barnes & Noble Education, Inc. to get her insights on success and the direction of business today. If you need to boost your cash flow, Rhonda Abrams lists 12 easy ways to make money in your small business. Marketing and sales You have a winner blog post that starts to fall off. Aja Frost’s Hubspot post tells you how to fix the problem before it’s too late. Fragmented marketing is ineffective. Karthik Krishnan discusses the importance of bringing all your marketing efforts together. Deep Patel outlines five differences in marketing to Millennials versus Generation Z. Entrepreneurship, startups, and innovation Amy K Hutchens gives entrepreneurs two questions to determine when “good enough” really is good enough. Writing for Forbes, Geri Stengel relates how one woman entrepreneur helps others break through the $1 million revenue barrier. You’ll be inspired by Nina Roberts’ article on two Albanian immigrant entrepreneurs went from busboys to steakhouse restaurateurs. Got all the skills required for entrepreneurial success? Anna Powers offers three. ( think the first on her list is often overlooked.) Need to refuel? Nina Zipkin shares what inspires 22 entrepreneurs to keep them...
read more53 free self-paced business courses to fuel your success
“Learn to work harder on yourself than you do on your job. If you work hard on your job you can make a living, but if you work hard on yourself, you’ll make a fortune.” – Jim Rohn I close my newsletter each week with a quote that I hope you’ll find inspirational. I featured this quote from Jim Rohn not long ago and it dovetails perfectly with one of my core beliefs: You need to continue to grow personally and professionally to achieve the level of fulfillment that you truly desire. A new year always brings new commitments with it and I hope that the coming year will be one when you redouble your self-improvement efforts. As a small business professional or entrepreneur, I know that your schedule can be wild, long, and often unpredictable so I’ve compiled a list of 53 highly rated self-paced free online business courses. Note: I’ve selected self-paced courses that have at least a four-star rating (out of five stars). However, some have as few as one review, so you’ll want to dig a little more deeply into the course content. To get more details on any one of these, copy the course title, head over to Class Central and do a search. In virtually every case, you’ll get an immediate suggested search result before you hit return or enter to do a complete site search. A Preview Course on The 5 Killer Risks of Enterprise Risk Management via Canvas Network An Introduction to Credit Risk Management via edX An Introduction to Success Factors Solutions via openSAP Athlete Career Transition via Independent Aviation 101 via Canvas Network Becoming a Successful Leader (Inclusive Leadership Training) via edX Becoming an Entrepreneur via edX BI 4 Platform Innovation and Implementation via openSAP Careers in Media Technology via Kadenze Certificate Program in Public Procurement via Independent Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): A Strategic Approach via edX Digital Transformation and Its Impact via openSAP Economics of the Media via MRUniversity Enabling Entrepreneurs to Shape a Better World via openSAP eTourism: Communication Perspectives via iversity Evidence-Based Practice in Management via edX Experience SAP Cloud for Customer via openSAP Finance for Everyone: Smart Tools for Decision-Making via edX Gerenciamento de Finanças Pessoais via Canvas Network Get Beyond Work-Life Balance (Inclusive Leadership Training) via edX Get to Know SAP’s Innovative Enterprise Solutions via openSAP Global Human Capital Trends via Canvas Network How to Build a Startup via Udacity How to Start a Startup via Independent Increase Your Tips: Success in the Service Industry via Canvas Network Indexing Books as a Career via Canvas Network International Finance via MRUniversity Introduction to Actuarial Science via edX Introduction to Applied Investing via Canvas Network Introduction to Ariba via openSAP Introduction to Global Hospitality Management via edX Introduction to Investments via edX Introduction to Project Management via edX Introduction to the Music Business via edX Leadership for Engineers via edX Leadership in Digital Transformation via openSAP Leading With Effective Communication (Inclusive Leadership Training) via edX Management for a Competitive Edge via Open2Study Operations Management via edX Optimization Methods for Business Analytics via edX Planning Change and Innovation via Open Education by Blackboard Project Management Basics via Open Education by Blackboard Project Management for Business Professionals via Canvas Network Project Management for Designers via Kadenze Results-Based Project...
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