I work for a medium sized corporation in a department that publishes a weekly newsletter coining a punny title related to it’s posted spot; the bathroom.
The newsletter itself is in it’s third release and like the rest of the releases, it has a way of swaying toward fear and protection rather than encouraging productivity and positive esteem. The first post was about the papers release, the second about “safe cell phone usage” and today’s release is about identity theft.
Identity theft is a growing problem world wide and unfortunately none of us are immune to it. There are easy steps you can take to protect your money, but for the most part, highly motivated criminals are going to win. The aforementioned newsletter however takes a different approach, offering a highly detailed explanation of identity theft and a list of 10+ steps to protecting your money all while keeping a fear-biased spin on it. Steps such as “shred all your papers IMMEDIATELY” to “never releasing any personal information to anyone”! My friend and I get a huge kick out of this, mocking the newsletter saying,
“Hello, my name is Bob!”
“Why, hello Bob, my name is undisclosed…”
The newsletter has good motives, but comes off humours because of how serious the writers take themselves. We don’t mean to laugh at it, but we can’t help ourselves. Often times I wonder, “why not offer tech news or company propaganda?” That’s more enjoyable to read rather than “YOUR IDENTITY IS AT RISK, PROTECT YOURSELF!!!” I imagine older, open minded individuals reading this information and progressively becoming more paranoid about the world around them. “They are after me… I just know it!”
The newsletter is a hub of information, or at least is meant to be. The writers, again, focus too much on the fear of the newsletter rather than keeping in mind the need to inform and not scare the crap out of. In the last issue, it was suggested that cell phone usage is a high risk security issue and we’re all better keeping them off except when needing to place a call. The newsletter’s writing suggested there are individuals staked out all over the city, waiting for your cell phone to log on to your provider network so they can steal your credentials. Even better, the newsletter suggested that our cell phones are at risk to becoming “microphones”. I found this to be humorous… “We don’t know where, we don’t know when, but someone is going to hack your cell phone and use it as a mic. That is all…” I understand these are real issue, but c’mon! Do you honestly think somebody wants to listen in on your calls just to hear how your shitty day at work went?
Along with all the what to do’s in that unlikely just in case issue, we are told that certain organizations, ZabaSearch in particular, is a company “who claims they are not villains”. If you have not used ZabaSearch before, you “have no idea who has your information and who can look at it”. I wasn’t really surprised by this statement… Did you know your credit report is accessible? ZabaSearch is seen in our newsletter as an evil company divulging personal information to the general public. In reality, ZabaSearch is a legitimate company who offers searchable functionality to an already existing database of information. Big deal!
Our weekly fear segment can be summed up in a few words, don’t disclose any work secrets outside of work! It is that simple… Do they need to know? No… THEN DON’T TELL THEM! Instead we are told that our cell phones are better used by not using them as well as our names should be kept private.
“I can neither confirm nor deny the existance of myself…”