Floozy Speak!

Phishing is out of control. Each month it gets worse and worse it seems like. Right when my local Bank One began to switch over to its new name of Chase, phisher's we're there in my email box. "set up that new account... attention needed!! your login will be lost!! hurry now!!" Phisher's are good at playing on peoples emotions. Right away i think of generation after generation of medical marketing firms that have mastered that art. Now I get to battle psychological warfare every time i open up my inbox.

We've started to see phishing in the global sense impact in our customers as well lately. Big business isn't completely clued into the fact just yet, at least from the user experience stand point. Basically if its not on the menu you don't probe it, however more often then not, we get to wander into that communication space and when we do I'm always interested in the email question.

Simply put, if I didn't ask for it, I better not see it. That's the customer mentality - just about everything is un-trustworthy.

Thats a sad state of net communication between brand identities and the customers that want too inspire and acquire.

In my head i picture a CEO saying "i got customers.. i just can't talk to them... they don't trust me." Thats the real skinny though.

Right off the bat, a strategy based on any form of email reliance is a bad idea in this phishing age. That sounds drastic but it'd do you more good to support email, yet really push a human or other communication offer instead. Secured RSS feeding maybe? I'm not sure. But the data is there and email is not to be trusted.

Most companies use email not to communicate as much as cross-sell and educate. In fact I'd love to do a study on just what percentage of communication a company wants to make with a user is really valid, worthy communication vs the sell. Everyone wants to "tell ya more" about the offers they have, however that kind of communication is just rampant for abuse in a phishing world. Companies need to rewind and focus on the customer, and what kind of world the customer is in. If my customer is under attack every day odds are I'd be better off to help get that customer some cover vs using the same delivery system the enemy is using.

Customers are forced to fend for themselves and have begun all kinds of counter-gurrellia tactics to fight back, most of which are paranoid, overcomplicated measures, but these are customers, everyday people - how do i protect myself in the physical world? I wear body armor, maybe get a clone of me, drive a hummer, drive a hummer than can go thru water, drive a hummer than can go thru water and is invisible, never leave the house, hire an army.. i mean thats crazy sure, but users are doing the exact same thing in terms of their usage of internet. They are making new ways to protect themselves in ways creators of the said systems probably never factored in.

Some customers start creating new identities online, new email accounts and start using them as trusted repositories. They are buckets, new, fresh, un-spammed to all hell areas where "for the moment" trust is ok. And everything is temporary online yet we lose sight of that fleeting notion cause we're so connected.

Phishing is just gonna get worse sadly. Heck anything I suspect I basically go to source, View, Source. Thats the only true thing i can use to see what's happening. And then it dawns on me, I'm spending 20 minutes to figure out if this email is real or not, am I that paranoid? Right away I think I should be doing something else, but the fact remains, i can't trust that email. The first thing i wanna do is call a human. We all know that drill these days.

The more intertwined the system gets the more I want to be free of the wires, I want to be able to switch off, connect on my terms whatever they may be, and business should support my freedom in that regard. Good companies will, and do just that.

Technorati Tags: experience, phishing, spam