climate and comms

In April this year,  Epsilon Data Management LLC  (one of the world's largest providers of marketing-email services) , a division of Alliance Data Systems Corp issued a statement, " On March 30th, an incident was detected where a subset of Epsilon clients' customer data were exposed by an unauthorized entry into Epsilon's email system. The information that was obtained was limited to email addresses and/or customer names only ." ( http://www.fastcompany.com/1744738/the-epsilon-breach-should-you-be-angry-worried-or-bored ) When it's all said and done, the Epsilon hack may be the largest name and email address breach in the history of the Internet.  Epsilon handles more than 40 billion emails annually and more than 2,200 global brands. If you are thinking you are safe because you opted-out of marketing emails, think again ( http://blogs.computerworld.com/18079/epsilon_breach_hack_of_the_century ) Epsilon required their customer

 If you live in the UK and are somehow involved in the business world and exposed to media you could not help but have noticed the extensive advertising campaign that HSBC has been running on its new (sic) ‘security device’ for online banking - Secure Key.    ( I was tempted to refer to them as  ‘ large UK bank’  - but it is so obvious who it is – no point in pretending. ) A lot of money has been thrown at this campaign – I would guess millions.  ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jx0Z5CiQMIw )   Full page spreads in large circulation newspapers cost big bucks not to mention prime time TV slots.   So here you have the worlds largest retail bank splashing millions on advertising and even more on a ‘cool’ little device that looks like a mini-calculator  - but basically a technology that has been around for about a decade.   This will be rolled out to 4m retail customers worldwide at a reported cost of up to £50 per pop! ( http://www.bankingtech.com/bankingtech/article.do?articleid=200002