In the course of our work at WebWatch, we spend a lot of time reviewing privacy policies. And most policies---good or bad---tend to have one thing in common: excessive wordiness.

For example, Yahoo's privacy policy runs to some 1,500 words, while WebMD's clocks in at more than 8,000 words. We don't hold verbosity against them, and rated both these policies as "excellent" on our HealthRatings.org site, since they both spell out exactly how they use your personal information. Both their policies are also well-organized, and WebMD even offers hyperlinks to take you to the relevant section.

But that said, there's something to be said for brevity, especially for consumers without the time or patience to wade through lengthy legalese. And while reviewing sites that sell shoes for one of our sister publications, ShopSmart, we ran across a privacy policy Hemingway himself would have found difficult to state more succinctly.

You can read the policy here, or save yourself a click and read on:

"Jildor Shoes will not sell, rent or share your personally identifiable information with any third party. Your information is used solely for the purpose of completing your purchase or contacting you regarding your purchase."

Posted by Jorgen Wouters at 03:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This story's a little old, but a fun read. Towards the end is this quote:
"The Internet's just a big bluff...If you can make a site look pretty and sound credible, you can pull inquiries in for just about anything and turn the Internet into one great sales-generation machine."
I can't really add or subtract much from that. I found this while preparing for a couple of panels next week for the 29th international ICANN meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico, which is open to the public.
Worth reading also is this profile of Kevin Ham. It may make you want to quit your day job.

Posted by Beau Brendler at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The U.S. media haven't covered this story much; I heard about it on Canadian radio this morning (via Sirius satellite in my car). For readers of this particular blog, this story is of interest when you consider the ways in which the Iraq war is being fought over the Web, the power of propaganda, and how hard it is to control. By the way, Canadian radio was attributing more than 140 U.S. deaths to various "Jubas," whose exploits frequently get uploaded to YouTube. CBC also said U.S. soldiers were taking pictures of themselves alive after being shot, defeating Juba's bullet with body armor, helmet or luck.

Posted by Beau Brendler at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ever get really annoying spam like this, that seems weirdly gymnastically able to get through firewalls (italic; errors left intact):
Hi,
Can we have a call scheduled sometime later this week, to discuss about our offer, which will help you enhance your lead pipeline and targeting you main market.
If you can send me your target criteria (business vertical, SIC code, job title, specific region), So that I can work on that and fetch you some sample according to your target criteria which will be at no cost. If you want detailed about our services that how could we improve your business in a cost effective way then just mail us.
If there is someone else in your organization whom I need to speak to, please let me know. (Please note: We are business group not Bulk message sender or spamer )
Await your response¹
Larry Roberts
Online Marketing Manager
800-870-3107
www.ListOrbit.Biz
No one answers that phone number, by the way. Of course the grammatically deficient last sentence in the note is a lie. And www.listorbit.biz is probably bogus. More on that in a minute.

This stuff comes from a spam site registered to Vinaya S. Kumar, 70/25, 80ft Circular Road, Koramangala 4th Block, Bangalore, Karnataka, India. If you feel so inclined, call Vinaya at +91-40890-72271 or e-mail him at techteam@stratmail.com and tell him to stop loading your mailbox with garbage.
Sending back the spam marked "unsubscribe" sometimes works, sometimes not. Last week, though, someone actually wrote me a personal note back, saying they weren't trying to spam, but to please put them in touch with the right person at Consumer Reports whom they could cold-call about something or other. This kind of thing is a violation of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley act and is against the law. Read more about pretexting here.
As for ListOrbit.biz, the site has that "out of the box" look to it, with a phone number no one answers, lots of spelling and grammatical errors, and a physical address that's actually a Houston mail drop. They've even posted an anti-spam policy. The domain is registered to a "Web Registrar" in London, England.

Posted by Beau Brendler at 02:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Readers of this blog know phishing scam e-mails range from the relatively unsophisticated to those that can fool financial services experts. I've pasted a middling sort of phishing letter below to make the point: If you're good at spelling and grammar, you can spot just about any phishing scam letter.
Most of my high school teachers were Jesuits, and it was Fr. Edward P. McTighe, S.J., that drilled the mechanics of grammar into my head. (Ironically, though, I owe my career to Mrs. Shuster, my 10th grade typing teacher).
So in honor of "Evil Eddie," as some students called him, here's how grammar and punctuation errors flag this note as flim-flam. Problems in italics, explanations in bold.

Dear Washington Mutual Customer,

Washington Mutual is constantly working to ensure security by regularly screening the banking accounts in our system. We recently reviewed your banking account, and we need more information to help us provide you with secure service. Until we can collect this information, your access to sensitive banking account features will be limited. We would like to restore your access as soon as possible, we apologize for the inconvenience. There's the first clue.

Evil Eddie would call that sentence a run-on. It's two separate sentences with subjects, verbs and direct objects ("for the inconvenience" is a noun clause). It needs a conjunction, like "and," but just a period after "possible" and a new sentence would be better.
Why is my banking account access limited ? This one's very minor, but there's an extra typographical space between the last letter of the sentence and the question mark.
Your banking account access has been limited for the following reason(s):

We have reason to believe that your banking account was accessed by a third party. Because protecting the security of your banking account(s) is our primary concern, we have limited your access to sensitive Washington Mutual banking account features. There's a big dangling modifier clause at the beginning of this sentence. A professional writer of memos would probably have switched the order: "We have limited your access to sensitive Washington Mutual banking account features, because protecting your account security is our primary concern." Actually, "sensitive Washington Mutual banking account features" is kind of a giveaway. Wny not just say: "We have limited your online access to your account."
We understand that this may be an inconvenience but please understand that this temporary limitation is for your protection. So here we have two complete sentences separated by a conjunction, which calls for a comma after "inconvenience."
Your case ID for this reason is 0xD2.0x8D.0xDF.0x4B.

How can I restore my account access ? Here's another extra space before a question mark.
Please Log On under your personal link into your banking account and update your account information:

0xD2.0x8D.0xDF.0x4B/online.wamu.com/
Who says "Please Log On" with three capital letters? Someone who learned English at Polytechni Bucuresti. And don't click on links in e-mails like this, but you knew that already.
Completing all of the checklist items will automatically restore your account access.
Actually, completing all of the checklist items will give some bunch of jolly lads in Plovdiv the info they need to clean you out.
Be aware that until we can verify your identity we will have no other liability for your account or any transactions that may have occurred as a result of your failure to upgrade your account as instructed above. Okay, that's just plain flapdoodle, besprinkled with some quasi-legality.

Sincerely,
Washington Mutual Security & Control Department. Okay, here's another little one: You don't put a period after a generic signature. Well, maybe in Kaliningrad, but not here.
© 2007 Washington Mutual All Rights Reserved
Thanks! I don't actually bank at WaMu, anyway, so you guys should buy better spam leads. Or steal better databases.

Posted by Beau Brendler at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)