Emotional Connection

It would not be Mother's Day without P&G making you shed tears. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B51Bs4u10ZA.

In the domain of marketing and branding, there's a concept called "emotional connection". Recall Petronas' videos released during Raya, Chinese New Year and Deepavali.

Sometimes brands can help people feel certain emotions, emotions that may even be only tangentially related to the products themselves. Brands can create tremendous appeal by linking to or promising desired emotions.

For instance, people long for freedom. Brands that offer people freedom tend to be in demand. Harley Davidson promises freedom of the road along with the comradeship of kindred spirits. The Marlboro Man was created to be a symbol of independence. In part, it was designed to make post-adolescent youth declare their independence from their parents (http://www.brandingstrategyinsider.com/)

The emotion that a brand evokes in someone — or more importantly, in a specific group of people — has a big impact on a company’s success or failure. Emotions play a huge role in how consumers act and react. Emotions drive decisions, prompt actions, and change mind-sets, leading to strong loyalty and a deep personal connection with a given brand that can extend beyond its rational attributes.

These emotional connections are more psychological than logical, and are usually subconscious feelings. Brands that develop distinct personas in people’s minds project an image that people want to buy into. Someone may buy a product because it makes them feel smart, affluent, or sophisticated (e.g., “I’m really stylish and have good taste because I wear these shoes.“) Generally, people buy products that are consistent with their positive, or aspirational, image of themselves.

One of the best-known books about the importance of emotional connections between consumers and brands is Lovemarks - The Future Beyond Brands. Written in 2004 by Kevin Roberts, CEO Worldwide of Saatchi & Saatchi, the book tells the evolutionary story of how products, trademarks, and brands become “Lovemarks.” In this groundbreaking book, Roberts said that by building respect and inspiring love, businesses can move the world. When brands — and branded content, by extension — make strong emotional connections with consumers, the feeling goes beyond brand loyalty and leaves an indelible mark that cannot be replaced.

Behavioral psychologists have long argued that only 30% of human decisions and behaviors are actually driven by rational considerations. This means that more than 70% of consumer loyalty and spending decisions are based on emotional factors.

Marketers that look beyond the transaction to focus on the softer side of the business relationship - the emotional connection between the brand and the customer - will gain a distinct competitive advantage.

Despite many marketers' belief that a brand's emotional benefits are important to consumers, nearly two-thirds of brand messages focus on the brand's rational/functional element.  (source:http://www.ana.net/content/show/id/579 )

Fifty percent of every buying decision is driven by emotion. Which, for anyone responsible for bringing a product to market, makes a Forrester Research survey a concern. It reported that 89% of the respondents felt no personal connection to the brands they buy. Some product specialist have identified eight forces that have a profound and lasting impact on a product’s relationship with its audience http://bit.ly/8Keys

What emotional connection can healthcare brands develop?

Cleavage goes to battle

Source:  Turkish TV presenter fired over low-cut dress after criticism

How do you know whether a regime that frees women to wear Islamic headscarves at work is liberal and furthering democracy, or Islamist and restricting it?

The question concerns Turkey's government, which in the space of a few days has ended a headscarf ban for civil servants (except in the judiciary and security services), but also caused a female TV music-show presenter to be fired for showing too much cleavage.

The headscarf ban was a piece of unabashed social engineering introduced in the 1920s to make Turkey, the rump of the former Ottoman Empire and Islamic Caliphate, secular. If you are liberal and not Islamophobic, ending the ban is a good thing: Women should not be excluded from the workplace just because they are devout and believe this requires covering their hair, period.

But what if the change -- which Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan introduced as part of a broad "democratization" package -- is part of a wider plan of social re-engineering, this time designed to impinge on the liberties of non-religious conservatives? If so, the numerous cases in which women were discriminated against, fired or passed over for promotion for wearing a headscarf even outside of work would now be repeated in reverse: Women who don't wear headscarves to work, and men whose wives don't cover their hair, will be discriminated against, fired and passed over for promotion.

Turkey's secularists say this is already happening to men whose wives show their locks. That's hard to prove, but the real issue is trust -- secularists believe the worst of Erdogan's intentions. Are they right?

The firing of a TV presenter, Gozde Kansu, this week is indicative. Huseyin Celik, spokesman for the ruling Justice and Development Party attacked Kansu (without actually naming her) for wearing a dress with a plunging neckline while on the air. A few days later, she was fired. There are a few points to make.

First, Celik should watch more Italian TV -- he would then understand that Kansu is a model of shy decorum. Second, Celik's words were as follows: “We don’t intervene against anyone, but this is too much. It is unacceptable,” according to Hurriyet Daily News. He later complained that it wasn't his fault that she was fired, and he had a right to express his opinions.

None of this is credible. Celik knows what "unacceptable" means; he knew that Kansu was on ATV television, which belongs to a company called Calik Holding; and he knew that Calik's chief executive officer is Erdogan's son-in-law, Berat Albayrak. There is no coincidence or unintended consequence here. Celik wants to re-engineer Turkish TV. 

Basic Instinct

Salam Eid Mubarak :-) As our friends join the balik kampong exodus, I'm reminded of what balik kampong means to me.

My “balik kampong” means ascending to being human again. Each Raya Balik Kampong reminds me of the profound journey I took in my early secondary school life. In those days, every month I would balik kampong - a journey that took almost five hours on foot and a river crossing in a sampan.

On one of those occasions, I arrived home and handed over to my mum an application form for a scholarship of eight ringgit a month from my school. My mum took the form, tossed it into the wood fire as she was cooking (She didn’t need to read it as she is illiterate). That profound moment is the most spiritual thing on earth residing in me - my north star.

Recently, I was reminded of that moment as I took the Menara KH lift on my way to the KL office on the 25th floor. Together in the lift was a pretty lady and her colleague with a trolley load of Raya gift baskets and hampers. She was busy ticking off the names of recipients on her long list. If I were to receive one of those Raya gifts, my mum would ask if I earned it. Still, she would insist that I’m not entitled to it and that I should not even feel entitled to receiving free gifts or to things that I do not earn.

The sight of Raya gift hampers in the office cuts to the quick of my psyche with searching questions asked of my basic human soul - the question of whether I should feel that I am really entitled to many things in life such as having no obligation to pay income tax, or a parking space in front of the office, or a bumiputra status or a big office room or a company driver to do my personal errands, or hand-outs from the Government or Raya gift hampers from the vendors. Should I feel entitled to things even if I don’t earn them?

Feeling entitled has been woven into the fabrics of our culture as amplified by the “No Gift Policy” notice placed by a Fortune Global 500 company, Petronas. The notice is placed at the registration counter of the Petronas Twin Towers. (Petronas climbed to 68th spot on the Fortune Global 500 list, up from previous ranking of 86th).

When I receive a Raya gift hamper from a vendor, is it for me or for my office? Should I take it home or should I leave it in the office to be shared with my colleagues? As I balik kampong for the Raya, I hope my north star guides me to feel that a no-gift policy takes me to my basic human being.

Selamat Hari Raya, maaf zahir batin

Orgasmic Moments - New Indicators of Progress

If only Prime Minister Najib cares to measure how many orgasmic moments we have in a year. Isn't it our happiness and well-being the KPIs that matter most? Not GDP! Here's why.  
1.   Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert says our beliefs about what will make us happy are often wrong -- a premise he supports with intriguing research, and explains in his accessible and unexpectedly funny book, Stumbling on Happiness. Dan Gilbert believes that, in our ardent, lifelong pursuit of happiness, most of us have the wrong map. In the same way that optical illusions fool our eyes -- and fool everyone’s eyes in the same way -- Gilbert argues that our brains systematically misjudge what will make us happy. And these quirks in our cognition make humans very poor predictors of our own bliss.

2.   Jack Welch, who is regarded as the father of the “shareholder value” movement that has dominated the corporate world for more than 20 years, has said it was “a dumb idea” for executives to focus so heavily on quarterly profits and share price gains. His comments, made in an interview for the FT’s series on the future of capitalism, come as the economic crisis has caused a radical rethinking by many leading executives and policymakers.

3. “Gross National Product counts air pollution, and cigarette advertising and . . . the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play . . . the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life wothwhile.” Robert Kennedy, 1968.

The above three topics may seem totally unrelated. However, upon putting my radical rethinking hat while considering Prime Minister Najib’s key result areas and gov’t KPIs in relation to measures of progress of Sarawak people, these three subjects are indeed, totally related. Governments, businesses and citizens must focus on what really make us happy.

Sarawakians must now set out a radical proposal to the new state government to guide the direction of modern Sarawak and the lives of people who live in them. In contrast to the conventional narrow focus on economic indicators, we must call on the new state government to directly and regularly measure people’s subjective well-being: their experiences, feelings and perceptions of how their lives are going, as a new way of assessing societal progress.
Some 40 years ago, in my kampong, my parents and siblings lived better, healthier and happier lives, despite no electricity, no roads and none of today’s modern necessities. We cooked over wood fire, got our water from the cool mountain stream and plenty of harvests from the farms.

Today, the rivers and streams have fewer fishes, we use too much pesticides in the farms, we live too much on credit with our education, house and car loans and we have to work harder to pay many bills and to cope with higher and higher costs of living. In all, I’m more miserable than I was 40 years ago.

The roads and electricity supply in the modern kampong today are not making our planet any better. In fact, these modern amenities only serve to increase our carbon footprint. We’ll be leaving to the future generations, a planet that’s degenerated and too costly to clean up. Our Malaysian education system is failing our children and educating them out of their natural creativity. And why can't the government hospital in Bau provide the same quality of clinical outcome as the Gleneagles Hospital or Cleveland Clinic?


Not only our beloved Sarawak, but the whole world is facing a breakdown of communities, environmental degradation, global warming, continuing poverty, and climbing rates of hunger. It is the perfect opportunity to reconsider development, progress, and purpose in terms of what is truly most important in life. Development is under scrutiny as a cycle of more production for more consumption to boost gross national product. There is an urgency to reconsider development in a broader, holistic manner and reclaim the concept of progress as genuine desirable change.

Economists, policymakers, reporters, and the public rely on the GDP as a shorthand indicator of progress; but the GDP is merely a sum of national spending with no distinctions between transactions that add to well-being and those that diminish it.

Mike Pennock from Genuine Progress Indicators (GPI) Atlantic argued that measures such as Gross National Happiness provide a guideline for developing a framework of national accounting where suitable monetary value can be placed on assets such as the environment and voluntary work. Thus costs and benefits can be calculated and accounted for in a balance sheet, and policymakers in turn cannot overlook vital aspects of human, social, and natural capital.

Some pioneering visions of alternative progress have emerged in Asia, chief among them the concept of Gross National Happiness as coined by Former King of Bhutan Jigme Wangchuck. Gross National Happiness has four pillars: the promotion of equitable and sustainable socioeconomic development; preservation and promotion of cultural values; conservation of the natural environment; and establishment of good governance. Gross National Happiness values are measured by tracking wellness in seven domains: economic, environmental, physical, mental, workplace, social, and political.

Currently there are two parallel global movements. The first can be characterized by the World Economic Forum, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund, supporting traditional notions of development. The second is the World Social Forum, Gross National Happiness, and allied movements that seek to redefine progress.

The new Sarawak state government, as a mainstream policy-making body, can be more sensitive to alternative approaches and start to measure Gross National Happiness and translate the indicators and data into public policy.

If Sarawak’s new policymakers measure what really matters to people—health care, safety, a clean environment, and other indicators of well-being—economic policy would naturally shift towards sustainability and real progress and happiness for all Sarawakians.

References:

Redefining Progress: Genuine Indicators of Progress

National Accounts of Well-being

Oxford University Human Development Initiative

Augmented Reality Playboy

Now if only Playboy hopped on the Augmented Reality bandwagon . . . aahh . . . the possibilities.

The December’s edition of Esquire magazine is a special “Augmented Reality” edition. A colleague bought it only because of the specialty and he wasted no time in getting me to check it out. It allows the reader to use custom-designed software and a webcam to access 3D animated and video content and to interact with the pages being viewed. Of course, my initial response was simply wishing I was holding a Playboy magazine with the augmented reality instead.

The augmented reality features are the 3D cover with Robert Downey Jr presenting weather-changing fashion portfolio, a pretty lady presenting time-sensitive funny jokes, a photo slideshow and a Lexus ad. To experience the augmented reality, you need to download the software for Esquire’s website. When the software is activated, it translates a black and white marker on the printed page into a video sequence enhanced by 3D animation on the PC screen. Tilting and turning the page produces different scenarios on the screen.

My immediate feeling about this is that I felt like a toddler with a new fancy toy. Esquire’s market must be toddlers. No doubt Esquire’s design team did some really great work here, but I don’t think it’s a good representation of a promising technology. Video content such as these can be and are already being delivered without having to download a software and waving a magazine in front of your PC’s webcam.

If you're curious and have RM26.00 to spare for the magazine, check out the video here and download the software here.

Threesome, still no choice in Swingers Club

While many join the swingers club, some stick to one. While some prefer to do it slowly, others tell us to cut the bull and get on with it. Before you make the cut, consider a sexier option, if there is one. Coming ahead of P1’s shout to cut to WiMax will be 4G wireless broadband called LTE.

While many carriers around the world are planning 4G networks, for our only 3 wireless operators, having built their networks using the global standard GSM, the current 3G wireless technology called HSPA still has some legs left. If a lot of Malaysians make the same choice as I do to ignore the shout to cut to WiMax, by end of 2010, WiMax could be dead.

Celcom, Maxis and Digi have not stopped shouting about being the fastest and widest wireless broadband as they all continue to provide mediocre speed and while many of us swing from one to the other. They may likely upgrade existing infrastructure with the latest 3G wireless technology, HSPA Plus, to increase speed. HSPA Plus will match the speeds of current 4G such as WiMax. Current 3G HSPA offers download speeds less than 700 Kbps, but typically I get less than 100 Kbps.

4G WiMax download speed is between 4 Mbps and 6 Mbps, about the same as HSPA Plus’ speed. WiMax’s slow rollout and lack of mobile devices such as WiMax embedded phones will eventually kill it. Nokia, one of the initial backers of WiMax, cancelled its N810 WiMax Edition tablet and no one is likely to develop such devices until WiMax network is more extensive.

Because there is little difference in speed between WiMax and HSPA Plus, many operators worldwide are opting to invest in upgrading to HSPA Plus while planning to eventually migrate to LTE. This means that we’ll be getting a lot of 3G HSPA Plus mobile devices in 2010, but probably not too soon in Malaysia as our operators are typically slow in rolling out advanced technology.

Assessing the 4G landscape, LTE or Long Term Evolution, is likely to dominate over WiMax. Some experts say initial speed will exceed 4 Mbps and expected to be within 15 Mbps to 20 Mbps. Elsewhere, AT & T, Verizon and T-Mobile will be launching their LTE networks in 2010 and 2011. It's OK if you've made the cut. Expect MCMC to put their act together about LTE in a decade from now.

While we Malaysians, will continue to be contented with whatever slow networks the 3 telcos provide us. And we really don't have a choice, even with 3 operators, they're all the same.

Playboy on Sarawak Civil Service Innovation Portal

Innovation Portal!!! My foot!

Chief Minister Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud recently launched the Sarawak Civil Service Innovative Ideas Portal (SCS-ii). The portal hopes to transform the state civil service into a more resourceful, creative and innovative organization. State secretary Datuk Morshidi Abdul Ghani said the SCS-ii aims to encourage officers, teams or agencies to propose new and innovative ideas that could make positiv difference to the civil service.

Here's my smart ass idea that would definitely serve all the above purposes - REMOVE Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud and REPLACE him with Mr. Baru Bian.

After accessing the portal, I have a fair idea of the kind of innovation that Sarawakians will continue to be getting if Taib Mahmud remains as Chief Minister for another month.

The portal takes a while to load. When it has been loaded on your browser, you get a full blank screen. You'll need to scroll down one full page before you get to the content.

Ahhhh . . . so much for innovation.

Who ever designed and developed the website can learn a lot from Playboy. And it's free.

How Journalists In Sarawak Have Better Sex

As of October 2008, the Christian Science Monitor, http://www.csmonitor.com/, century-old newspaper and winner of 7 Pulitzer Prizes, switched its daily to entirely Web.

Read more here http://www.tinyurl.com/scimonitor. Several other great old newspapers have gone Web-only as well.

We continue to witness the rise and fall of species as evolution presents a different playground for newspapers and journalists. Are we witnessing that soon, there may be no need, not only for newspapers, but also no need for organizations of journalists?

The pressure from the suppressed Malaysians has hastened this process of evolution. Can we have a guided pathway to evolve?

The investigative piece, published by the Los Angeles Times on July 12, highlights a pathway to the evolution of alternative news sources and journalism in Malaysia. The piece is about the failure of a nursing board that oversees 350,000 registered nurses to remove nurses with histories of misconduct, drug abuse, negligence, violence against patients and incompetence. If these nurses were fired from one hospital for such misdeeds, they simply took their licenses down the street to another hospital, often to begin a new cycle of mistreatment and endangerment.

Read more here http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-nurse12 2009jul12,0,2185588.story.

One thing that stands out from the report is that it was written and reported by two reporters, Charles Ornstein and Tracy Weber, who do not work for the Los Angeles Times. They work at ProPublica, http://www.propublica.org/ , a New York–based non-profit and nonpartisan team of investigative journalists founded in 2008 and funded by philanthropy.

Certainly no blogger would have the luxury of such time for the many painstaking months to assemble the evidence necessary to demonstrate that it was taking the nursing board unconscionable lengths of time to dig into these cases. Reporters risked being sued for libel or slander if they misidentified any of the miscreant nurses or mischaracterized their behavior. No bloggers can afford to lose - or even to defend - a RM10-million libel case. Databases needed to be built, analyzed, and made Web-friendly. Few bloggers have the quantitative or technical skills to do this.

Perhaps then, that’s the reason Malaysian bloggers prefer to blog about biased opinions, hearsay, rumours, gossips and half-truths.

The LA Times’ piece amply demonstrates the importance of journalism and of journalistic organizations like the LA Times and ProPublica. Without such people and institutions, there is no way such a report would have emerged on the Web.

Malaysians need an institution like ProPublica to extend the practice of investigative or “accountability” journalism. The institution can empower citizens by creating a database enabling anyone to review budget and federal stimulus spending down to the kampong level. Bloggers can dig into the database to produce stories on the impact of the spending in their communities. At least, with that institution, we can minimize the threat to accountability and thus to our democracy.

The process of finding and communicating news may no longer require newspapers. But the process will still require journalism and journalists, to smoke out the most difficult-to-report situations, to test glib assertions against the facts, to probe for the carefully contrived hoax. These are reporting activities that take a great deal of time, money, and skill.

Today, newspapers like The Star, The Borneo Post, The Eastern Times and the New Straits Times publish only crappy work of inexperienced reporters and the usual political spins. Now, these newspapers have become robbers of the important bulwark of our democracy.

We need the kind of journalism that is intended to shine a spotlight on abuse of power and failure to uphold the public interest, and by so doing to give the public the information needed to produce positive change.

Guess how many investigative journalists are on the payroll of Borneo Post, NST and The Star, compared to total staff?

Mainstream media have no reporters digging into possible domains of corruption. This means that not only is there corruption that won’t be reported, but also that politicians, cronies, and others who might have toed the line before will now be tempted to cross it, because nobody will be watching. Who will be watching over to ensure that abuses highlighted in the Auditor General’s report do not get repeated year after year and that the culprits do not continue to stay in their positions?

Institutions like ProPublica can save our democracy and provides the pathway to evolve the Malaysian blog sphere.

Three Out Of Ten Prefer Mobile Phones Over Sex

Since the past several weeks, a few of my office colleagues have been talking ecstatically about getting company-issued smart phones. We have probably come to the time when finally, mobile phones are better than sex or nasi dagang ( a Terengganu staple diet). Just a few months ago I came across a survey conducted amongst 1,000 people in Britain which found that 85 per cent of people would rather give up chocolate, sex or alcohol for a month than their mobile phone handset.

An annual survey commissioned by Samsung Mobile to determine just how much of a priority people give to their cell phones found that three out of ten people said they’d give up sex for a year rather than giving up their mobile phones. Asked which they'd prefer -- sex or keeping their cell phone -- 36 percent of women interviewed and 15 percent of the men selected the phone. (Does this explains why 3 out of every 10 new marriages in Terengganu ends up in divorce in 3 to 5 years?).

OK girls, here’s the mobile phone, now gimme the sex!

You’d have thought that only people having affairs would never let go of their mobile phones (which would always be on vibrate mode). So that seems to unveil a new truth – tantric sex is in the mobile phone. Or have 36% of women arrived at the age of phone sex?

With Gartner’s report that 269.1 million mobile phones were sold worldwide in Q1 2009 ( a 8.5% decrease from Q1 2008), does it look like mobile phones is now replacing sex as a fundamental part of our being? Or is it going to be smartphones?

According to Gartner, worldwide smartphone sales in Q1 2009 surpassed 36.4 million units, a 12.7% increase from Q1 2008. Smartphone sales represented 13.5% of all mobile device sales in Q1 2009, compared with 11% in Q1 2008.


AdMob’s Mobile Metrics Report indicates that mobile web is on for explosive growth. The smartphone, iPhone and its non-smartphone counterpart, the iPod Touch, is powering the growth of mobile web. According to AdMob, these two devices accounts for 43% of all mobile web data traffic worldwide. According to Gartner, the Android smartphones sales will grow dramatically to be the iPhone’s contender and overtaking Symbian, Windows Mobile and Blackberry smartphones.

Could the smartphones be the thing that replace sex as our fundamental being? Or could it be the iPhone?

Naked on Facebook, Orgy in Pulau Perhentian

News of wild, naked teenage parties on beautiful Pulau Perhentian, Terengganu, brings to mind our narcissistic tendency to enjoy sharing as much as possible.

The fact that the 200 teenagers who attended the sex orgy on the island were invited via Facebook highlights how social networks have gotten us in touch with our inner exhibitionist.

Many of us now get up in the morning and immediately update our Facebook or Twitter account. We have pictures of ourselves tagged by others on Facebook and these are pictures we may actually want to hide.

Some Facebook users talk about their antidepressants or post pictures of themselves violating the law or upload videos of themselves in compromising positions. Two Domino’s employees were fired for such a stunt and another company fired an employee who was actively on Facebook while on medical leave. There are others sending naked or semi-naked pictures of themselves via their cell phones.

There was the “Quiet” project run by Internet entrepreneur Josh Harris. Harris asked 100 people to live under constant surveillance in an underground bunker for 30 days, broadcasting all their actions to everyone else in the space. The project demonstrated that we would sacrifice privacy for public recognition.

As we continue to display our lives to the eyes of the World Wide Web, are we trumping our very notion of and right to privacy? Are we over-sharing personal information on Facebook? Are we inviting voyeurism into our lives as we frantically update our Twitter accounts from our Blackberrys and celebrating when we gain a new follower?

According to a study of Internet users 18 and older, a full 60% don’t worry about the amount of information that is available about them online, and only 38% have taken measures to limit such information.

If you care about privacy, the World Wide Web is a scary place. If you understand the implications of where and how your Facebook postings, Youtube videos or Gmail and Yahoo emails are stored, you might be more careful or not use these everyday tools as often.

Not only could those in employment get fired for those regrettable postings, but those looking for jobs could also find difficulty getting jobs as more employers turn to social networks to screen potential employees. The many Sarawakian teenagers and students who flaunt their pub romps and drinking sprees on Facebook may need to tone down on such postings. If there are pictures of a company manager or CEO at a beer bash 20 years ago, it could change things. JPA may withdraw your scholarship for an anti-establishment comment that your college mate didn’t like.

The uproar over CTOS, the credit tip-off service that banks in Malaysia use, has not generated enough concern for our own privacy, even though CTOS helped make our lives really miserable by aggregating our personal information and providing them to banks without our consent. What would it take for us to be really concerned about our privacy on social networks and other channels? It would need a big enough and a costly enough unfortunate incident. The following incidences give us hindsight and a glimpse of what could be the future.

1. Persistent Cookies Enforcement.

A new precedent may be set soon for governments around the world to follow as the US government is proposing that government agencies use single-session and multi-session cookies, including persistent cookies, to track users – as long as security and privacy standards governing the collection and tracking of information are met. The broad use of Web cookies on government sites could allow the mass collection of personal information. It won’t be long before the Malaysian government follow suit.

2. Deep Packet Inspection.

Webwise, a behavioural advertising technology from Phorm, a London-based startup has created a privacy controversy. Webwise uses “deep packet inspection”, which lets it see the content of Web traffic so that it may better track consumer behaviour and creates profiles that let it serve up more targeted ads. Several British ISPs say they would use Webwise to serve up ads more effectively. The US government has begun deliberations on permitting deep-packet inspection.

Already the Malaysian government has the capability to eavesdrop our cell phone conversations. The government could already have an arsenal of profiling data that could be used to influence voters and the public.

3. IP Address.

The German courts are in the process of considering whether an IP address is personally identifiable information that needs to be protected. No matter what the courts decide, citizens and consumers must regard their IP address as akin to their IC number.

4. Tidbits That Marketers Drool Over.

When Facebook implemented its Beacon application, tens of thousands of users revolted. The application is a targeted advertising tool that broadcast what Facebook users were buying (at Beacon’s partner sites) by posting ”stories” about it on their status feeds. While there are plenty of Facebook users who wanted to know what their friends were buying, there were also those who didn’t want that information public. One guy bought a nice ring as a surprise for his wife, who subsequently saw it on his Facebook page and asked him who it was for.

5. Online Prowlers.

We’ve seen postings of people harassing each other on Facebook. Soon, companies will have to deal with employees harassing each other in public via Facebook. Especially when there is a sense of anonymity for people when they sit in front of a computer. They say things to a computer they wouldn’t to a real person.

6. Location Aware.

You may have used Google Maps and experienced the way Google Maps’ Street View exposes location information. Angry activists have mashed up Google Maps with a public donations database and revealed home addresses of people who contributed money to defeat their cause.

Can the majority remain unconcerned with the repercussions that sharing personal information online might bring?

Watch for status update that says, "On the way to Pulau Perhentian".

The Sexy Spy Is Your Cell Phone

Your cell phone’s battery suddenly runs out faster than usual even when you have not been talking more? Your cell phone is unusually warmer even in between calls? An unusual annoying pulse buzzing while you’re on a call or between calls? You seem to have trouble shutting it off, or it stays lit up after you’ve powered down? The phone sometimes lights up when you aren’t making or receiving a call, or using any other function?

Your cell phone could be transmitting every word you say, every text message you send or receive (even if you’ve deleted them) and your exact location.

Even when your cell phone is turned off, it could still be used to listen to you and what goes on around you.

Most governments get their countries’ telcos to acquire and install systems that allow them to listen to any citizen’s calls or to track their location. It would be naive to think that Malaysian government does not eavesdrop. But I believe the government does not listen to you, unless you’re a gangster boss, or someone considered a threat. Or an opposition politican???

Your cell phone connects you to the world, but it could also be giving anyone from your boss to your wife a window into your every move. The same technology that lets you stay in touch on-the-go can now let others tap into your private world — without you ever even suspecting something is awry.

As an individual you can easily, in about 2 to 10 minutes, bug someone’s cell phone, enabling you to eavesdrop on every conversation, text message, website visit, and track every where the person goes. When the cell phone is turned off, you can turn on its microphone and remotely listen to what the person is doing.

How To Spy Using Cell Phone

Do you want to secretly spy on SMS text messages, calls, GPS locations and other confidential info of your child’s, spouse’s, girlfriend’s, competitor’s, boss’ or staff’s cell phone?

Before you can spy on a cell phone you need to know the following facts.

To spy on a given cell phone you should make sure that the target cell phone is compatible with the cell phone spy software. Cell phone spy softwares are compatible with the following type of phones (operating systems).

1. Symbian OS (Most Nokia Phones)
2. Apple iphone
3. Windows Mobile

Today most of the modern cell phones are loaded with one of the above three operating systems and hence compatibility doesn’t pose a major problem. There exists many cell phone spy softwares on the market to accomplish this job and hence people often get confused about which cell phone spy software to go for. Top rated cell phone spy software include Mobile Spy and FlexiSpy.

These are hybrid spy software/service which allows you to spy on your target cell phone in real time. This unique system records the activities of anyone who uses the cell phone. For this you need to install a small application onto the cell phone. This application starts at every boot of the phone but remains stealth and does not show up in the running process list. It runs in the background and will spy on every activity that takes place on the phone, including logging:

1. Calls Log – Each incoming and outgoing number on the phone is logged along with duration and time stamp.
2. Every text message/MMS is logged even if the phone’s logs are deleted. Includes full text.
3. The phones’s current location is frequently logged using GPS when signal is available.
4. Each address entered into Internet Explorer (or any browser) is logged.

· These cell phone spy software works in total stealth mode. The person using the phone can never come to know about the presence of this software.

Simple surveillance

You don’t have to plant a James Bond-style bug to conduct surveillance any more. A service called World Tracker (available on in UK) lets you use data from cell phone towers and GPS systems to pinpoint anyone’s exact whereabouts, any time — as long as they’ve got their phone on them.

All you have to do is log on to the web site and enter the target phone number. The site sends a single text message to the phone that requires one response for confirmation. Once the response is sent, you are locked in to their location and can track them step-by-step. The response is only required the first time the phone is contacted, so you can imagine how easily it could be handled without the phone’s owner even knowing.

Cell phone apps like Loopt and the new Google Latitude also allow you to track your friends' physical locations, and be tracked in return.

Advanced Eavesdropping

Once connected, the service shows you the exact location of the phone by the minute, conveniently pinpointed on a Google Map. The company has indicated plans to expand its service to other countries soon.

So you’ve figured out where someone is, but now you want to know what they’re actually doing. With software like FlexiSpy and Mobile Spy, you can listen in, even if they aren’t talking on their phone. Dozens of other programs are available that’ll turn any cell phone into a high-tech, long-range listening device. They run virtually undetectable to the average eye.

FlexiSpy, for example, promises to let you “catch cheating wives or cheating husbands” and even “bug meeting rooms.” Its tools use a phone’s microphone to let you hear essentially any conversations within earshot. Once the program is installed, all you have to do is dial a number to tap into the phone’s mic and hear everything going on. The phone won’t even ring, and its owner will have no idea you are virtually there at his side.

It’s Totally Illegal

You might be asking how this could possibly be legal. Turns out, it isn’t – at least, not in the ways I’ve just described. Much like those fancy smoking devices designed “for tobacco use only,” the software itself gets by because of a disclaimer saying it doesn’t endorse any illegal use.

Can the government use your cell phone records to track your physical location without first obtaining a warrant based on probable cause? My opinion on the matter is “no”. Any government applications for cell site location tracking information made without showing sufficient need for this kind of sensitive information should not be granted by authorities or the courts of law.

Even for our government to eavesdrop on you – it’s illegal.

Surveillance intensive future is inevitable.

A surveillance intensive future is inevitable. And cell phone tracking will be a common law enforcement investigative technique.

On the commercial side, the uses of location tracking are endless. And many of them may well turn out to be things people like. But a key principle of privacy, accepted around the world as part of the core fair information principles, is that information collected for one purpose shouldn’t be used for other purposes without people’s affirmative permission. If someone wants to sign up for a friend-finding service and understands fully what this means for their privacy (and hopefully has the ability to turn it on and off), that’s one thing. But people who are just using their mobile phones for texting and calling friends and family do not expect that companies will exploit the side effects of how cell phones work for other, unrelated purposes that invade their privacy.

Protecting Your Cell Phone

Unfortunately, there isn’t much you can do to safeguard your cell phone just yet. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time until we see Kaspersky or McAfee-style programs to firewall your phone and keep intruders out. For now, though, the only sure-fire form of protection is to keep a close guard on your phone. Don’t accept Bluetooth connections unless you know what they are. Most important, make sure no one has access to install something when you aren’t watching. Otherwise, they may soon be watching you when you least expect it.

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