Let's Stop Deluding Ourselves About Online Privacy

Why do we bother deluding ourselves with the notion of privacy? If we’re honest with ourselves, we know it simply no longer exists. The only way to ensure something remains somewhat private is to make sure it never escapes the confines of our noggins.

You may balk at the notion postulated in the previous paragraph, but if you really analyze it for a few moments with cold logic and available knowledge, rather than gut reaction and wishful thinking, you’ll realize it’s true.

The quantity of information bouncing around databases regarding each of us is mind boggling. “They” know things about us we don’t even know ourselves, and some of it may even be true.

Consider the information your creditors and their processing affiliates have on you. Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover know what you purchased, where, when, and from whom.

That Sears card you’ve carried for years, detailing all your purchases there, is in the databases of the issuing bank, Citibank/Citigroup, which provides credit card services for many merchants and retailers. How about that Walmart/Sam’s Club card? Monogram Bank/GE Capital thanks you for providing its databases with all that wonderful targeting information.

It doesn’t stop there. A recent article on The Ultimate Banking Guide Website says banks are starting to share data on which customers are unprofitable or might be high-risk. This allows credit card firms to close these customers' accounts and cancel their cards.

Do you shop at Amazon, Best Buy, or any of the many merchant portals? They have oodles of targeting data.

What about those discount cards just about every brick-and-mortar has you hauling around in your wallet or on your keychain? They’re not giving you those deals out of the goodness of their hearts. They’re aggregating your data, which they then sell, use to target you, or both.

Ever heard of the Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange, or the Automobile-Property Loss Underwriting Service? It’s the database where your insurance company tosses your information, ensuring that any insurer will have access forever to any claim you’ve ever filed. Ever! And don’t think they don’t have similar systems for the rest of your insurance needs, regardless of HIPAA or any other law.

Want to get a glimpse of the tip of the iceberg? Check out this LexisNexis page. You can order up to one copy a year of your insurance report, employment history report, and resident history report for free. You also can order a host of other reports for a fee, including vital records, healthcare credentials, and a disturbing bit more. And the ISO site offers even more.

Virtually every industry has an information clearinghouse accruing, storing, and passing out data on you. And there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. From your driving record to your taste in music, from your choice in hotels to your choice in entertainment, from the age of your children to the age of your dog, they know it all.

The Internet has made things far simpler for us, from shopping to communications, but it’s made it even easier for those who would prey on us. Until we stand up and fight back, forcing our lawmakers to create effective and useful regulations for these industries and practices, the abuse of our privacy will continue. And it will be aided by the spread of inexpensive broadband Internet services, which makes it easier to gather and transfer infomation.

What used to take tapes, drives, and reams of paper, as well as a squadron of operators and data entry personnel working for weeks at a time, now takes a few keystrokes or clicks.

And somehow, we manage to convince ourselves we have a modicum of privacy left in our lives.

Jonathan’s economic team: Tough task still ahead

As the nation’s economic woes continue even after successful elections, all eyes are on the new economic team of President Goodluck Jonathan.

But can the new team crack all the knotty issues plaguing an average Nigerian?

Will they be able to put food on the table of the hungry masses” What of our comatose infrastructure. Can this team fix it. Will they avoid the business-as-usual syndrome of their predecessors?
Well, going by the pedigree of who-is-who in the team, Nigerians have decided to set agenda for this dream team to help them hit the ground running.

As the nation eagerly awaits the return of the Managing Director of the World Bank, Dr (Mrs) Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala ,to lead the pack of other technocrats in President Jonathan’s economic team-expected to kickstart the nation’s transformation-no few Nigerians are apprehensive that the task ahead is definitely Herculean.

No thanks to the decades of neglect, corruption and maladministration that have painfully midwifed economic collapse, industrial shutdown, joblessness, mass poverty, dilapidated infrastructure, mounting domestic and foreign debts as well as insecurity of life, property and investments in the country.
Already financial experts have set agenda for the yet-to-be inaugurated economic team with a tall order to ensure fiscal discipline in the management of the nation’s vast resources. This will include but not limited to “the need to reduce oil dependence, increase in employment, resolve the banking crisis, restore investor confidence and optimism in the capital market, protect the naira value in the foreign exchange market, protect local industry, comply with World Trade Organisation (WTO) and articles, and ensure transparency in the management of oil revenues,” according to Financial Derivatives, an economic and financial advisory outfit.

But can this dream team pull strings that will catapult Nigeria into the arena of the 20 advanced economies by year 2020? Can they make Nigerians afford three square meals a day? Will their output encourage Nigerians to stay in Nigeria rather than trekking overseas via Libya? Well, the antecedents of who is who in the proposed team will go a long way to do justice to these questions.

Who are the members of the new team?
Touted as number one in the team is Madam Okonjo-Iweala, the Finance minister; Mr. Olusegun Olutoyin Aganga; the last Minister of Finance, who now mans the Trade and Investment Ministry; Dr. Shamsudeen Usman; Minister of the National Planning Commission, Professor Bart Nnaji, Minister of Power; Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, Petroleum Resources Minister; Prof Abubakar Sambo ,Special Adviser to the President on Energy and the yet-to-be-named Chief Economic Adviser.
Also in the team are Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi; the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria(CBN); Dr. Abraham Nwankwo, Director General of the Debt Management Office(DMO) and the Director General of Bureau of Public Enterprises(BPE), Ms Bolanle Onagoruwa.

eBay's CEO Discusses Q2 2011 Results - Earnings Call Transcript

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to eBay's Second Quarter 2011 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to Ms. Jennifer Cerran, Vice President of Investor Relations. Ma'am, you may begin.

Jenny Cerran

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us, and welcome to eBay's earnings release conference call for the second quarter of 2011. Joining me today on the call are John Donahoe, our President and Chief Executive Officer; and Bob Swan, our Chief Financial Officer. We're providing a slide presentation to accompany Bob's commentary during the call. This conference call is also being broadcast on the Internet, and both the presentation and call are available through the Investor Relations section of the eBay website at investor.ebayinc.com. In addition, an archive of the webcast will be accessible for 90 days through the same link.

Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that during the course of this conference call, we will discuss some non-GAAP measures when talking about our company's performance. You can find the reconciliation of those measures to the nearest comparable GAAP measures in the slide presentation accompanying this conference call. In addition, management will make forward-looking statements relating to our future performance that are based on our expectations, forecasts and assumptions and involve risks and uncertainties. These statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding expected financial results for the third quarter and full year 2011 and the future growth in the Payments, Marketplaces and GSI businesses. Our actual results may differ materially from those discussed in this call for a variety of reasons, including, but not limited to: global economic events, including sovereign debt uncertainties; changes in political, business and economic conditions; foreign exchange rate fluctuations; our ability to integrate, manage and grow businesses recently acquired or that may be acquired in the future, including GSI; our increasing need to grow revenues from existing users, particularly in more established markets; an increasingly competitive environment for our businesses; the complexity of managing an increasingly large enterprise with a broad range of businesses at different stages of maturity; our need to manage regulatory, tax, IP and litigation risks, including risks specific to PayPal, Bill Me Later and the financial industry; and our need to timely upgrade our technology and customer service infrastructure at reasonable cost, while adding products and features and maintaining site stability and performance. You can find more information about factors that could affect our operating results in our most recent will report on our Form 10-K and our subsequent quarterly report on Form 10-Q at investor.ebayinc.com. You should not rely on any forward-looking statements. All information on this presentation is as of July 20, 2011, and we do not intend and undertake no duty to update this information. With that, let me turn the call over to John.

'Buy as many Rollers as you want... but they won't make you happy'

Ron Ullah has a word of expert advice for husband and wife Colin and Chris Weir, Britain’s £161million EuroMillions Lottery winners — but first he must finish the delicate task of aligning the portholes of the Starship Enterprise.

‘The trouble is,’ says Ron, paintbrush hovering over his painstaking birthday cake creation, ‘there are only so many holidays you can take before it gets a bit samey. Blow a few million, by all means, but there will come a point when it all seems too easy.

‘Once you’ve seen the sunrise over the beach at Cyprus a couple of hundred times, it starts to feel a bit mundane.’
Simple life: Lottery winner Ron Ullah is happiest when at work in his cake shop

Simple life: Lottery winner Ron Ullah is happiest when at work in his cake shop

Ron speaks from experience. In October 2002, he scooped £5,177,425 on the Lottery and believed he’d been handed a golden key to paradise.

He was 57, had grafted since he left school at 15 and anticipated a long and much deserved retirement shuttling between homes in Florida, Cyprus and Essex. There were also his yachts and the Rolex on his wrist glinting in the sun.

So why, nine years on, is he once again back at work — running a successful cake-making business and working 12-hour days?
His daily commute from Wickford in Essex to his shop in Suffolk is a 100-mile round-trip. The Rolex is still on his wrist and there’s a sizeable diamond crucifix round his neck — but the rest of his outfit is distinctly High Street.

To be honest, he looks as if a holiday is exactly what he needs.

The answer is that Ron really loves creating cakes. The window of Carousel, his shop in Ipswich, is filled with gorgeous examples of his sugar-paste artistry.

Prime among them is a tiered jungle complete with waterfall and twining creepers — with every gorilla peeping from between individual leaves shaped by hand. The Starship Enterprise has been ordered for a little boy’s birthday.

But having invested wisely, Ron doesn’t have to labour for hours over marzipan for the cash — which, by the way, is coming along very nicely, thanks to some clever investments. He does it because he was bored simply by being rich.

Having ticked off the essentials on his fantasy shopping list, Ron looked round at his £155,000 Rolls-Royce Silver Seraph, his £1 million house, his en-suite bathrooms, the horses grazing in the paddock, the lake at the bottom of the lawns, and realised that life was empty without a job.

‘One thing you can’t buy is a sense of purpose,’ he says, perched on a stool in Carousel’s caramel-scented kitchen. ‘I’m very hands-on by nature and there I was, with everything my heart desired — except a goal to aim for.

‘If you’ve strived all your life and then, suddenly, what you were striving for is handed to you on a plate . . . it’s weird. It feels fantastic, yet at the same time there’s something missing.

‘When you first realise you’ve got all that money, you’re hit by about 100 emotions. I went cold — I still go cold thinking about  it — then I was euphoric, but then immediately this dark cloud of anxiety came over me and I started to worry.

‘You try to be rational, but you can’t be when you’ve suddenly got £5 million in your account. And I went a bit silly.’

Search Concluding for Ann Arbor City Admin

The two Ann Arbor city administrator finalists – Ellie Oppenheim and Steve Powers – wrapped up their two days of interviews in Ann Arbor with a Wednesday morning session that included presentations by both candidates and questions from city councilmembers.

For their 10-minute presentations, Oppenheim and Powers had been asked to talk about what they’d try to accomplish in their first 90 days on the job. They covered much of the same ground that they’d discussed during Tuesday’s round-robin interviews with councilmembers and senior staff, talking about how they’d familiarize themselves with the organization and the community of Ann Arbor. [See detailed Chronicle coverage of those Tuesday sessions for Powers and Oppenheim.]

When asked during the Q&A to describe the most challenging part of their presentation, both joked that it was handling PowerPoint – Oppenheim had difficulty advancing the slides and eventually enlisted the aid of a city staffer, and Powers’ presentation included a blank slide, because he couldn’t figure out how to insert the image he wanted to use. Powers also noted that it was difficult to know how much of his sense of humor to show in this context – his wife, for example, had advised him to delete some slides that he’d included.

Seven of the 11 councilmembers were on hand for the presentations and follow-up questions: Mayor John Hieftje, Mike Anglin (Ward 5), Marcia Higgins (Ward 4), Steve Kunselman (Ward 3), Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2), Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) and Sabra Briere (Ward 1). The other four councilmembers are expected to watch a video of the session prior to Monday’s council meeting. There will be a resolution on the July 18 agenda to nominate a candidate, but no name will be added to the resolution until the evening of the meeting.

Higgins, who’s chair of the search committee, told her council colleagues that on Monday a candidate will be nominated, a discussion of that nomination will take place, and hopefully the council will arrive at a consensus, she said. Or it’s possible that councilmembers will decide they don’t yet have an acceptable candidate, she added, and the process will continue.

However, based on a nearly hour-long discussion on Wednesday among councilmembers, it seems that a consensus is coalescing in favor of Powers – though both finalists were praised. Powers’ management style and familiarity with Michigan’s economy and governance structure were among the reasons cited by those councilmembers who are leaning toward hiring him.

This report briefly summarizes the presentations of Powers and Oppenheim, as well as the questions they were asked on Wednesday morning. The discussion among councilmembers at the end of the session is reported in detail.

How Much Does that Job with Groupon Pay?

If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to work for Groupon or what the job might pay, well this may be your chance to find out. JobHintz, a job search site that also provides reviews and advice from people on the inside, has recently published some Groupon job openings.

According to general manager of JobHintz, Carla Olson, most of Groupon’s new requisitions are in sales. The account executive position, or local ambassador for Groupon, for example, is an offsite position where employees connect with local businesses to build partnerships for Groupon. The position pays between $50,000 and $70,000 a year, which as Olson points out may not seem like a lot for someone experienced in sales but you don’t have to be a seasoned sales rep for this position. You just need to be out going, possess great people skills and have a creative knack for making the sale.

Groupon is also hiring onsite as well at both its Chicago and Palo Alto locations.

Software Engineers can expect to get paid typically $100,000 and $130,000 annually, while test engineers should expect to get compensated somewhat less: between $80,000 and $110,000 per year. Product managers should expect to make even more money than software engineers. Depending on the skills and qualifications, a product manager job at Groupon pays between $100,000 and $170,000, while Director level candidates should expect to get paid up to $190,000.

“Those salary ranges are quite typical in the heated technology market in Silicon Valley,” says Carla Olson. “But candidates should be aware that the competition for Groupon jobs is quite steep, since they hire only the best and the brightest.”

For all you writers out there, Groupon is hiring editors and writers. JobHintz is listing the base pay for editors at $55,000 to $80,000, though the job description states pay as considerably less at $45,000. Writing positions are full time in-house but Groupon will consider a relocation allowance. Salary is $37,000 and includes full benefits. I’m guessing the fun atmosphere makes up for the low pay.

Now you can book your airline ticket online and pay using cashU

Nowusers of cashU -the leading online payment gateway in the Middle East and NorthAfrica- can book their flight tickets online and pay using cashU through one ofthe region most respectful online travel agencies; selfbilet.com

Bylaunching this service cashU is now the region first prepaid online paymentmethod that offer its customers the opportunity of paying the cost of bookingairline tickets online using a safe and secure payment gateway.

Commentingon this news Martin Waldenstrom, CEO of cashU, said: "In line with ourcommitment to offer new services to our users, especially in new industriessuch as online booking, we are happy to announce our partnership with selfbilet.comand offer our users the opportunity to book their flight tickets online and payusing cashU and as a second phase our users will be able to book hotels andrent cars online from selfbilet.com and pay using cashU".

"Byadding cashU as a payment method in selfbilet.com we managed to integrate cashUgateway successfully into their Amadeus system which gives the possibility ofother airlines and/or travel agencies to add cashU as payment method easily andin the near future we will announce the launching of many similar services". Mr.  Waldenstrom concluded.

Celebratingthe launch of this new service, cashU have announced that they will belaunching a weekly sweepstake competition in which they will be rewarding anumber of their users with free tickets to Istanbul to spend a summer vacationthat cashU promised will be unforgettable.