Posts Tagged consumer
Consumer outlook improving
The consumer’s outlook is improving, according to the January Consumer Reports Index, a measure of overall consumer financial health. The study reports that stress levels have diminished, financial difficulties have moderated compared to past months, and the strong retail performance of the holiday season is an important marker that Americans may be willing to engage and spend once again.
The Consumer Reports Index captures respondents’ attitudes, asking if they are feeling better or worse off than a year ago. When the index is greater than 50, more consumers are feeling positive about their situation. When it is below 50, more consumers are feeling worse. The Sentiment Index can vary from a high of 100 to a low of 0.
Posted by eBrand Media Research Department in Trend Tracker on January 23rd, 2012
Why give up privacy? Because everybody else is doing it!
By Bob Sullivan, The Red Tape Chronicles
Would you share the most intimate details of your life with a stranger, such as cheating on your taxes or sleeping with a friend’s spouse? You’d be more likely to tell if you thought everyone else was doing it, say a group of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University.
The results of their study could help explain the slow but steady march toward “anything goes” behavior on social networking sites like Facebook, where users are notorious for revealing too much information about themselves.
Msnbc.com has obtained a copy of the report, which is to be released next month. In it, the researchers worried about what they called a “frog effect” on the public. Like a frog that doesn’t notice it’s in danger when sitting in water that slowly comes to a boil, consumers are not noticing that personal privacy standards are slowly eroding.
A befuddling conflict
The group of behavioral scientists were looking for answers to a vexing question that dogs nearly every privacy-related research project: People routinely say they care deeply about privacy, then consistently act otherwise.
In the study, the group asked nearly 2,000 adults a series of sensitive, “self-revelatory” questions. They ranged from tame (Have you ever left a room with the light on?) to the dramatic (Have you ever had sex with the current partner of a friend?). After each question, the researchers showed the test-takers fake results offering up alleged answers from other test takers. Some of the fake results showed the majority admitted to a variety of these unethical behaviors; others showed that most test-takers had denied taking part in the behaviors, or refused to answer the questions.
Posted by Tom Polanski in Social Media, Trend Tracker on May 1st, 2009
SPAM CAMPAIGNS READ MSNBC.COM OR CNN IN “FROM” AND “SUBJECT” LINES
Posted: Wednesday, August 13 at 01:55 pm CT by Bob Sullivan
Spammers have upped the ante in their efforts to trick news consumers, switching from e-mails with tabloid-style headlines to impersonating major online news services. On Wednesday, e-mails that appeared to be from msnbc.com landed in inboxes worldwide, promising breaking news and confusing some recipients.
The spam unleashed Wednesday follows a massive campaign last week in which spammers impersonated CNN.com. That campaign saw 250 million spam messages sent in one intense 24 hour period, according to spam-fighting firm MX Logic Inc. Those e-mails appeared to include links to CNN’s top 10 stories, but Internet users who were tricked into clicking on those links were sent instead to Web sites overseas that were booby-trapped with malicious software.
Recipients should immediately delete any unexpected e-mails purportedly from CNN, msnbc.com or any other firm that they haven’t done business with and authorized to contact them.
Users who open the fake CNN or msnbc.com e-mails and click on a link are in for a bad day if they fall for the ruse. Those who do are sent to Web sites that attempt to trick them into downloading what is described as a video player plug-in. Instead, the malicious software will infect the user’s computer, ultimately giving hackers complete control over the machine. Infected computers are then used to send out even more spam.
Posted by Tom Polanski in Advertising on August 13th, 2008