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Exploring the science and magic of Identity and Access Management
Friday, March 29, 2024

Will ScribeFire Work for my Blog?

Blogging
Author: Mark Dixon
Friday, April 8, 2011
11:34 pm

As I search for a decent blog editor, I am re-visiting ScribeFire, a brower extension which I used back in the Windows days before I found LiveWriter.  It seems to do a decent job, but I can’t find support for Technorati tags or Twitter messaging.  Image management is limited.  

I am posting this via the ScribeFire extension to Google Chrome.  We’ll see it the Safari extension works any differently.

 

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Why Is Blogging So Much Harder Using a Mac?

Blogging
Author: Mark Dixon
Friday, April 8, 2011
10:35 pm

A real surprise for me when migrating recently from Window to Mac is the dearth of good blogging clients on MacOS.  I have tried Ecto and MarsEdit, both of which are drastically inferior to the LiveWriter blog client for Windows by Microsoft.  Particularly, I miss the great image handling capability, with built in sizing, borders and alignment GUI that helped make blogging fast and effortless.

I am posting this note with Qumana, hoping it provides some relief.  Its image handling is a bit better, but it doesn’t appear to handle WordPress tags correctly.

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Dear Kroger: Did You Forget to Tell Me?

Identity, Information Security, Privacy
Author: Mark Dixon
Friday, April 8, 2011
4:36 pm

My last post highlighted the well-publicized Epsilon data breach that affected so many consumers like me.

But what if a company forgets to tell its customers?

That may have happened to me. Our family probably does over 80% of our grocery shopping at Fry’s Food Stores, owned by The Kroger Co. I’m quite sure they have my email address, because of their store affiliate card program. However, when Kroger was victimized by the Epsilon data breach, I did not get a notification or apology from Kroger.

Does that mean they don’t care, or by some stroke of luck, my email address wasn’t compromised? I may never know … but will wonder.

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Being part of the honored 2% isn’t so gratifying

Identity, Information Security, Privacy
Author: Mark Dixon
Friday, April 8, 2011
3:49 pm

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On April 4th, I received apology letters from my bank, a major retailer, a large pharmaceutical chain, and three hotel companies.  All of the apologies were similar, but I’ll share just one:

Dear Ritz-Carlton Customer,

We were recently notified by Epsilon, a marketing vendor The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company uses to manage customer emails, that an unauthorized third party gained access to a number of their accounts including The Ritz-Carlton email list. We want to assure you that the only information obtained was your name and email address. Your account and any other personally identifiable information are not at risk.

Please visit our FAQ to learn more.

In all likelihood, this will not impact you. However, we recommend that you continue to be on the alert for spam emails requesting personal or sensitive information. Please understand and be assured that The Ritz-Carlton does not send emails requesting customers to verify personal information.

It must have really hurt Ritz Carlton, that paragon of sophistication and propriety, to fall on its virtual knees and send out thousands for such emails.

I subsequently learned that USA Today reported:

With the possible theft of millions of e-mail addresses from an advertising company, several large companies have started warning customers to expect fraudulent e-mails that try to coax account login information from them.

Perhaps the Wall Street Journal wanted to make me feel special, one of select few:

Alliance Data (parent of Epsilon) reiterated that social-security and credit-card numbers were not stolen. It also said that only 2% of its more than 2,500 customers were affected.

I have yet to know whether there will be a harmful personal affect from this data breach. But it does illustrate that we are all vulnerable, whenever we trust any confidential information to someone else.

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