“And while you’re at it, tell us which patents are not bogus? Any? Do you believe in intellectual property? Property ownership? Or is it all there for Google’s taking?

While Apple and Microsoft and Nokia and Nortel and Blackberry and IBM and many others were actually *innovating* in smartphones and mobile technologies for over a decade you were busy making monopoly profits in a different market. Now you want into the big global smartphone market. And essentially want *all* the intellectual property of these companies to be effectively voided.

So you can continue to use your monopoly profits in a different business to kill off all the companies — all the innovators — and reap monopoly profits in this new business.”

Link

There’s a very simple business reason why Google cares if they have your real name. It means it’s possible to cross-relate your account with your buying behavior with their partners, who might be banks, retailers, supermarkets, hospitals, airlines. To connect with your use of cell phones that might be running their mobile operating system. To provide identity in a commerce-ready way. And to give them information about what you do on the Internet, without obfuscation of pseudonyms.

Simply put, a real name is worth more than a fake one.

I contacted The Script Kiddies through Twitter and asked if they would consent to an interview, which they responded that they would, provided it was carried out through Twitter. I posed 8 questions to the group. The unabridged and unedited Q&A is posted below.

1. What is the mission of The Script Kiddies?
Our current mission is to aid in #antisec with exposing government and corporate corruption all over the world.

2. How did the things you accuse Pfizer of come to your attention?
You know what they say; the medium is the message…through media.

3. Can you tell us how you hacked the page?
Paul Dyer. The ignorance of an individual can lead to a security breach of alot more then one may think.

4. Do you see social media as more vulnerable to attack than other forms of digital media?
Social media gets more attention, and tends to be less secure since companies trust individuals to protect and control them.

5. Did you feel you got the results you were looking for?
The results we were hoping for is the public awareness of what Pfizer has done, and the punish the company itself. so yes.

6. Were you concerned at all that you may not have had all the facts before beginning your efforts against Pfizer?
We know just as much now about their corruption as we did before.

7. Given that most drug development risks human life, and not developing certain drugs also carries risks to human life, how can pharma companies better manage in order to avoid coming under future scrutiny from groups like yours?
The ingredients that make up these drugs are nothing knew. The risk could easily be calculated before testing on humans.

8. What would you say to those who feel your methods may be as harmful as those you look to expose?
It isn’t up to me if the media or the people approve of what we do. the result is something we can all approve of (cont.) were not trying to be hero’s. We are well aware hacking is criminal and can be unjustified in most cases (cont.) with groups such as ourselves, lulzsec, and Anonymous; everyday we get closer to a society without corruption and with fair rule.

It should be noted that in my previous post, I assumed that the group hacked into the page through some vulnerability within Facebook. That assumption was incorrect. Instead, it seems access was attained by clues and publicly available data found on the internet left by one of the page administrators.

Last night, sometime around 8:30pm last night, Pfizer had its Facebook account hacked by a group called ‘The Script Kiddies.’ The group, much like LulzSec and Anonymous before it, is made up of hackers who inflict their own form of retribution (or what they would term as justice) on organizations they disapprove of by breaking through various layers of online security to post images and messages on cooperate owned sites. In this case, Pfizer’s Facebook page.

In an interview with the website studentactivistdiary.co.uk, the group claims that “[Pfizer is] guilty of killing people through harmful drugs and clinical tests. […] We plan to achieve awareness mostly; awareness that the security online is an allusion and also that Pfizer’s crimes are intolerable and we will not deal with them. We will stand up and say, hey, this isn’t right. We will take a stand. Some say that our methods are extreme, but they have to be to achieve our goals. Pfizer is a corrupt giant, so we attacked them. Simple as that.”

Despite several claims of “not being an expert” the representative from ‘The Script Kiddies” felt their actions justified and the results went live for all to see. Pfizer removed the posts and locked it’s Facebook page down shortly after the attack.

Whether or not you believe this kind of armchair activism is justified or not is a debate I will leave for another day. From the vantage point of communications, an attack like this does raise several important questions. Were Pfizer’s security protocols to blame or was Facebook the problem? Will this attack set Pharma’s efforts in social media back? Should Pfizer respond? And if so, how?

If the people managing the Pfizer page were using strong passwords or continuously updating the log-in credentials I can’t say, but one very important issue should not be glossed over here…

Pfizer wan’t hacked, Facebook was.

Yes, these hackers took over the Pfizer page, but that page is housed on Facebook’s servers, and Pfizer can only make the page as secure as Facebook’s user interface will allow. Unfortunate as it was for Pfizer, I’m not sure how much more security could have been applied. The hackers in question may crow all they like about how they supposedly beat Pfizer, but Facebook needs to step up here. Also interesting to note, if these hackers really wanted to put on a show, why not hack the Pfizer.com site instead of the Facebook page? It probably gets far more traffic and therefore would garner far more attention.

This wasn’t a social media problem, it was a technological one, and is one that’s potentially fixable. If a group like this wants to hack your sites, they will find a way to do so, if not on Facebook than somewhere else for sure.

Given the tenuous position it has in social media, its easy to see how those who think pharma should leave social media alone will use this as an opportunity to say “see I told you so.” The truth of the matter is that, like it or not, these types of attacks will continue to happen. And, like with any other media channel, unless it is comfortable, active, and engaged in the space, pharma’s responses to issues like this will continue to be flat-footed and painfully slow.

So what should Pfizer do? I’m a firm believer that you don’t negotiate with terrorists, and that responding directly to an attack like this will bring attention to the hackers, and in all likelihood, provoke more attacks.

What Pfizer shouldn’t do is retreat.

Social media represents a powerful way to create understanding and deepen awareness of issues most likely to affect or benefit users. Pfizer has the opportunity here to lead the way, whether it’s bringing better transparency to its clinical trials and safety programs or by providing customers who are having legitimate issues or have questions about their products answers and support. Leveraging social media to provide help and support will go a long way towards improving the perception of your brand, but it must be done carefully, authentically and with your audience needs in mind.

But make no mistake. There will always be detractors. There will always be haters. Hiding from them won’t make them go away.

“But in order to get there, Google needs you to change. They need you to drop your resistance to being listened to, tracked and monitored at all times. They want you to be the best product you can possibly be. Google’s customers will love you.” Link

With all the hoopla about new Google products, they fail as often as they succeed. People also lose sight of the fact that “open” translates, in Google’s terms, to “being allowed to sell your behavioral data for money.”

For the sake of clarification, this isn’t a post about privacy. That horse is being flogged repeatedly and everything about the topic has probably been covered already. I use Facebook all the time and am of the belief that you can protect your privacy well enough by simply being discreet about what kind of information you choose to supply. If you don’t put highly personal information in, people can’t ever get at it, and we’ve all heard about sites like Pleaserobme.com.  A modicum of common sense goes a long, long way.

With tragedies like the one involving Ms. Pilkington it’s easy to look to blame someone. The classmates, Facebook, the parents, all in some way, shape or form can make tantalizing victims for a blood-thirsty media outlet looking for a attention-grabbing angle. I’m a big proponent of parents having tighter relationships with their kids, schools taking a more active role in monitoring student activity and everyone making more responsible decisions to make the world a safer place. In this case, several classmates used the virtual world to torment Alexis to the point of suicide. Their crimes were so egregious that they even kept taunting the poor girl even after she was dead. Could the Pilkington tragedy have been avoided? I don’t know, but I don’t think Facebook and it’s bevy of privacy issues are the problem here. Whatever the means, some people are going to act aggressively and stupidly whether the technology is there to help them out or not.

The disturbing thing about cyberbullying is that it’s most often done by someone you know. In cases like that, your privacy isn’t what has been violated, your identity is. We’re obviously not talking about identity theft here, but rather blatant attacks on your personal identity; how you feel about yourself, and what your outward persona is to others. What makes cyberbullying so damaging is that the teasing can be incessant and come from all angles, all in plain view of your circle of friends, 24-7. It used to be that when kids picked on other kids, they could at least look forward to escaping the pressure by getting on the bus and going home.

The internet has the ability to bring everyone into our personal space, whether we like it or not.

As I write this, Facebook has very quietly been asked by some parental groups to install more safety features to help protect kids. In England for instance, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Center (CEOPC) has asked Facebook to include a “Panic Button” on all group pages. The feature would allow kids to alert someone in the event they feel threatened or unsafe. Facebook has flatly rejected including any such features its site, declining to comment as to why.

So this begs 2 relevant questions:
1. Why won’t Facebook provide more safety features on its site? And,
2. What features should they provide if they were willing to do so?

Mark Zuckerberg’s well documented abhorrence to personal privacy aside, I don’t think Facebook is deliberately obfuscating its responsibility of providing a safer community experience. I do think they worry about the precedent it sets. If you live in New York, from time to time there will be visible and formidable increases in local police and security forces in the subways. If you’re like me, the first thing you do is to feel a bit safer, but then you might begin to wonder: Why are the extra forces are needed? Is something going on? Should I be worried? It’s this very thinking that I believe Facebook is looking to avoid. If you begin to see features like panic buttons and parental alerts, I’m sure the next logical question parents will indeed ask themselves is whether Facebook is safe at all.

We all want to feel safe as long as we don’t have to think about the danger.

So what kind of tools should Facebook, or any social site for that matter, be developing? While not an exhaustive list, here are a few that I can think of.

1. A simpler privacy settings dashboard
Privacy issues for Facebook users aside, the dashboard and default settings for restricting access to personal information are a joke. Facebook should create a much simpler system for managing these features and have them all located in one place, rather than scattered throughout your profile. And, by default, they should all be off so that users would have to opt in to making information available. Their recent updates to the privacy settings system are a good start, but not remotely close to optimal.

2. An online cyber safety councilor
For anyone under the age of 18, a councilor, trained in helping people who feel they are being threatened would automatically included in the chat list of a user when they come online. Don’t want to include a panic button? This is the next best thing. A trained specialist could help guide individuals through what to do and where to go for help in the event that they feel unsafe when on Facebook. You could even take this idea one step further and have a councilor’s chat window automatically appear and offer to help should someone type a phrase like “I’m thinking of committing suicide.” Think of it as a real time 9-1-1 operator.

3. Sentiment bots to detect predatory conversations
Facebook claims that it already has tools like this in place, but if they are anything like some of the tools most social media agencies use to analyze conversations, they are most likely woefully weak. Conversation analysis tools can’t detect things like sarcasm or humor, so honing in on keywords becomes essential to determining relevancy. If these tools do exist, beef them up. Make the API open source and offer $10,000 to the person or team that could make them more accurate. Would it be perfect? No. But it would be a good start.

4. Educational programs
There already exists a page on Facebook dedicated to understanding cyberbullying, but if I hadn’t searched for the words “Facebook + cyberbullying,” I probably wouldn’t have found it. Plus, I’m not entirely sure Facebook sanctioned this. The bottom line is Facebook has the ability to drive awareness, education and support to lead the charge on this issue, and their efforts to date have been muted at best.

Privacy issues not withstanding, in my opinion, Facebook is at a crossroads. The site is already getting heat from congress about their “opt-in” privacy options, and have, to date, capitulated to a certain extent. This has made users a tad more anonymous, but not necessarily safer. Tragedies like the one that befell Ms. Pilkington are horrible, and should be met with a swift and decisive eye towards preventing a repeat occurrence. But for now, Facebook seems inert. I can only pray it doesn’t take another, higher profile incident to make them rethink a more proactive stance on the subject.

What do you think?