Tag: websites

Hackers claiming to have info for millions, including *gasp* celebrities

Carl Setzer

Hackers claim to have personal info of millions of Instagram accounts, including celebs

When I first heard the story (not this specific article), I believed that the photos were pulled from her phone. Which is what caught my attention.

Now I’m a bit puzzled. Ok, they posted nude photos of Justin Beiber on Selena Gomez’s Instagram account. Now, was the exploit posting to her account? Were these photos randomly findable ones under a Google images search?

If the hack enabled them access to photos stored on theses celebs phones, this seriously powerful. If this is true, Instagram and its parent Facebook, have a deeper reach into our data than many realize.

Else = a data skimming tool was able to glean passwords. Which is clever and all, but not that remarkable. One that gives remote users full, or at least significant access to a phone’s data? Now that’s something. Otherwise, though this sucks for the victims, is a relatively standard hack. And the dramatic piece is that he victims are, <insert gasp here>, celebrities.

I do not mind ads / Just make them work on mobile / Do not break the website

Carl Setzer

First, a quick note about the subject line. A friend challenged me to post on Twitter only in haiku for a day. I thought these subject lines would be fun, too.

Anyway, ads. As I’ve focused the past few years on marketing, I have no issue with web ads. Currently, they’re the way many web personalities and other sites pay their bills. Family feeding is a fun, fantastic feeling.

However, web designers need to build advertising around mobile. Too often advertising either destroys the user experience, or critically hampers it. Pop ups that can’t be cleared are big issues. Several times this week I’ve struggled with sites where the “close” button was off the screen, AND clicking on the ad took you to a new website. (Sidenote: web devs and designers, use the target attribute on anchor tags. Don’t build ads that push your readers away from your site!)

These things make your site unusable on mobile. And, let me reiterate what’s been stated myriad times: the web’s future is mobile. If your mobile experience sucks, you’re are already behind. Perhaps you’re ahead of the curve on being an anachronism. It’s hardly ideal.

Last year’s whole Google mobile-gedon thing should have pivoted sites over, but, well, nope. But then folks still build auto-play videos on their sites. Thought that went out with MySpace. Since I’m simply griping now, let me add popups asking me to subscribe upon page load. Let them learn what you’re about first. I’ve neverr subscribed to a site BEFORE I’VE READ ANYTHING! NEVER!!!! Build the pop-up to launch towards the end, if you must use them at all. I’d put the ask in the post body, personally.

Developers, build sites for positive experiences. Delight your readers, inspire them to come back again. Don’t give in to greed or desperation. They’re ugly.

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