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Archives for November 2017

Social Media Parenting Guide for How to Set a Good Example for Your Kids

November 22, 2017 By Patrick L. Burns Leave a Comment

Children model the behavior of their parents and this includes in the digital communities of Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat. When parents share posts about their lives, and then monitor these posts for likes and followers, children take note. While parents would never want to post anything that would be a negative influence on their children, there is little guidance to help them navigate parenting in the digital age. Below is a social media parenting guide for how to set a good example for your kids on social media.

Want more info? Check out our in-depth social media tips for parents here and our easy social media parenting guide for discussing social media usage with your kids here.

Social Media Parenting Guide

Filed Under: Social Media Marketing, Social Media Parenting Tagged With: Social Media and Children, Social Media and Kids, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Parenting, Social Media Parenting Tips, Social Media Parenting Tips Infographic

How to Avoid an Email Phishing Attack to Your Campaign

November 21, 2017 By Patrick L. Burns Leave a Comment

Tips for Avoiding Email Phishing Attack

7 Ways to Keep Your Campaign Safe from an Email Phishing Attack

Cyber security is an issue of critical importance to political campaigns at all levels in the wake of the hackings of the 2016 election. Both the Republican and Democratic parties have faced challenges and are making significant investments to help prevent hacking in the 2018 election cycle. Some of the most significant recent cyber security failures in politics were a result of an email phishing attack. These include the hacking of the Hilary Clinton Campaign’s Chief of Staff John Podesta’s emails during the 2016 election and the hacking of the Marcon campaign before the French Presidential Election.

While we’ve written about the importance of political campaigns securing their websites and provided tips for how to keep social media accounts safe, we think it important to provide tips on how to avoid an email phishing attack to your campaign.

What is phishing? Phishing involves the use of fraudulent emails and copy-cat websites to trick you into revealing valuable personal and organizational information — such as account numbers for banking, credit card and donation platform accounts and the key login IDs and passwords you use when accessing these accounts. When hackers go on phishing expeditions, they lure their targets into a false sense of security by hijacking the familiar, trusted logos of established, legitimate companies such as Google, Facebook and Apple. A typical phishing scam starts with a fraudster sending out millions of emails that appear to come from a high-profile company in the hopes of getting folks to inadvertently click.  In some cases they are specifically targeting your campaign. Phishing is one of the most popular methods of attack for cyber criminals. There has been a tenfold increase in phishing campaigns over the past decade reported to the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG).

Here are some tips for how to avoid email phishing attacks:

Learn Common Traits of Phishing Emails: There are some common content traits to phishing emails that can help you in recognizing them. Many are poorly written and contain spelling errors. Phishing emails often use spammy words such as “free’, ‘profits’, ‘no fees’ to promote offers. Many contain urgent in the subject line and  threaten the loss of an existing account. These emails often have no personalization field for the recipient and contain no email signature for the sender. Finally, phishing emails often contain fake logos and poor structure. Be weary of logos of poor quality or an email message whose header and footer content looks different from the usual content you receive from a company.

Pick Up the Phone to Verify:  If you receive a request for personal or financial information over email do not respond. Pick up the phone and call the company yourself using a number in your rolodex, not the one the email provides. Hackers use pressure tactics and prey on people’s fears by noting the urgency of the matter. If you have reason to believe that a company needs personal information about you right away, pick up the phone and confirm it. As a general rule, you should never share personal or financially sensitive information over the internet.

Do Not Click : Do not click on the link provided in an email provided by a company requesting personal or financial information. Type the URL into your web browser yourself or use a bookmark you previously created. Hackers can mask the true destination of a URL, even though a URL may look real in an email.

Verify a Site’s Security: Before ever submitting any personal or financial information to a website make sure the site’s URL begins with “https” and there is a closed lock icon near the address bar. Check for the site’s security certificate as well. If you get a message stating a certain website may contain malicious files, do not open the website. Never download files from suspicious emails or websites. Even search engines may show certain links which may lead users to a phishing webpage which offers low cost products. If the user makes purchases at such a website, the credit card details will be accessed by cyber criminals. Be wary of pop-ups. Pop-up windows often masquerade as legitimate components of a website. All too often, though, they are phishing attempts.

Keep Your Browser Up to Date: Security patches are released for popular browsers in response to security loopholes that phishers and other hackers discover. When an update for your browser is available, download and install it.

Keep Anti-virus Software Updated: Use antivirus software and be sure to keep your software up to date and enable spam filters. Antivirus software guards against known technology workarounds and loopholes. Anti-spyware and firewall settings should be used to prevent phishing attacks and users should update the programs regularly as these updates are made to counter new scams. Firewall protection stops access to malicious files by blocking the attacks. Antivirus software scans every file which comes through the internet to your computer and prevents damage to your system.

Periodically Check Your Accounts: Be sure that you are reviewing campaign banking, credit card and donation platform accounts daily to check for irregularities in your online transactions.

Need more help?

Contact us here or via Facebook Messenger. Or sign up for our newsletter to get the latest tips here.

 

Filed Under: Campaign Cybersecruity, Campaigns and Elections, Public Affairs Tagged With: Phishing and Campaigns, Phishing and Elections, Phishing Attacks and 2016 Election, Phishing Attacks and Campaigns, Phishing Attacks and Elections, Phishing Email

Content Marketing and Social Media Training for Georgia Movers Association

November 2, 2017 By Patrick L. Burns Leave a Comment

Content Marketing and Social Media Training Georgia Movers AssociationArc 3 Communications recently conducted a content marketing and social media training program for the Georgia Movers Association as a part of their annual conference. The program was attended by hundreds of moving company executives from across the state of Georgia. The annual conference was held at the Idle Hour Country Club in Macon.

Arc 3 Founder Patrick Burns provided insights on what is content marketing and why it is important for a moving company’s marketing efforts. Participants were provided insights into how to incorporate a content marketing process inside their business and the fundamental elements for developing and implementing a content marketing program.

The Arc 3 Communications team also provided insights regarding the major platforms in digital marketing today – Facebook and Google. Session included strategies on how moving companies can utilize Facebook advertising to market their  business using tools like the Power Editor for targeting and Facebook Pixel for re-targeting. Tips for sharing timely and informative posts and how to leverage Facebook’s live video feature were also provided.

Session attendees were also provided tips for “Keeping Google Happy”. Practical and helpful website tips in the areas of security, page speed, local SEO, caching, optimizing images, accelerated mobile pages (AMP), and inbound links were shared. Finally, insights into Instagram Stories and Snapchat and trends that may lie ahead in marketing were presented.

The training session on content marketing and social media stimulated conversation among the moving company executive attendees on the types of content and marketing tactics members were using to help them to achieve their business goals.

Arc 3’s  content marketing and social media training seminars are customized for trade associations and have been very valuable to their members. Content marketing and social media are changing everyday with new platform updates, tools, shifting audiences and techniques. Through our research, lab work and networking we keep up with the latest trends in content marketing and social media.

Want to talk about a customized content marketing and social media training program for your association? Contact us here or via Facebook Messenger. Or sign up for our newsletter to get the latest tips here. 

Filed Under: Business Advocacy, Content Marketing, Our Work, Public Affairs, Social Media Marketing Tagged With: Content Marketing, Content Marketing and Associations, Content Marketing and Moving, Content Marketing and Social Media, Content Marketing and Social Media Training, Content Marketing Training, Facebook Marketing, Facebook Marketing and Associations, Google, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Marketing and Associations, Social Media Marketing and Moving, Social Media Training

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Husband, Father of 5, Founder of Arc 3 Communications - a public affairs agency. Over 30 years in politics and public affairs. Follow me on twitter and instagram at @patricklburns. I live, work and play in the community I grew up in. Read More…

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