...And The WINNER IS!

 Author: Virginia Benedict, Techanalyst

               Content Management/Editor/Creative Director

For the past 20 some odd years I have been evaluating what we refer to in contemporary lingo as Social Media Platforms.  I have been evaluating eMail providers, hardware, software, and security tools, as well. 

 The new kid on the block leaves all other social platforms far, far, waayy far in the dust.  Just like its parent,  is the state-of-the-Art Social Technology.

v Security

 Ø  Security on is not a "whenever possible" predicament.  Google takes its patrons' personal and public security seriously without paying lip service.

§  Personal privacy

§  Granular security settings

§  Ability to block anyone you fairly deem anti-social

§  Ability to seamlessly report privacy issues.  Which, by-the-way, I  rarely have found the need to exercise

§  Intuitively seamless to configure

§  Password secure Account configuration section

v Ease of Use

Ø  With very low learning curve and outstanding technical support both self-        served or hand holding.

v Navigation

Ø  Elegant and seamlessly lending itself to the way you think.

v Help Center

Ø  Absolutely outstanding guide with well produced video streams and unlike other platforms Google offers clear concise explanations/descriptions while in addition maintaining Help Forums and Support Communities.  Every page/profile offers feedback features providing seamless elegant tools for the user to report troubles or share back thank you Kudos and encouragement.

v Profile Features

Ø  Whether you are an Enterprise Professional, a Marketer/PR, an Artist, a Scientist, or retired…  It makes no difference;   has the tools for you to shine.  You can present yourself to your community in any light you wish and as elegant or creative as you wish without being stuffy.

Ø  Speaking of Communities, as always   listened.  Now, Technical Community leaders such as myself can shine even brighter than ever.  However, Communities are not strictly for professionals.  There are communities for every social venture/undertaking you can dream of organizing.

Ø Virtual round tables and online webinars.  With , you can seamlessly organize virtual meetings, virtual round tables, and online webinars, and there is nothing to download.                                    

         As a  Account Owner you simply join the you have been invited to attend or even better you can organize one yourself and invite your community of Circles.

Ø AahhH! Circles! Let us not forget the healthiest way to meet new people, build your professional network, gather your family and friends and granularly share or not share whatever information you like by assigning it public, private, friends, and/or Friends-of-Friends setting on the fly.

                       

 Ø  On  you can configure your profile any way you like within the format

§  Elegant and seamless to set up

§  Outstanding tools all around

§  Ability to individualize your profile

Ø  Ability to make it Enterprise Professional, extreme support of the Arts & Science, Familial, or non-descript

     Ø Integrated Blogging!      is an extension of your profile. With this tool you  can self-publish your work and potentially Monetize your blog using one or both of

the free advertising programs: AdSense and/or Google Affiliate Ads                 

I can go on and on…  and the bottom line is that you just have to try it and speak for yourself…  These are just some of the features and opportunities thatcontributes to the betterment of humans unpretentiously, unencumbered, and unfettered from anti-social practices.

They get it! By George, they Got It. Google Developers These children are doing it. They are forging the path for Peace and Solidarity amongst humans by bringing us together.  By nurturing us through their social tools.

                                                                            Women Techmakers 

My Communities:

    

                                                                                           

                                                                                            

Please Note: To Join these Communities you must send a Request-to-Join [name of community] on subject field for for instructions on the requirements.

Social Engineering, Social Tools, and Human Dispositions

Authored by Virginia Benedict

If you are someone like me, your first instinct is to trust others; your second instinct is to want to trust others; and your otherwise instinct is to resent not being able to trust when you discover that your trust has been betrayed.  Yes, I have found that most humans including myself have an innate subconscious desire to trust.  We take chances and give the benefit of the doubt in the spur of the moment, only to discover that those ‘inspiring’ our trust are the least trustworthy.  This discovery makes us feel powerless and betrayed.  It makes us feel guilty and inadequate for not engaging our instincts and taking control of the situation or redirecting the conversation into a neutral state which would allow us to safely escape the predicament.

If you are very much like me, you do not like confrontations or engaging in negative discourse of any kind.   Hence, we fall victims of ‘Social Engineering’.

I often wonder why I have this dire need to share indiscriminately.  It feels at times as if these individuals intently push me to reveal information they have no business asking of me.  I tell myself over and over, “I trust with my eyes open”, only to discover that when push comes to shove, I give into my innate desire to bond, to trust, to embrace others.

So what exactly is ‘Social Engineering’ and who are these social engineers?  At what point does this behavior become intrusive and at what point does the actor of this behavior can be defined as a perpetrator?

Well ‘social engineering’ is a term coined primarily by Security Professionals when identifying Identity thieves; when in fact, it is a social and behavioral anthropology term governed by anthropomorphic attributions.  Social engineering has a wide behavioral spectrum of vectors and variables stemming from the innate benign to the most egregious intellectual, emotional, and/or physical of assaults on our usually unsuspecting psychic.   All species in the animal kingdom are susceptible to this behavior as both actors and subjects simultaneously.

In other words, at one end of this spectrum, we find ourselves in the primordial state; i.e., at birth, the beginning of a relationship, a first encounter (be it live or in cyber space), a situation we happened to find ourselves in, and so on...

We may be entering this state as a blank slate (as presumed of the state at birth, for example), a neutral state (as when unsuspecting), predisposed (as when we are being targeted and subjected by experts in any field; i.e., advertisers, marketers, and as in the case of Security professionals, perpetrators and opportunists),  

An example of the benign is the social interaction between parents and newborn (assuming healthy individuals) learning and adapting to each other’s personalities; or siblings learning how to play or interact with each other while adapting to each other’s temperament driven role-playing, characteristically speaking.

When in a neutral and/or predisposed state, individuals are in a highly vulnerable position.  This can be the vector driven by experts such as educators, marketers, advertisers, drug pushers (be it illicit or legal), and/or Identity Thieves and other criminal types.

Early childhood Educators, for example, are potent members of a social structure who have the power to type cast our young in so many facets and with each facet driving its own spectrum of behavioral outcomes; thus impacting on the innate personality of the child.  Any of these outcomes can predispose the individual throughout his/her life to be either indiscriminately trusting to a fault or intuitively cautious when trusting.

No matter what the disposition is at any given time if you are like me, your first instinct is to trust, to want to trust, and you regret not being able to when you realized that you do not live in a trustworthy world.

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If you should like to partake in further round table discussions on the subject of social engineering types and outcomes, please feel free to contact me. 

 

Virginia Benedict is available to speak on this subject matter as it relates to technology as social tools, information security and social behavior.

As always, you are welcome to email me your questions and feedback as well.

 

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