This situation and others like it, reinforce the need for users to protect their email accounts.  If you have concerns about your email account, you are recommended to change your password as soon as possible.  If you are the type of person who uses the same passwords at multiple sites and accounts, those account passwords should be changed as well.

http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/10/06/hotmail-phishing-attack-confirmed-20000-accounts-in-total

http://www.reuters.com/article/sarahPalin/idUS33422544820091005

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8292928.stm

There may be other email addresses and subject lines being used.

The fraudulent letter looks like this

Dear <<Customer Name Removed>>,

We recently received an email from ICANN with a list of invalid emails on the WHOIS records of domain names registered with us. Since you have domain names registered with Network Solutions, we would like to remind you that ICANN has implied strict rules against having invalid whois information. Keeping such information could immediately lead to deletion of any domain name(s).
At this point, since the account registered under the name <<Customer Name Removed>> has invalid information, we will proceed to domain names deletion which will be available to the registry 45 days after deletion. In order to avoid this to happen we will need to verify you to that account.

In order to do that we will need the following information regarding the account where <<Customer Name Removed>> holds the domain names:
1. Confirmation of the current password used

a. please provide the password in your reply to this email

b. the password will then be reset for security reasons and a new password link will be sent to a valid email

c. if you do not know or remember the password, please follow the instructions below

2. Answer the Security question on file

a. Last Digits of the social security number?

b. Please provide the answer in your reply to this email

c. if you do not remember the answer, please follow the instructions below
We need to confirm you to the account before we make any changes. We would like to have a valid email we could use in the account too
Understand that at this point, and in order to avoid immediate deletion of the domain names, the changes need to be made from us directly so that we can notify ICANN that the new information is valid.

We apologize for the inconvenience.
Thank you for choosing Network Solutions.

Sincerely,

Tom Spencer

Network Solutions Security Department

Please take precautions, to verify the authenticity of the email and never forward your password via email to anyone.  Network Solutions will not ask for your password.

If you believe you have received an e-mail of this type and provided your password or answers to security question information, we recommend the following:

• login to your account
• review your account information for accuracy
• choose a new password security question and answer
• change your password

If you believe any of your account information has been altered, please contact Network Solutions customer service immediately at: 1-800-333-7680

If you have questions, advice or ideas please feel free to leave a comment here on this blog. Here are some other resources for learning more about Phishing:

http://www.microsoft.com/protect/yourself/phishing/identify.mspx

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/alerts/alt127.shtm

http://www.antiphishing.org/consumer_recs.html

http://www.commoncraft.com/phishing

On Saturday afternoon, the Network Solutions Social Media Swami, Shashi B, and I spoke as a part of the South By SouthWest conference in beautiful, but rainy and cold Austin, Texas. Shashi and I will be doing a more complete recap when he returns from Austin. He is still there as the conference winds down.

First in regards to the conference, I want to say my wife, Rebecca (check her contemporary furniture line at www.17thandriggs.com) and I had a great time at SXSW and we met so many fantastic people over the weekend. It was tough leaving Sunday as the conference was just getting into high gear, but hey what can you do work was calling. We are still bummed we did not get to hit a Tex-Mex place to eat when we were there. Every place had such a long line. Guess we just have to hit a Chi-Chi’s now….HA! Too bad they are all closed.

Anyway, on Saturday we had a great session titled “A Hard Sell? Social Media & Your Boss. The audience was super engaged and we had a lively Q&A session. It was a standing and sitting room only crowd that turned out. Thanks to Steve Fisher for the warm introduction by the way at the beginning of Shashi and my talk. And yes, Steve that was the Beastie Boys’ Sabotoge (check the great video) blasting from the next conference room during the Q&A.

Also we missed you Jill Foster at the conference. The Network Solutions contingent was not complete without you.

Anyhow as I said more of a recap later, but I promised that I would make a set of social media guidelines available to attendees and others as the guidelines were part of the discussion on Saturday. As we said at SXSW, if you are thinking of launching a social media initiative, Social Media Guidelines of some kind are a good way to a) get legal departments to buy into embracing social media, b) get everyone in the company on the same page as to some best practices and c) make people aware that failure to meet the guidelines can result in loss of a job and exposing the company to liability so compliance is mandatory. These guidelines along with the processes that our entire legal department have implemented and use to support Network Solutions social media efforts have really been helpful. All of the legal folks at Network Solutions have contributed to the success thus far of our social media efforts.

Now I will make my standard disclaimer. These guidelines do not constitute legal guidance. They are solely for informational purposes. Each company is different so consult legal counsel in preparing your company’s guidelines.

Also here are is a great link that describes lawsuits that deal with social media – a few of which were even filed just in the last two months. Also on Sunday, Keith Casey suggested we do a follow-up post that actually narrates some of the thinking behind the guidelines. Look for that over the next few days.

So here they are (feel free to leave your comments after). By the way, these guidelines draw from a variety of sites that discuss this issue as well as other company’s policies beyond Network Solutions.

Employee Social Media & Blogging Guidelines:

Communicating online has potential risks for you and for the company. As a result, every employee needs to understand the risks. The following are some of the risks to communicating online via different social media outlets.

Unauthorized or inappropriate commentary or posts online can:

• Get the Company, and you, in legal trouble with the U.S. and other government agencies, other companies, customers or the general public.
• Diminish the Company’s brand name by creating negative publicity for The Company, owners and partners as well as yourself or your team.
• Cause damage to The Company by releasing non-public information or proprietary information.
• Cost us the ability to get patents or undermine our competitive advantage.
• Cost you your job at the Company.

Most of these risks can be avoided by just being careful and responsible and using common sense and sound judgment. Here is a summary of the important rules to follow to avoid getting in trouble when blogging or engaging in other forms of online communication activities. Violation of any applicable company policy may result in disciplinary action up to and including termination of employment.

Important rules to follow when blogging:

1. Do not disclose or speculate on non-public financial or operational information. The legal consequences could be swift and severe for you and The Company.
2. Do not disclose non-public technical information (for example, code) without approval. The Company could instantly lose its right to protect its intellectual property or proprietary information. If you have any question about whether the information is proprietary, please contact the Legal Department for input prior to posting.
3. Do not disclose personal or private information about other individuals.
4. Do not disclose confidential information, The Company’ or anyone else’s.
5. Do not discuss company policies or work-related legal proceedings or controversies, including communications with The Company attorneys.
6. Do not post negative content or defamatory, libelous, offensive or demeaning material or other types of content that may relate to drugs, alcohol or tobacco, pornography or other offensive or illegal material.
7. Please check the Topic Taboo List below for topics that employees are prohibited from discussing in any online posts.
8. Do not post others’ material, for example photographs, articles, or music, without ensuring they’ve granted appropriate permission to do this.
9. Follow The Company’ Systems Security Policy (see in particular sections on Personal Websites, Blogging and Online Communication) and the Code of Business Conduct and Ethics and uphold The Company’ reputation for integrity. In particular, ensure that your comments about companies and products are truthful, accurate, and fair and can be substantiated, and avoid naming specific customers or generally disparaging comments about individuals.
10. If you are writing about a current product that The Company offers, coordinate with the appropriate Product Manager to ensure the accuracy of your content.
11. Always use your real name, not an alias or a made up name in blog posting, comments on blogs or forums especially if you are posting on behalf of The Company.
12. Do not plagiarize material (using content that is already published). Failure to follow this could subject you to termination and legal liability for you and The Company.
13. All posts about company products must be consistent with marketing and advertising laws.
14. All of your posts are subject to the Terms of Use for the particular blog or social networking site so review the Terms of Use prior to posting any content.
15. If you have a question on any of the above or whether you should post information, please contact the Public Relations, Legal Department or the Ethics/Policy Department.

Topic Taboo List

Consistent with the The Company Employee Social Media and Blogging Guidelines, please do not write any content or postings that involve or related to the following items:

• Topics in which The Company is involved in litigation or could in the future: (i.e. policy, customer disputes, etc.)
• Non-public information of any kind about The Company, including, but not limited to, policies and strategy
• Illegal or banned substances and narcotics
• Pornography or other offensive illegal materials
• Defamatory, libelous, offensive or demeaning material
• Private/Personal matters of yourself or others
• Disparaging/threatening comments about or related to anyone
• Personal, sensitive or confidential information of any kind

Also note if your company is publicly traded you will need to make sure all statements/comments/posts etc. comply with SEC rules and regulations that govern such companies. Here is an example of Intel’s Social Media Guidelines. They are really good guidelines. Lastly, for companies that are located outside the U.S. there are likely more regulations that need to be considered depending upon the country the company is in.

Let me know what you think in the comments!

This is the fifth post in the series of blog posts with the session as a theme.

So you are in intense discussions with various people at the company and you are just about to get approval.  You are feeling good.  Its finally going to happen.  Social media paradise is within your grasp that you can just feel it.  Than that guy in the back of the room that doubles as the male equivalent of Debbie Downer says, but Legal will never go for this.

Wrong!

Here is one part of the path to getting legal approval from most legal departments.  Suggest to the lawyers that the company has a set of social media guidelines that everyone from the company must comply when they participate in and engage the community.

These guidelines do not have to be 30 pages long.  They can be as simple as a 1-2 page document that has some Do’s and Don’ts.  Many of the guidelines are frankly common sense approaches that can be used across the company in many forms of public communication and public relations.

The guidelines should at the very least address:

• Defamation (business and personal)
• Intellectual Property (Copyright/Trademark)
• Addressing topics that are in litigation
• Trade Secret Disclosure
• Privacy Issues
• If a pubic company – SEC and disclosure issues

I will be discusing guidelines like this in more detail on Saturday afternoon with Shashi B.  Hope you can join us at SXSW.

This is the fourth post in the series of blog posts with the session as a theme.

So you have become an expert and now you are feeling like you can start making the case to the company to embrace social media.  Here are the some suggested steps to get you rolling on the path to getting your boss to approve.

1) Data. Data. Data

Take a survey of what the community is saying about the company.  Check Yelp, Twitter, Facebook for any groups talking about the company along with forums and use that as your ammunition.  Categorize the lack of response to these comments.  These can be powerful, especially if negative comments go unanswered.

2) Line up your team

There are folks at all levels of the organization that are probably already involved in social media.  Find them and get them motivated to the cause.  Get them to start spreading the word in their business groups, no matter what part of the company they are work in.

3) High Level Help

Determine who is the executive in management that will be the person that will push the cause for you.  This person can be found by floating some trial balloons that include some of the data that you have collected to gauge the level of interest and whether the executive will be your advocate. Once you locate this executive make it easy for her/him to be your advocate at the executive level when you are not in meetings by arming this executive with data and ideas about the tools that you plan to use to engage the community.

4) Organize a meeting of the team and the executive to pool ideas and plan the final push to approval

Pull together the executive and the team of supporters to finalize the strategy to get to full buy-in.  Also use this time to figure out how to address naysayers and anticipate arguments against participation in social media.  There may be a lot of push-back initially.  Be prepared.  Also the multi-prong approach of having the various members of the team sell social media to their bosses while simultaneously having you and the executive sell the senior level management allows for saturation approach that eventually resembles that snowball rolling down the hill gathering speed and with it more snow.

5) Have a plan for approval and next steps

As you near approval, various people may start asking you well what now?  You need to be ready to hit the ground running once you have the green light.  Have an action plan and get ready to roll-it out.

Shashi B. used much of this approach as he weaved his way through Network Solutions to get to his Swaminess!  Let us know how you go your company to YES!

Rohit’s talk covered a wide range of issues from stories out of his book to fun facts he learned while he put together his book. Throughout the evening the in-person and online audience was super engaging and peppered Rohit with questions dealing with a variety of topics including the need today for not only large businesses and non-profits but also small businesses to create an engaging brand while also having a unique personality.

During the presentation, Rohit covered examples of companies that have effectively engaged the online community and ways for marketing and differentiating yourself as a small business.

In response to one question from the audience, Rohit provided a roadmap for small businesses that are just starting out on how to begin the process of building a brand, a unique personality and most importantly a relationship with the community.

Missed the evening for some reason ? Watch it here. http://blip.tv/file/965449/

Also do not worry, Network Solutions is planning more of these events so please say tuned. Add your name here to be notified of future events http://solutionsarepower.com/event-registration/. We want to see you at the next event.

Photos credit : Nahum Gershon

Special thanks to Jonny Goldstein for being a great moderator on Wednesday evening, Scott Stead for doing a fantastic job for coordinating the live stream on the web, Jill Foster for her super hard work pulling together all of the details of the event and finally Busboys and Poets for the wonderful set-up and food.

For those of you out there who have never been to Busboys and Poets, check it out. It is really a great place in the U Street corridor. Also thanks to all of the attendees. We know you could have easily gone home and skipped this event and stayed out of the pouring rain.
Thanks for making the event a success. Last of all, please feel free to send us any suggestions about this event or suggestions for future events.

We can’t wait to hear from you.

Blogs and buzz about the event.