Business in Science and General Truth

We hear about identity theft in the news all the time, and we think we very well may be at risk, but we’re not sure what to do to help prevent it. Well, there are some things you can do that are very simple that will help prevent you from ever becoming a victim of this potentially disastrous crime.

The types of identity theft are :

1.) When one’s personal information is stolen from their person, such as a wallet with credit cards and other identity revealing financially negotiable instruments.

2.) Something called “phishing” where bogus emails are sent from a scam artist claiming to be a bank or some other type of financial institution, claiming they need you to “sign in” and provide personal information that can allow them to filter money from your account, or charge purchases to a credit card.

3.) Mail related identity theft is where a thief can either intercept your mail and get your personal information or even fill out a change of address form for you so they may receive your mail and do with it what they please.

4.) Internet fraud through unsecured websites when you provide credit card or personal information, a thief may be able to hack sites that are not secured and gain your personal information, or even infect your computer with a virus which hijacks personal information.

First and foremost, make sure you do not ever respond to an email that is requesting you to log in somewhere to verify your information, even if it appears to be from a company you do business with on a regular basis. Spammers skilled in the art of “phishing” are very adept at making these emails look like the real deal, and unfortunately many people have been duped into disclosing important personal information.

What you can do to help combat this problem is visit the company’s offical website on your own, not through any links in the email of course, and report this suspicious email to them. Most large companies have measures in place to protect their clients, and they want to be aware of any bogus emails going out to people with their trusted name attached.

There are also large efforts in the making to prevent these types of emails from coming through to your email inbox, and instead going to your spam bulk file, making them more idenitfiable as a potential security threat, and also reducing the likelihood that one will be defrauded by them.

Another important prevention measure is to not only be aware of bogus emails, but also to make sure any website that asks for credit card information for a purchase has a security seal of approval. These secured sites usually will have some sort of symbol that they are secured by Verisign or another online security system that signifies it should be safe to pay with. If the site looks fishy, stay clear.

Whenever you receive mail that has credit card information, or is a solicitation for a credit card offer, make sure you tear it up into pieces. Another scam to gain access to your credit or accounts is for thieves to go through your garbage and fill out your credit card offers with a change of address, get the new credit card mailed to them, and start using it to make purchases. Also, it is wise to always have up to date virus protection on your computer, as some viruses are designed to hijack your personal and credit information.

When making purchases with credit or debit cards in any retail establishments, if your credit card number prints on the receipt that they keep, ask to scribble out the whole thing.
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Operationally, a financial organization such as broker/dealer, a bank, or a hedge fund is broken up into three intertwined groups: Front Office, Middle Office and Back Office. A Front Office is comprised of traders, marketers and corporate finance employees. This is the area where revenues are generated. Accessibility to live information plays a critical role in the success of this critical function. Here a talented and highly educated personal are in short supply. Information Technology (IT) is the backbone where sophisticated tools are needed to make quick decisions. Most of the trades are done and executed electronically through secure trading platforms where funds move at the speed of light.

There are times when traders and marketers do not seem to see eye to eye on many trades. The marketers eager to make a deal and to satisfy the clients rush into closing deals that are less profitable to the organization. Here conflict arises when traders find out that their numbers were marginalized. Normally traders prefer to make as much money as possible on trades as their commission is based on how much hair cut is generated from each deal.

The line between the middle office and back office is often blurred. Many organizations, especially small ones, do not specifically distinguish between the two. These groups are entrusted with monitoring and reporting risk to management and FO. Here profit and loss are calculated. Also they share different vital functions. The documentation department handles the drafting, reviewing and chasing of signed documents. The individuals drafting or reviewing these documents need to be well versed in the latest ISDA definitions. Errors are normally found during the process of drafting and are mostly due to manually misbooking trades in the system. Definitely these have great impact on risk. Unconfirmed deals could result in substantial losses if only one of the parties acknowledge the deal while the other does not, or when one party has different notional amounts on swaps deals by great margin. A dedicated team of highly skilled people are needed to resolve these issues before any major risk could result.

Middle and back office groups are also oversee settlements and reconciliations. The main function of the settlements group is to make sure all parties agreed on flows that need to be exchanged if any. Often times, trades are unrecognizable by either party or trade discrepancies are prevalent. Settlements people work closely with the middle and front office to resolve outstanding breaks in a very short period of time, usually less than 5 days. Unsettled flows, especially large ones, expose the company to potential risk. Due diligence are needed by all parties to reduce the number of failed trades.

As we can see, the operation side of any organization is critical to its well-being. Many well known companies suffered huge losses due to lack of supervision and control. Management needs to be vigilant at all time to this costly business that do not directly get involved in generating revenues.

Affiliate Marketing became a common term to every online marketer when Amazon.com decided to come out with the first professional affiliate program, I would say, back in 1996.

But before affiliate marketing could really dominate the online market like now, the first generation of affiliate marketing came as the form of the “Get Paid To” Programs, or commonly known as GPT industry.

The GPT industry comprises of programs like Get Paid To Read, Get Paid To Be Online, Get Paid To Join, Get Paid To Sign Up and many others. You can safely say that as long as there’s any activities that can be done online, it can be part of the GPT industry.

The “Get Paid To” Programs are very straightforward programs and most of the time you just need to concentrate on signing up more new members and you can get paid on a percentage off their participation or advertising purchase.

As the years go by, many of these affiliate marketers started to find out the loopholes of these programs and participated and recruited mainly because of the overriding commissions and did not contributed much to the advertising. This leave much for the Program Owner to find revenues to return back to these members.

The nature of the program itself turns out to be non-lucrative as well. There was not much return of investment for the advertisers as many of these affiliate members are in there for unproductive participation.

This caused a ripple effect and many of these programs eventually ceased their operations.

While these were still ongoing, the giant online Bookstore, Amazon.com, came upon this concept and professionalize the world of affiliate marketing. With real products (physical products and info-products), advertising and marketing resources to support the program, affiliate program is becoming effective and lucrative. Since then, we have companies like ClickBank.com that promotes info-products and Commission Junction to promote the sale of physical products, just to name a few popular ones.

Now in 2008, it’s hard not to have an online product with no affiliate program attached to it. You just need to type any keywords of your niche together with the word “affiliate program” - you would be sure to find a site that gives you the chance to participate in their affiliate program.

The future of affiliate marketing seems to be rosy for many newcomers and experienced marketers. With many successful Internet Marketers claiming affiliate marketing as the Number #1 source of making money online, it will not be wrong and too late to join in. You can join in to be part of the history of affiliate marketing.