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Thursday, December 28, 2000 By David Radin
No wonder e-tailers are getting such a bum rap. During their years of euphoria, they could ignore problems, and many of them would seem to disappear. If an e-tailer's management team didn't like something that happened to the company, its communications department would issue a news release; everybody would believe its; and it would get on with e-business as e-usual. Some still try it.
Take Egghead.com. One day the company says there are no security problems. The next day, the management contacts the feds to investigate a possible hacker break-in. The following day, the company announces that 3.7 million customer records were stolen.
If there were nothing wrong on the first day, why would they even bother to mention it? One wonders whether they were trying to deflect a confidence crisis during the busy holiday buying season. I see no other explanation. Unfortunately, the way the company handled it makes one less confident instead of more confident with buying at Egghead.com -- perhaps less confident in buying online altogether.
As of this writing, the company says that so far, none of the customers whose records were stolen reported fraudulent use of their charge cards. That sounds like good news. But why should we believe them? And even if it were true, does that make it any safer to give Egghead our valuable personal data? Based on what I've seen in the industry, and reports I've heard from my listeners, this type of problem isn't keeping users from purchasing online. Although I've been told by many that their online buying experiences in general have been spotty -- poor service, slow Web sites, inability to find the right item, and even disconnects by the e-tailer. According to Boston Consulting Group, this has led to 28 percent of all e-tail transactions being aborted or otherwise failing.
This weekend, one of my astute callers suggested that he was less concerned that his credit card might be stolen online. But he is acutely aware that a theft like the Egghead theft might be the work of corporate espionage. In his view, somebody broke in to steal Egghead's client list so the perpetrating company can get access to the people who are buying online, and what they're buying. In essence, this is a way to obtain a marketing database.
Allow the same company to use data-mining to add legally obtainable information to the information it already stole, and it get a perfect client profile -- one with which it can pinpoint its target audience, find out their buying habits, their abilities to pay successfully, and other demographic information.
Q: I often have trouble reading the type in the blue bar at the top of my windows. Is there a way to make it more readable?
A: The readability of the title bar on each window is directly correlated to the resolution of your monitor, the font used and the style. As a default, Windows uses MS San Serif (Western) font in an 8-point size. That's 2 to 4 point sizes smaller than a typical typewriter font. So it can be quite difficult to read when your monitor is set to high resolutions. To increase the size of the font in the title bar, right-click on an open spot on your Windows desktop. Select [Properties] from the menu that pops up. Choose the [Appearance] tab. You'll see a graphic representation of your Windows desktop. Click on title bar on the window labeled "Active Window." In the size field next to the field labeled "font," select a new, larger size. Then adjust the size field next to the "Item" field to be a few point sizes larger than the font size. Vary the sizes until you find it quite readable. Then click on the "Inactive Window" title bar and adjust in the same way. When the fonts are adjusted to your liking, click on the [Apply] button. Then exit your display properties by clicking on [Okay].
David Radin is host of the nationally syndicated radio show "Internet Insider," a local version of which is aired on KDKA AM 1020 at noon Saturdays. You can ask him a computer or Internet question by following the instructions at www.post-gazette.com/interact, where you can also find an archive of his previous Q&A columns.
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