+1 T. Rob, Thank you for sharing this story. I suspect that I’m in the target demographic, age-wise, and I certainly don’t share the software expertise that most of the members of this group have, but I do have pretty decent cyber-hygiene thanks to help from this group and others. That said, I agree completely with you about designs. Info tech is advancing so rapidly that there will always be a significant number of people who find it difficult to keep up for any number of reasons as they get older — designers need to become aware that those folks in the “long tail” of the distribution comprise a truly large number of people. It’s not enough to provide for large print — systems and websites need to be truly easy to use. Truly easy — not just easy for the designer. Designer need to become aware of something called “The Curse of Knowledge.” Just because you know something (the curse) doesn’t mean that everyone else knows it (the cursED). Anyone can create Soviet designs (need more concrete, need more steel), It's hard to create an elegant design – one that is easy to use, efficient and works because the laws of physics on on the your side not working against you. Thanks again for sharing, Guy From: "T.Rob" <
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> Organization: IoPT Consulting Date: Wednesday, January 4, 2017 at 20:59 To: 'ProjectVRM list' < "> > Subject: [projectvrm] The mother-in-law ad-tech problem We spent a couple days either side of New Year's Eve in the hospital with my father in law. Afterward my mother-in-law started searching for all the conditions and meds mentioned in his discharge paperwork. Next thing you know, she's picked up ransomware which as best as I can tell was delivered through an ad rendered while she was reading email in Outlook Live. As I mention in the linked post, I can't ever know for sure that the malware specifically targeted sick and elderly people but based on the ads she's now seeing it would be hard to win an ad placement bid right now for any other criteria. So right after nearly losing her husband of 60+ years, emotionally and physically exhausted and unable to sustain her normal levels of web vigilance and security hygiene, she suddenly becomes a ripe target for malware delivered in ad-tech that ransoms all her family photos and correspondence. It took hours to recover her PC and she was practically in tears the whole time. Which to me is a big part of the problem. Much of the discussion of ad tech and ad blockers centers around tech-savvy mainstream users, not the elderly parent or grandparent whose online experience is determined largely by default settings of their devices and technology-specific cataracts that blind them to how this stuff works. Designing for the least abled among us results in designs that everyone can use. Designing to the 80th or 90th percentile is much easier but renders millions of people "statistically insignificant" even to the point of creating new classes of disability where once there were none. I understand that web sites need to make money to deliver high quality content but any web property owner or manager who believes the number of users who are actually victimized through malvertising is statistically insignificant needs to look my mother-in-law in the eye while they explain to her just how insignificant she personally is to their revenue stream and why. Until ad-tech can be directly accountable to its victims site owners don't get to whine about ad blockers. https://medium.com/@tdotrob/dont-claim-your-web-site-depends-on-ads-d1aec0d45b3f# Kind regards, -- T.Rob T.Robert Wyatt, Managing partner IoPT Consulting, LLC +1 704-443-TROB (8762) Voice/Text |
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