Has this happened to you: login to your credit card site, only to be told you “need an activation code now”. That’s fine, so you get one via phone or email, enter it and go about your business.

You then attempt to login from home/work and it tells you you need an activation code for that computer too. Okay, not too bad, I can handle that… seems to make sense. I go through the process there.

But I go back to the first location and NOW it tells me I need to do the activation process again. I already set up an activation code for this - and since a lot of people access things from two locations, they should not have to keep creating activation codes whenever they use two different computers consecutively! Annoying things like this actually reduce security because users will try to find ways to circumvent them, and/or will be inconvenienced (e.g. not as likely in this case, but a more sophisticated user might set up a remote login to their home computer to get around this, thereby creating another large potential security hole). Silly stuff.

A company called YieldStar [WSJ, sub req] is providing landlords with real-time market data to help them price apartments more effectively, including providing to consumers or brokers potentially information that can help them decide what length of lease to lock-in and (presumably) various pricing options depending on length of lease. This is great - expect to see much more on specialized outsourced analytical and pricing services across a number of industries. Whether you are building a market yourself which provides that price discovery (as we are), or doing some other kinds of proprietary analysis based on existing data out there, this is a very rich vein.

The third part of this series (to which we may return later) relates to commitment and consistency…. As Robert Cialdini points out in his wonderful book, Influence - The Psychology of Persuasion, after we make a decision (or commitment) we then take subsequent actions that are consistent with that, even when these don’t make rational sense. e.g. Bettors feeling more confident about the horse they bet on 30 seconds after the bet than just before placing it. Some of Cialdini’s factors also play a part in things like holding onto a stock for too long (overconfidence, as well as this consistency factor).

As many of us driving have probably experienced at one time or another, sometimes we’ll get stuck in a lane that isn’t moving when traffic is whizzing by us. Often this happens when there is a stalled vehicle, and because traffic is so close to one another, people have to stop and are have to wait for a break in traffic to get out of that lane.

You should retain flexibility and not be afraid to change lanes from time to time to avoid getting into a situation such as this — too often we choose a lane and then convince ourselves that it is the best one, even when contrary evidence presents itself. Make sure the reasons you are doing something are still valid, and you’re not unconsciously just doing it to stay consistent with your past decisions.

The second in the series of lesson from traffic (not internet traffic, but the actual vehicular kind) is also set in Seattle, and was also the result of a business trip I took there (while with Jupiter Research).

We’d just had lunch with a couple of senior executives from a potential client company (let’s call them John and Phil). The lunch venue was a short three block walk away from their office. We were walking back to the office where we’d parked. I was chatting to John and one or two steps behind us, my sales representative Brent was chatting to the other company executive Phil.

We were standing waiting at the traffic light, and the little traffic man had just lit up for us to cross the road. John was half turned towards me, saying something and he was about to step into the intersection, me a step or two behind him when all of a sudden Brent GRABS John by the back of his shirt and pulls him backwards out of the intersection. I stopped as well because just at that moment a white Lexus SUV came barreling through the intersection at high speed, running the red light! John would surely have been toast! Brent had saved his life (and perhaps mine as well as I no doubt would have been at least collateral damage)!

Traffic lesson number two (what IS it about Seattle you may ask?) is that not everyone plays by the rules, and that you yourself may not be able to react quickly enough to the actions of those rulebreakers. So be sure to surround yourself with smart, watchful people who are not afraid of taking action and give them the tools and the authority to be able to take that action. (okay maybe I’m putting too much into this one, but it’s a good story and such a thing does make you think a lot about how little separates us from…)

I was in Seattle a few years ago for some client meetings– staying downtown which is always a good trip. I like Seattle. Anyway, in the morning before I was due to meet our salesperson to go over to the client’s offices, was grabbing some coffee at a Starbucks or a Tully’s on the corner. I had just sat down at a corner table that looked out over the intersection when, all of a sudden, a Lincoln Towncar comes flying backwards into the intersection, driverless with its door open, and does a wide 180 degree reverse turn and ends up smashing backwards into a telephone pole facing the other way!

Looks like the driver had parked facing up the steep slope and 1) not put his parking brake on properly and 2) not turned his wheels the correct way. Luckily nobody was in the intersection: since the road was a one-way, it’s more likely that someone wouldn’t even have been looking up the road for something coming at them backwards, the wrong way. Ever since this day, I must admit that I almost always look both ways when crossing a 1-way street. And that might be the lesson from this that one can apply to various things like business (competition: although infrequent, your biggest threat may be coming from an unexpected place so always doublecheck where you are … ) etc.

I won’t belabo(u)r the point, but I think there are all sorts of metaphors and lessons to learn from traffic. I will continue the series tomorrow!

There’s a great article from the NYTimes (here available on CNET) about the black market in credit card, bank account and other consumer information on the Web. This is the dark side of online, global, always-on commerce.

Long story I found on slashdot about a guy who had credit card numbers stolen and used and managed to nab the two culprits. The reason they were stolen however, is he says, because they probably found them dumpster diving, he doesn’t shred his documents which is a must these days (unfortunately). The interesting thing always, is how he and other commenters on this story immediately assume that the numbers were stolen ONLINE. Newsflash - stealing your info online is actually quite hard, offline is easy!

Not to mention that one of the thieves had a cash access check that his Visa card issuer had sent to this guy (filled out, in his pocket, when the police nabbed him). Those are obviously quite dangerous and one of the first things a person should shred - no WAY should those ever be thrown out in the trash in one piece.

Just as there are thriving markets online and offline for stolen phone cards, credit cards and other goodies, there is a market for hacked home PC’s. These “botnets” can then be used for spam attacks, setting up fake websites for phishing passwords and user IDs (those “citibank” emails you’ve become fond of getting) or for distributed denial of service attacks…

The Jan.22nd Economist has an article [sub needed] discussing how human intuition distorts and disables accurate risk assessment. It covers some of Daniel Kahneman’s work (2002 Nobel in Economics for “having integrated insights from psychological research into economic science, especially concerning human judgment and decision-making under uncertainty“), breaking some of his findings down as follows - things we do that undermine accurate decisionmaking:

Over-optimism: we are wired to think the future is bright, that we will be successful (”40% of [Americans surveyed] think they will end up among the top 1% of earners”)– we have a hard time admitting our success is just pure luck.
Anchor effect: the way that putting a number on something that is rather uncertain tends to make this figure the focal point for future discussions or negotiations.
Stubbornness: People tend to try to stay consistent with their past decisions, and the sooner they make a decision the more difficult it is to overcome it and reverse themselves.
Over-emphasis on personal experiences: a dogged preference for the known over the unknown, a tendency to weight personal encounters more heavily than (even well-backed-up) information from others.
Fear of loss/failure: Losses sting us more than gains of an equal size excite us - especially given that we tend to separate individual losses and gains and look at them in isolation rather than as an overall “portfolio” where some will lose and some will gain.
Misplaced priorities: we spend too much time worrying about small things and not enough energy on things that will have a very large impact. We’ve all been there!
Counterproductive regret: It’s much easier to not invest in XYZ Corp. when we’re still upset we didn’t get into the stock 3 months ago before it started to run up. However, if XYZ is expected to continue to increase, we should certainly purchase it. But that regret often negatively colors our decision whether to invest and we forego further gains…

Overall the article is a decent overview of behavioral finance… certainly a topic I enjoy understanding. Another book I’ve often recommended to people is Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini, Ph.D., discussed here.