Update WP-Super-Cache and W3TC WordPress Plugins Immediately

The Website security company Sucuri has found some serious vulnerabilities in the two most popular WordPress Plugins and issued a warning to the entire WordPress user community to update them as soon as possible. The two Plugins namely WP Super Cache and W3TC are found susceptible to a very serious vulnerability – remote code execution (RCE), a.k.a., arbitrary code execution. The website security expert commented that this issue was reported last month by few users but publishers issued a patch disabling the vulnerable function by default. Considering the widespread usage of these two plugins which comes somewhere close to 6 million downloads makes it a big concern. The comment friendly WordPress sites are more vulnerable. Plugin developers have acted quickly and recent updates are available for download. WordPress users can download the updated versions from Plugin Repository: WP Super Cache W3TC Total Cache Thanks to Sucuri and both Plugin Publishers for bring-up this matter and fixing the issue so quickly. You can read more about the issue here and some ref...

The Future of the Cookie

Session Cookies or Sitting / Persistent Cookies may they be used as Advertising Cookies or Process Cookies or Security Cookies or Preference Cookies or Analytics cookies. May they be First Party Cookies or Third Party Cookies, local objects / Flash Cookies or HTTP only cookies or Zombie Cookies. Cookies are now integral part of Browser based Digital Journeys, E-marketers may call them as basic units helps temporarily recording the data of Browsers to Buyer Experience or Play to Pause or Click to Close actions. Digital marketers and websites are using them for various purposes, may it be for segmentation, behavioural / Psyco-graphic targeting, tracking, personalization, security, advertising, eCommerce, and the usage list goes on. What started as method to store temporary browsing data has taken a big shape. Here is a nice article from IAB on Future of Cookies in the Digital Marketing...

FTC Strengthens Children’s Online Privacy Rules

To keep up the pace with fast growing and evolving digital ecosystem and trends, FTC has adopted some amendments to COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act) that will give more control to parents to safeguard child’s privacy online. The Digital world is changing rapidly and Digital marketers are adopting new age technology tactics to collect more and more information from user. Content gathering in this Big data landscape need to be controlled. Digital Marketing Strategies now a days are getting more and more CRM / data driven. the final amendments to COPPA are: modify the list of “personal information”  that cannot be collected without parental notice and consent, clarifying that this category includes geolocation information, photographs, and videos; offer companies a streamlined, voluntary and transparent approval process for new ways of getting parental consent; close a loophole that allowed kid-directed apps and websites to permit third parties to collect personal information from children through plug-ins without parental notice and consent; extend coverage in some of those cases so that the third parties doing the additional collection also have to comply with COPPA; extend the COPPA Rule to cover persistent identifiers that can recognize users over time and across different websites or online services, such as IP addresses and mobile device IDs; strengthen data security protections by requiring that covered website operators and online service providers take reasonable steps to release children’s personal information only to companies that are capable of keeping it secure and confidential; require that covered website operators adopt reasonable procedures for data retention and deletion; and strengthen the FTC’s oversight of self-regulatory safe harbor programs. According to FTC’s News...

Consumers Don’t Mind Online Ads – If relevant and Genuine

Gone Are the Days of Banner Blindness. Consumers Don’t Mind Online Ads – If relevant and Genuine! Have you found yourself ignoring the online ads that keep blinking on a webpage or popup out of nowhere? I’m sure most of you would have searched around to find out the “X” mark or a “close” link to be able to hide those annoying ads. Being a diehard digital marketer and a supporter of online ads (after all they do help me earn my living J and are also a life line for Google, Bing, Yahoo, Facebook and most of online media giants), sometimes I still do get annoyed by those ads. The digital / online media ecosystem has evolved through a series of transformation at all levels of the supply chain including the mindset of the audience. Now we see Advertorials, Adver-Blogs, Adver-Games, Advertainment, Adver-widgets, Adver-Plugins. This sponsored culture has propagated within the roots of the industry like any other publication media.  Amazon’s ad-supported version of Kindle, priced at $114 that it had introduced earlier this year, is currently at the top of its list of best selling electronics. Interestingly, if almost everyone is annoyed by those ads, why are people buying the ad-supported gadget! It sheds light to an interested point about the e-commerce industry and online advertisers. 1. After all consumers don’t mind online ads, if they are what they look. If the ads that are coming are genuine, don’t look fake or look like as if on a click they will take you a website selling bogus products, people will actually look at those ads. Moreover, the ads should...

Hello World

Hello WORLD At the onset of Internet everyone wanted an email, then they wanted to join more and more news groups….after this they wanted a personal web page for themselves, then they wanted more pages for their family, friends, petsJ. Very soon corporate also joined the rally, every company big or small wanted an address on internet (an online business card), then they wanted some web directories to search business and their addresses…Phew -online yellow pages, then companies started advertising on them. Soon schools, hospitals, societies, communities not only this OMG Govt.’s came forward and there were too many pages… a medium for interaction became medium of communication…everyone wanted to search, soon there were search tools to give people exactly what they wanted, soon people started searching with expressions. This became an OVERTURE to new era and GO getter search tools started recording them. Businesses started advertising on these expressions…. Soon companies started benefiting from advertising and people started getting what they wanted. Soon people got connected with companies, communities and vice-versa; And this is how a medium of personal identity, became a medium of interaction, a medium of communication and finally a medium of TRANSACTION. Real time communication has endless possibilities coz people by virtue have affinities, Preferences and most important….social needs, email was not just enough to keep them happy soon they got happy with Online forums and then chat to connect with their friends and  share good and bad things, then people wanted to make new friends not only dating J  but real friends and communities thereby. This freedom of expression – The Net Neutral Space...