Mark Leishman (00:00):
It's 13 to two RNZ afternoons. Well, we're living in a tech world and sometimes we need a bit of help navigating it. That's why on Tuesdays we spend a moment on tech, and today we've got Dan Watson, managing director of Vertech back with us. Good day, Dan. Today I see you've got some tips for small businesses and how to avoid an email based fish hook. Please explain.
Daniel Watson (00:26):
Ah, yeah. Okay. So this is one of those things where you probably wouldn't encounter unless you're in a small business and you're hustling, right? And there's a lot of people out there that kind of, the phrase is survive to 25. Let's just get through the end of this year, and then things will ease up as the interest rates drop down. Now I understand that fully. So one of the ways that people are trying to survive for 25 is doing a lot of email marketing, like getting out there, working their list, trying to drum up business any way they can. Now, when you are sending out emails from your business email box, if you don't have some set in place, you're going to run a foul of the anti-spam measures out there on the internet. What I mean by that is if you start pumping out massive amounts of emails, we're talking like hundreds and thousands, not tens, then it's a possibility that, hey, if you're sending out a message that kind of looks a bit spammy, like too salesy, you might get people who are just going to market as junk mail. And as soon as people start marketing as junk mail in their mail systems, that sends a message to the overall system to go, Hey, I'm getting a whole bunch of these.
(01:56):
And then the receiver's mail systems and then put you onto basically a blacklist. Say, look, if you see messages coming from this account or this email address, it's probably spam junket.
Mark Leishman (02:11):
But would small companies be sending out hundreds of thousands or are these larger businesses,
Daniel Watson (02:16):
Oh, not hundreds, hundreds of thousands, but hundreds and thousands.
Mark Leishman (02:19):
Oh, I see. Okay. Fair enough.
Daniel Watson (02:21):
There is a point. We definitely, if you send out a message of 5,000 emails that you're definitely going to trigger stuff just purely because the total number that you're sending out. But there is other ways to, even if you're sending below that number, that you can get on the wrong kind of radar. And there's a few tips that I'd recommend to people to make sure that doesn't happen.
Mark Leishman (02:43):
Okay, so what do you do?
Daniel Watson (02:45):
Yeah, well, the first up, if you can chunk it down to smaller numbers, do A through F by surname or something like that, but don't do the whole list in one go. If you've got a big list, chunk it down to bite sizes. Two, I would suggest that you actually just go to a service like MailChimp or there's dozens of equivalent ones out there and get a subscription, even if it's for a short time. They're not expensive, but they're already set up with suggested templates that avoid the traps of spammy language. They make sure that they've got an unsubscribe option in there, which is a legal requirement in some jurisdictions, and also make it look more legitimate in the eyes of receiving mail server. Plus their servers are all set up to do this kind of thing, so they just don't send out a job. Lot of emails. They will chunk it down into bite-sized pieces themselves, which saves you a bit of effort. Beyond that, there are settings within your domain name record. So just like we have Vertex co nz, we have got some settings in our domain name records that say, who are the legitimate email servers for our domain? And by tweaking those settings, just so you can indicate to the world that you are not a short-term spamming out
(04:26):
Heart pills and weight loss programs and that kind of stuff, and all that means is that at the end of the day, more of your emails hit the inbox rather than going to the junk mail folder. And as a result, the spend on marketing results in business coming in through the door.
Mark Leishman (04:44):
Fantastic. Now, of course, school holidays at the moment, Dan, have you also noted a few developments about cybersecurity and gaming?
Daniel Watson (04:55):
Yes. Okay, so everybody thinks about checking your bank account and your credit card details. As a consumer, if you're a business, you're doing something similar, but trying to protect the privacy of your customer information, all that kind of good stuff, kids are quite keen users of the internet and they're also susceptible. So what's been recorded is that there's been a massive uptick in attacks targeted at gamers, like specifically really popular games like Minecraft. Robots among us and the scams have been set up, and yet there are templates out there that cyber criminals can purchase for this kind of thing because there's a whole dark web and business model around supplying that market, which is aimed at copying the actual legitimate game websites or utilizing the trust in big internet personalities like YouTube's Mr. Beast and doing offers like here is a free skin for your game. Now skin is one of those little micro transactions that can take place on a free game. You might not have to pay for the game, but you can glam up your character within the game by purchasing things from. So that looks like however you, it seems like a small thing. It's actually a massive thing. It's a massive economy out there. And because some of them are really rare, they're highly desirable. So people, it can be lured into
(06:40):
Handing over their login details or clicking the link, which then leads to a compromise of their computer, which then can downstream like, Hey, if kids have spent, if a kid has spent 2000 hours getting really good at a particular game, then that game account has value to somebody else. So if somebody can get control of the kid's gaming account, they can sell it off to somebody in the stakes who's going part with 50 bucks to get an account and a game that's already gotten through the basic levels and now is level 100 and has all sorts of cool stuff. It's nuts, but this is what's going on out there.
Mark Leishman (07:20):
Yeah. Now Dan, finally, you've got a hot tip on what you call a cool app. What is this about?
Daniel Watson (07:26):
Oh, hey, so I live in Pi Hoy and which is fairly is that
Mark Leishman (07:33):
I
Daniel Watson (07:33):
Be spot. There is so many posts on local Facebook about people catching possums and STOs and weasels and that kind of stuff. It's fantastic. Well, actually it's ferrets, spiritual SOS hedgehogs and all the rest. There's a big push to by Predator free New Zealand to eliminate these introduced pests and enable the bird life to really spring back and it is fantastic. What we're seeing there, I've just been introduced to Trap nz, which is what I'm spruiking out there, is that if you are in an area where there might be some trapping and hunting going on, putting down bait stations and the liking in your rural area, then check out that website trap DO and Z because there might be some activity in your area that you can join up with because all of those community groups generally run on the smell of an oily rag and the main push of it is volunteer action. So that might be the way that you can get introduced to maybe getting out there and walking a trap line from time to time and even spreading the load across more volunteers. Or if you've even got traps on your own property, perhaps you can mark them on the map using the app and recording how many of what type of pests you're catching,
(08:58):
Which all feeds into the greater effort by Predator free nz to understand how well they're doing and where should they be putting in more effort for this kind of thing,
Mark Leishman (09:10):
Trap nz, the app. Fantastic. Hey Dan, thank you so much. Dan Watson, managing director at Vertech.
Daniel Watson (09:16):
Sure mate.