Put phishing emails in front of credit union employees and how many will fall for them and cough up sensitive info? 20 to 60% will get conned.
And that can be costly to a credit union, both in terms of money and reputation.
Enter BrightWise, a Des Moines Iowa cyber training company created by Sherri Davidoff, CEO of LMG Security, and the Iowa Credit Union League’s holding company Affiliates Management Company (AMC).
After training, said Davidoff, the number of employees who fall for the phishing con tumbles below 10%.
What BrightWise will focus on, said Davidoff, are fun, short videos – think maybe five minutes – than an employee can absorb at his/her leisure.
Smarter employees are critical because how hackers work has changed, said Davidoff. “It’s no longer 13-year-olds in their moms’ basements that are hacking us; it’s organized crime groups all over the world,” Davidoff shared with NBC’s Today Show.
“People tend to think cybersecurity happens in the IT department,” added Davidoff. “Front-line staff are under constant assault from crooks and their automated robots, look-alike communications and other crafty tricks. We have to arm employees with knowledge, but also give them the tactics they need to sidestep cyber sneak attacks.”
Want more details on the Paul Allen scam? Read this.
Listen up to this podcast for a fast overview of the cyber threats credit unions face – and what they can, indeed must, do to protect themselves and their members.
A nasty secret about hotels is that a lot have bedbugs. I am talking five star hotels and hostels, dives and ultra luxury digs. Guests bring them. And they often leave them behind. To bite the next guest, suck some blood, and very probably crawl into a suitcase and come home with you. That last is a real threat. Most of us don’t notice a bedbug bite or two, or we think we nicked ourselves with something in the hotel bathroom.
Wrong. Sleep with bedbugs in a hotel and they are coming home with you.
If you like scary reading, click here for a roundup of TripAdvisor user complaints about bedbugs in hotels. You’ll get a sense of how global the issue is, both geographically but also economically. Staying only in luxe properties is no protection.
I have lived through a bedbug infestation in my home. It sucks. It cost $600 in exterminator fees to clear up. Plus a lot of sheets and blanket cleaning and washing. Along the way, there were many bites, some of which leave horrendous marks. The bites also are itchy and you just feel disgusting knowing you are an edible blood bank for who knows how many insects.
The cause of that infestation probably was a neighbor, not a hotel, but as our knowledge of bedbugs grew in that incident so did the realization that we had in fact been bitten by bedbugs in hotels in the past.
No surprise there. Hotels are fighting against what amount to a bedbug epidemic. It is not clear who is winning.
According to the New York Times, “A 2016 survey of 100 hotels in the United States, conducted by Orkin, a pest control company, found that 82 percent of them had been treated for bedbugs in the previous year. “
Personally I’m not troubled that 82% had been treated for bedbugs in the past year. I’m more troubled by the 18% that hadn’t been.
Conde Nast Traveler shouts: Bed bugs in hotels are on the rise.
Travelpulse says, Hotels are spending big money on bed bugs.
Exactly three states have laws that explicitly obligate a hotel to remove a bedbug ridden room from occupancy. That’s Kansas, West Virginia, and Nevada.
That means the onus is on you to protect yourself from bedbugs.
Having been through a bedbug infestation once, I am determined not to bring back bugs from the hotels I stay in.
Consumer Reports outlines a self-defense program to take when entering a hotel room.
Step 1: Put your luggage in the bathroom or on a luggage rack. Probably they are free of bedbugs.
Step 2: Pull back the sheets and check the mattress and box spring for signs of bedbugs – they are visible to the naked eye. Keep your eyes peeled for “exoskeletons (casings that the bugs leave behind when they molt) and dark, rust-colored spots.” Those spots probably are dried blood, by the way.
Says CR: “If you see any telltale signs, tell hotel staff and ask for a new room, preferably in another part of the building.”
Personally, I would check out and decline to pay. But there’s no guarantee the hotel down the block doesn’t also have a bedbug problem so maybe I am spinning my own wheels.
You want a more meticulous inspection? Hotel Businesscontent sponsored by ActiveGuard offers a multi-step program for hotel housekeeping to implement in a hunt for bedbugs. It’s detailed. And you’ll want to have a flashlight in hand. But if you want high confidence that your room is bedbug free, go with this six step program that looks at everything from the underside of the box spring to the edges of the headboard. The steps are here.
If you check out from a hotel after just one night you might not notice bug bites until you are on your way home. Often it’s an itch that first gets your attention. Then you notice the bites and you know you’ve been dinner for a bug. All’s not lost. You still can save yourself a home infestation. Put your clothes in the dryer for at least 30 minutes. Wash them if you wish but bedbugs can usually survive water. It’s the heat that kills them.
If you are beginning to think they are everywhere, they are. And there are more infestations reported in summer, per the National Pest Management Association: “More than half of pest control professionals noted that they receive the most bed bug complaints during the summer, as increased travel during this time of the year may help spread bed bugs from vacation destinations to homes or even college lodgings to homes as students go on summer break.”
Inspect hotel rooms, always. Inspect your luggage when you get home. Ditto when cruising. Be wary of seating in airports, movie theaters, etc. Stay vigilant and bedbugs can be beaten.
Corruption. Greed. Ignorance. Racism. Sexism. Words you don’t usually hear spoken about cooperatives. But brace yourself because in the next hour you will as The Cooperators Podcast talks with Jake Schlachter, founder and executive director of We Own It, a Madison Wisconsin based organization aimed at energizing the 130 million of us who belong to cooperatives in the US to seize control, to put our cooperatives in the directions we want them to go.
We have that power.
We just have to know it. And use it.
We are member owners. We Own It wants to remind us about that. And offer us tips on how best to use our powers.
The primary focus of We Own It right now are electric cooperatives and, yes, they have a glorious history. They brought light to the darkness of rural America. It sounds like a Biblical moment.
But now, at many rural electric co-ops, it’s more akin to the expulsion from the Garden of Eden.
Board members paid six figures for what many believe are volunteers jobs.
Boards with no African Americans serving populations with many African American members.
Boards with no women.
Boards that could spell solar if you spot them the consonants. And many of those boards also just don’t get that adding broadband Internet to their services just may save them for generations to come.
Some electric co-ops are grand indeed. Some aren’t. We Own It aims to energize members to transform the latter.
We Own It also has its eyes on credit unions which talk a good game of member ownership – but many credit unions fail miserably when it comes to empowering their member owners. Have you ever voted in a credit union election? Ever?
The podcast also detours into food co-ops – and what they can teach electric co-ops and what they can learn from other co-ops.
BTW, Jim Blaine sits on the board of We Own It. He gets his own podcast here. Other, related podcasts include Stuart Reid (food co-ops) and C. E. Pugh (also food co-ops). And Chris Mitchell discussed rural broadband and electric co-ops here.
To read my interview with scholar Robert Putnam on “Bowling Alone,” read my interview here.
This is fundamentally a very optimistic podcast. But at times it may seem we stepped into Apocalypse Now and all we can do is mumble the horror, the horror.
Buckle up.
Like what you are hearing? The Cooperators Podcast seeks sponsors and supporters to help us spread the word about cooperatives and how they often are the better way. Contact Robert McGarvey to find out what you can do to sustain this podcast.
At 30 he took over as CEO of State Employees’ Credit Union in North Carolina. That was 1979. Come 2016 and he retired. SECU had grown to $33 billion – and it had 256 branches and 5800 employees.
That’s the Jim Blaine story and here he sits for a marathon interview, the longest in this podcast’s history.
It’s worth the hour. Make time.
Blaine starts out by questioning the wave of mergers that is now rocking the world of credit unions. Why not just liquidate the institution and give every member $1000?
Keep listening and you realize he’s not exactly for doing that. In fact he denounces the loss of a few hundred credit union charters yearly.
What he is actually doing is highlighting a reality that, typically, those mergers accomplish just about nothing. The resulting institution, a bit bigger, is in fact no more competitive.
Blaine also worries about the loss of local institutions, where in many credit unions all decisions – including the trivial – get made at corporate HQ.
Is there in fact a future for credit unions?
Maybe. Maybe not. Blaine highlights a strategy for keeping credit unions relevant. But he frets that many may not heed the message.
I come not to praise room service but to bury it. And maybe gleefully dance on its grave.
The Phocuswire headline said it plainly: Will food delivery apps eliminate the need for hotel room service?
I can only hope.
I am no fan of room service. As I write this I remember a room service breakfast for two at an Upper Eastside hotel that involved egg platters – cold and maybe $35 each; with cold toast; cold bacon stippled with congealed fat; coffee – $14 apiece for lukewarm java; plus tax and a mandatory room service charge. Around $150 total.
Did I mention the 40 minute wait? That of course probably explains the tepid temperatures of the food and drink.
But the staggering thing is that a self described ultra luxury hotel would deliver such dreck to a guest’s room. And have the nerve to charge exorbitant prices.
Yeah, I should have gone to Starbucks, maybe a block away but I was lazy and – obviously – I was dumb.
And now Phocuswire tells me that just maybe I can forget about calling room service ever again.
Phocuswright, along with iSeatz, did a consumer survey – involving 800 of us – along with f & b pros to explore the pros and cons of room service and also third party delivery services. It concluded: “The study found that travelers perceive both traditional room service and third-party food delivery platforms as providing ease and convenience, and overall satisfaction is similar with both options.
“But for room service, a notable issue for travelers is the perceived value – or lack thereof – in relation to the product received.”
You got that right about value, or lack thereof.
Yes, I’ve talked with senior hotel execs who tell me I don’t get it, that I don’t recognize that with room service every tray is in effect delivered twice – to the room, then back to the kitchen. That adds expense, they tell me, and it also explains why often the food arrives cold.
In that vein, the report noted that many hotel executives want to stop room service. “Most hotels claim that they would prefer to eliminate the provision of room service if given the choice. However, most are currently obliged to maintain it, either because of guest expectations (particularly in luxury and, to a lesser degree, upmarket-properties), or because of brand requirements.”
The other factor that is holding back many hotels from shutting down room service is that we like it. Color me surprised by how many of us still use room service. Per the report, “Traditional room service remains a popular option for in-room dining, and is used by over two thirds (67%) of travelers.”
Oh, by the way, look online for room service menus at the hotels that you’ll be staying at in the next month. You probably won’t find any. If you do, they will have glorious photos but no prices. I can’t say I don’t understand why hotel execs hide the prices. I’d be ashamed too.
But there now is a way out, that should please hotel execs and guests alike. Suddenly food delivery services are an Internet unicorn. And hungry guests can get the food they desire.
Some hotels are partnering with food delivery services but who cares? This is the Internet wild west. Buy the food you want, where you want it. Worst case you’ll be forced to go down to the lobby to pick it up. Big whoop. How many morning have I been forced in Strip hotels to go to the lobby for morning coffee at Starbucks.
You’ll eat better with the delivery services.
Look at Doordash. I’m thinking about a couple of iHop breakfast samplers – eggs, bacon, ham, sausage, hashbrowns, pancakes. Priced at $12.50 apiece. Throw in coffees, a tip, tax, delivery fee ($5.99) and you are still under $45. Where I am in Phoenix, you’ll get your food in under 40 minutes probably.
Don’t like iHop? There are dozens – probably hundreds – more restaurants to choose from.
Some hotels are in fact partnering with specific delivery services and some guests say they prefer that — “The study found that two out of five respondents would ‘definitely’ or ‘probably’ use a food delivery service directly from a hotel if it was available,” reported Phocuswire.
I have no preference in that regard. I’ve used services to deliver directly to my apartment and am comfortable using the apps.
But if you’re not, very probably the hotel front desk will help you out in interfacing with a delivery service.
Hotel room service probably is going away, sooner rather than later. And nobody will play the bagpipes at its passing.
If you live in the sticks and want broadband, Chris Mitchell is the man to know.
If you are a cooperator and want to hear a co-op success story, Chris Mitchell also is the man to know.
That’s because – as director of the Community Broadband Initiative – Mitchell knows the reality of what’s happening in bringing high speed Internet to rural America. He also records a weekly podcast, Broadband Bits. It’s a good listen.
By his estimate maybe 85% of the lower 48 states land mass lacks high speed Internet.
By contrast, 90% of significantly populated areas have that access.
This is about a whole lot more than streaming porn and playing online games. It many ways it’s about the life of rural America, much of which faces a depopulation crisis.
Good broadband just may cure that.
Nobody thinks broadband alone will keep folks on the farm. But a lack of broadband just may be enough to send them packing.
Where do co-ops fit in? As heroes in fact, roles played in much of the country by both electric co-ops and telephone co-ops (of which there are many hundreds by Mitchell’s count).
A few decades ago the telephone co-ops began to offer broadband. In the last decade the electric co-ops – generally much bigger companies with deeper pockets – have entered the picture.
Mitchell expects a stampede of co-ops entering the fight.
This all is reminiscent of the rural electrification project that brought light to the countryside in the FDR New Deal.
It worked then. Mitchell believes it will work again and is optimistic that rural America doon will enjoy quality broadband, very possibly better than what urban America gets.
“The solution is in view,” Mitchell said. “There’s little that would stop co-ops from solving this problem.”
Like what you are hearing? The Cooperators Podcast seeks sponsors and supporters to help us spread the word about cooperatives and how they often are the better way. Contact Robert McGarvey to find out what you can do to sustain this podcast.
Words we don’t know may still bite us. Meet Flygskam. What language is it? Swedish. And it means “flight shame.”
In Sweden today increasing numbers are ditching planes in favor of trains – even 15 hour trips such as Gothenburg to Lulea (1-½ hours by air).
They cite flight shame as the explanation.
Are they crazy?
Nope. Swedes are throwing flight shame in the faces of flyers and the hot button is how polluting planes are. A New York Times headline spelled it out: Flying Is Bad for the Planet.
The Times’ lede smacks you in the head: “Take one round-trip flight between New York and California, and you’ve generated about 20 percent of the greenhouse gases that your car emits over an entire year.”
Don’t even ask about the airlines’ plastics problem. It’s huge and not shrinking.
What happens in Sweden doesn’t stay there. Know this: Flygskam is heading at you. If you haven’t heard displeased snickers about your frequent flying yet, you will – at the office, at the fitness club, at your community meetings. What had been a badge of honor – platinum elite status – is getting transformed into a badge of shame.
Environmentalism has caught up with frequent flying and it will exact its price.
The driving force behind Flygskam: Greta Thunberg, a 16 year-old Swedish school girl. Don’t scoff. She and the movement she has launched will change how we travel – certainly how often we travel.
According to the South China Morning Post, “A recent survey conducted by WWF found that 23 percent of Swedes were opting out of air travel to reduce their impact on the climate, and 18 percent of those polled had chosen to take a train rather than fly. ‘Flygskam’ (‘flight shame’) has taken off on social media across Europe, as has the inversely correlated ‘tagskryt’ (‘train bragging’), and the phenomenon is making a difference on the ground.”
The Morning Post continued; “According to a recent Bloomberg report, Swedavia AB, which operates 10 Swedish airports, has seen year-on-year passenger numbers drop for seven consecutive months, while state train operator SJ moved a record 32 million people around the country last year.”
Rick Steves, the PBS travel guru, has acknowledged that flyers are “contributing to the destruction of our environment.”
In Europe, flygskam has spread beyond Sweden. The United Kingdom is a hotbed,
And “the Finnish have invented the word ‘lentohapea’, the Dutch say ‘vliegschaamte’ and the Germans ‘flugscham’, all referring to a feeling of shame around flying.”
An Instagram account that exists to shame boastful travel influencers about their gallivanting – #StayOnTheGround — has over 60,000 followers
Certainly Donald Trump believes climate change is hokum but he probably also has doubts that the Earth in fact is not flat and that the Moon is not made of cheese. Nobody with the slightest familiarity with climate science doubts that in fact climate change is real and a corollary is that air travel is highly polluting – and much air travel also is not exactly necessary.
Which brings us back to flygskam and us. The money question is this: what will you do about this at your end?
Me, I’ve already decided to eliminate air travel that can be easily eliminated. I have not modified my position. If a trip can be replaced with a phone call, I’m all in.
And a lot of business trips can be eliminated.
What about vacation travel? This year I find myself planning vacation trips from where I live in Phoenix to San Francisco, Texas, northern New Mexico – and, yep, I see all happening in a car.
Can I go the next six months without once boarding a plane? I’m not prepared to promise that. A family emergency could trigger a flight. So could the right business proposition. I am not for hurting myself.
But I am for doing what I can do to save the environment and part of that is indeed eliminating superfluous air travel.
Are you down for likewise?
Or are you pinning on a “smygflyga” button?
That’s flying in secret of course.
And isn’t that a change? A generation ago we might have lied that we’d flown from LA to Vegas because driving seemed so lame. But now we lie and say we drove.
Climates change. So do customs.
For the environment let’s hope this change sticks.
Need a loan? You want to know Christina Jennings, Executive Director of Shared Capital, a Twin Cities based loan fund that is itself a cooperative and makes loans only to member cooperatives and there are around 250 of them.
In the past 30 years Shared Capital has made around 850 loans totalling $50 million. This year it will make around a couple dozen loans, said Jennings, with an average loan amount a notch over $100,000.
Listen closely to this podcast to hear about the loan application process. Jennings is very explicit about what’s needed to succeed.
As for the mix of co-ops funded, Jennings said Shared Capital has seen a huge spike in the number of worker co-ops – now more than half the applicants. It’s also seen a decline in food co-ops, in part because that sector is fiercely competitive right now.
Jennings also discusses how to assess the viability of a start up worker co-op.
All in, said Jennings, this is a great time to be in the co-op world – they now are seen not as a fringe but as part of the economic solution.
But opening a new co-op remains a long and tough slog that may take a decade to bring to fruition. That’s why a key question has to be: why are you forming a co-op?
Want to become a Shared Capital member? Jennings tells the how to in this podcast.
She also tells a great story about how Organic Valley, a Shared Capital member, is living the cooperative principles in its support for other co-ops.
Along the way in this podcast you’ll hear mentions of previous podcast guests such as Stuart Reid (food co-ops), C. E. Pugh (also food co-ops), Paul Bradley (mobile home parks), and also Davil Gill of Marquette Brewing, a start-up that in fact Shared Capital has been working with.
Like what you are hearing? The Cooperators Podcast seeks sponsors and supporters to help us spread the word about cooperatives and how they often are the better way. Contact Robert McGarvey to find out what you can do to sustain this podcast.
Chew on this Credit Union Journalheadline: Credit Unions are losing the war for Millennials.
Worse, the average member age keeps trending up. Per the CUJournal article, “Half of credit union members are now age 53 and older. These are members who for the most part have gone through their home-buying and wealth-building phases and are approaching the slow draw down of assets in retirement, if not there already.”
Credit unions could pat themselves on the back for wooing more than their share of Gex X – 31% of members are in that cohort – but hold the back slapping because credit unions are desperately failing in the fight for Millennials (born 1981-1996), the prime ages for active borrowers.
The CUJ piece said: “Right now, just 24 percent of members are millennials, while 40 percent of customers at digital-first direct banks and 34 percent of customers at the top 50 global bank are millennials. Credit unions are losing the battle for the youth.”
Probably credit unions are doing no better in the fight for Gen Z (born 1996-2015), whose oldest members are now out of school, in the workforce, buying cars, using credit cards, and dreaming about home ownership. They are about 20% of the US population and a reality is that most credit unions just ignore them. That’s pushing Gen Z into the arms of fintechs (can you say Venmo?) and the global and digital banks . And that’s a mistake.
What do credit unions need to do to win these generational battles? CU2.0 recently convened two focus groups. One with three Gen Zs, in the other three Millennials spoke up.
You won’t like what they had to say.
(Both sessions are in the CU2.0 podcast series. Hear their words from their very lips. Gen Z podcast here. Millennials here.)
There is good news. Both cohorts agree that credit unions have a lot of plusses. Free checking is widely available – especially important to many who are burdened with sizable student debts. The non profit status of credit unions is a plus with these age groups. So is the community orientation of most credit unions.
And the last big plus are the vast credit union surcharge free ATM networks, via Co-Op and also via CuLiance, where each network is 2x the biggest bank ATM networks. Just one problem: very few millennials and Gen Z know about this. “I didn’t know about this network until today,” confessed one focus group participant who works for a company that consults with credit unions.
Just about all the participants said that few, if any, of their friends and generational peers knew about any of the credit union plusses. They don’t even know they are non profits.
“They seemed sketchy to me,” said one participant who indicated he had thought credit unions were kind of wannabe banks that weren’t big enough to qualify.
(Listen to the CU2.0 podcast with Teresa Freeborn who heads CUNA’s $100 million “Open Your Eyes” campaign to raise awareness of credit unions.”)
The bad news continues. Credit unions pride themselves on their branches – but do younger generations ever step in a branch? Nope is the answer from many. “I haven’t been in a branch in three years,” said one in the focus group.
And credit unions have a lingering reputation for serving up antiquated, secondrate technology – which is especially bad news with generations who want to do most of their banking on a mobile phone. Is the technology really this bad? Doesn’t matter if enough of the young believe it.
So is this RIP credit unions? It is not. The focus group members pointed to the strength of the credit union message and urged credit unions to get busy and active spreading their messages on social media (and maybe not Facebook – listen to the podcast to learn why).
Another idea that emerged from the focus groups is the suggestion that credit unions get busy offering financial education and budgeting skills classes geared to the young – perhaps as young as middle school students. With many young graduating college deep in student loan debt (upwards of $37,000 apiece), these generations could benefit from classes in basic budget skills.
And get them as members early and they just may stay members – especially when they understand that the ATM networks mean they can access their credit union no matter where their travels take them.
Last advice from the focus groups: run one of your own. Gather up three or six millenials for a one hour session, do likewise with Gex Z, and listen, listen, listen. They will tell you how to market to them if you only ask. The best route to actionable information is to go to the source. They want to tell you how to serve them better, Just ask.
Listen to the two part CU2.0 podcast on what the young say about credit unions.
Like what you are hearing? Find out how you can help sponsor this podcast here. Very affordable sponsorship packages are available.
Find out more about CU2.0 and the digital transformation of credit unions here. It’s a journey every credit union needs to take. Pronto
