My media flirts

Back at AOL I had a vanity job title of Safety & Security Expert. This only came out on PR occasions, those being a number of radio and newspaper interviews. I had a load of fun doing them and, get this, along the way was interviewed by Maggie Philbin and had a photo shoot with Kim & Aggie. These sorts of life-changing moments (I hope you’re sensing some sarcasm here) stay with you for life so I had a quick look today to see if I could find the old articles and thought I’d record a few here for prosperity/embarassement.

“Phishers are becoming increasingly sophisticated at spoofing legitimate brands and it is often difficult to spot a scam, so it’s crucial that people protect themselves,” said Will Smith, AOL’s safety and security expert – Guardian.

“As well as using spam filters and being wary of unsolicited emails, we would advise internet users to check their bank balance regularly and read their bank’s terms and conditions,” said Will Smith, AOL’s safety and security expert – BBC News

Said AOL’s safety and security bod, Will Smith: “Phishers are becoming increasingly sophisticated at spoofing legitimate brands and it is often difficult to spot a scam, so it’s crucial that people protect themselves.” - The Register

Will Smith, AOL’s Safety & Security spokesperson, is keen to centralise AOL’s current online security tools to make them easier to use. – PC Advisor

Never did I think I’d share a column with the President of France in the Times but it must’ve been a slow news day:

“Some of the terms being bandied around are more suitable for a computer programmers’ convention than for people who want to go online at home” Will Smith, AOL’s net security expert, says online terms such as “phishing”, “rogue dialler” and “Trojan” leave most computer users bamboozled - The Times

Introducing me

I guess it would be useful to have a bit of information about me here. As you might’ve guessed, my name is Will and I work for a company called Boring where I’m a director. I’ve lived and worked in London since 1998 and have always worked in the Internet. These days some people who’ve worked in an industry for over 10 years would call themselves a vetran, I’d say I was on the wrong side of being a dot com millionaire.

The majority of my career has been at AOL, where for most of my 8 years I worked in Product Management and even found the time to do a little bit of PR stuff when they’d let me out my cage! After AOL, I did a stint at American Express and more recently have been Client Services Director at Boring’s sister company, Acknowledgement.

My passion is doing web type stuff. What’s that mean? Er, well, I can’t design for toffee and my coding skills are limited to being able to embded a link into some HTML but I do like coming up with neat web ideas, overseeing projects and trying to create decent web and digital marketing experiences. Does that make me an annoying nusience? Probably.