Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Critics charge that the NBC News report that your smartphones and computers get hacked the minute you arrive in Russia is erroneous and misleading.

... In Procter’s view, the most misleading part of Engel’s report is that none of what happened to the new MacBook Air (sigh) and smartphone used for his experiment required the user or the bad guys to be in Russia at all. Far from the hackers targeting his devices, he invited them in by clicking on questionable links — something any halfway accomplished PC user would not do.

Meanwhile, cybersecurity expert Robert Graham of ErrataSec proclaimed the program “100 percent fraudulent”, saying the ”hack” happened because of the Olympic-themed websites visited, not their location.

A friend working in the video trailers in Sochi said the NBC report is a huge topic of conversation there — and not in a good way:

“They sacrificed two new laptops and a smartphone to demonstrate how quickly hackers will seize your devices here. It was complete sensationalism. They steered the computers to known honeypots and pretty much invited the hackers onboard. I only know of one person who had any trouble. Her AOL Mail account was hacked after arriving here. My response: AOL? Who still uses AOL? Was your password PASSWORD? WTF?”...

On Friday, Fox News invited renowned religious scholar and prolific author Reza Aslan onto the air, ostensibly to discuss his latest book on Christianity, ‘Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth.’But instead, host Lauren Green launched into an Islamophobic attack on Aslan’s credentials and expressed incredulity that he, a self-professed Muslim, would be able to write about Christianity in a fair and honest way.Throughout the nearly 10 minute interview, Green inaccurately sought to portray Aslan as a religiously-motivated agitator with a hidden agenda out to discredit the very religion that he himself once practiced...