MobileActive.org wants to hire you! If you are a cracker-jack researcher and writer, we want you for research and stories from around the world about mobiles for social impact. Some data entry on organizations and projects around the world using mobile phones to make the world a better place are also part of the job. Online and telephone research, interviews, writing reports and blog posts.
Must be a thorough researcher, and persuasive and clear writer. Living and working experience in developing country/ies a must. This is an ideal position for journalism graduate student with a great interest in mobile tech, or for a technologist interested in the social implications of the mobile revolution. Location in New York preferred but could be done from anywhere IF it's the right person. Fluency in Spanish or Arabic a great plus. Some travel will be supported.
Send a resume, cover letter explaining why we should hire you, and at least TWO published pieces pertaining to this or a related subject matter of at least 300-500 words. Send your materials to katrin [at] mobileactive [dot] org. Search is open until we find the perfect candidate(s), so hurry.
MobileActive is announcing the third MobileActive Guide, profiling strategies and civil society organizations using mobile phones in their work to make the world a better place. The MobileActive Guide focuses on using mobile phones in fundraising campaigns. It features case studies from around the world, strategies for using mobile phones in fundraiaing, and a how-to section for organizations considering using mobile phones to support their causes.
Mobile phones have become a powerful emerging tool for participation in civil society. This five part series looks ways nonprofits have used mobile phones in their campaigns and the effective strategies deployed, and shares lessons learned.
In addition to Twitter and mobile phones as a vehicle for economic development, mainstream press and the avant garde public are fascinated with ringtones for good. It is the one topic in mobile campaigns for a cause that consistently get press and attention from mainline journalists. A case in point is the recently featured endangered species ringtones which have the press all, well -- ringing.
Greenpeace Argentina, as part of Greenpeace's global Whales Campaign, in a protest action yesterday delivered cans of fake 'whale' to the Danish Embassy in Buenos Aires. The action was recorded clandestinely by the activists on mobile video. According to Greenpeace, the Danish government is part of the pro-whaling meetings held in Japan. The cans were inscibed with "Whales Canned thanks to Danish support."
Amnesty International announced yesterday that it will accept payments on the UK via mobile phone that will get more money to the charity. Billed as a "digital wallet", LUUP, the mobile payment vendor that Amnesty uses, will " make it easier for people to make donations. Says Amnesty: "It will also enable the human rights organisation to receive up to 15 per cent more of the money than via PSMS methods such as regular text."
The UK arm of Amnesty ruled out premium rate text messages for donors as too costly. In Europe and in the US, network operators take a significant percentage of the revenue of premium texting -- up to 50% in some cases, and donations are limited to what are essentially micro contributions. Using LUUP, however, means that donors can give up to £800 in the UK to Amnesty International, for example.
And for this cold February day, something lighter: The nonprofit New York Philharmonic is selling ringtones of its performances on its brandnew site. Ringtones cost around $3 US, and include well-known works by Brahms, Mozart, and Dvorak. Cute.
MobileActive is announcing the second MobileActive Guide, profiling strategies and civil society organizations using mobile phones in their work to make the world a better place. The MobileActive Guide focuses on using mobile phones in issue advocacy. It features case studies from around the world, strategies for using mobile phones in advocacy work, and a how-to section for advocacy organizations considering using mobile phones to advance their causes.
Mobile phones have become a powerful emerging tool for participation in civil society. This five part series looks ways nonprofits have used mobile phones in their campaigns and the effective strategies deployed, and shares lessons learned.
Amnesty's campaign to close Guatanamo using SMS has been bothering me ever since I opted in to the mobile action network. Don't get me wrong - the web campaign is great and the pictures and stories on the blog are effective.
But the mobile campaign is all wrong. Yes, mobile campaigns are a new medium, only beginning to show a return, and not well understood. This is even true for big commercial campaigns that are only now sticking their toes into the mobile marketing waters.
But come on, advocacy organization, you are smarter than that. Mobile marketing is not rocket science, there is already a lot we know, and even as you experiment, use some common sense and pay attention to what you already know about engaging users and constituents.
So in order: 1. What's happening in the mobile marketing market that advocacy organizations should pay attention to (caution: this is US-centric!)
Carriers in the US are loosening up their previously tight restrictions on mobile advertising. Verizon, Sprint/Nextel, and AT&T are now allowing banner ads on their landing pages
More and more Americans have WAP-enabled phones, allowing them to do more and more on their cell phones, including watching video and photos, browsing the web, and of course, ubiquitous text messaging. rich media mobile messaging for greater brand and communication impact. Marketers now have at their disposal MMS (define), WAP push (clickable links to WAP-based multimedia content incorporated into SMS messages), and video shortcodes (consumers receive a video stream directly to their handset in response to texting to a shortcode).
Altogether more than 74% of US adults have cell phones -- and they do not leave the house without them (and their keys and wallets - the three things most adults walk around with at all times.)
Sms/texting is growing by leaps and bounds with more than 64.8 billion SMS messages sent in the first six months of 2006, up 98.8% from 32.6 billion in first six months of 2005.
Mobile marketers are salivating, with polls, contests, coupons, and even mobi-sodes, short sms serial stories hitting the commercial market. Pepsi, Ford, Toyota, Burger King all have mobile campaigns, and more and more marketers are allocating hard dollars to "mobile marketing" budgets.
Visa announced its mobile payment platform, allowing cardholders to use their mobile phones to make purchases or conduct other transactions by tapping them against readers. Think 'just in time' fundraising.
But what's the ROI for mobile marketers - such as advocacy organizations?
Everyone agrees, the medium is young, it is risky when poorly done, and it'll take time to judge payoffs. MobileActive's research of existing campaigns shows some interesting returns with sizeable opt-ins, and rather impressive open and forward rates for campaigns conducted by IFAW and Oxfam, for example. We will be publishing more details from specific campaigns in the next MobileActive Guide on Mobile Advocacy.
While a lot of metrics are still elusive, Brandweek reports about a commercial campaign: For the "Everydayrocks" text initiative, some 13,000 people opted in. And more than 75% of the entrants responded to SMS messages from the brand and/or redeemed mobile coupons. Only 4.8% opted out. Most telling, however, was that mobile emerged as the conduit with the best market reach; mobile outperformed radio by more than 64% and billboards by 24%. Overall, the mobile redemption rate was 28%, making it by far the most effective component."
We have seen positive other PR as well - a clever campaign, especially one that goes viral, will get earned media coverage and word-of-mouth exposure
What are advocacy organizations concerned about?
According to Brandweek, there still is considerable "consumer resistance, the main reason behind the carriers' historic refusal to open the gates to ad content." Brandweek goes on: "Studies have shown that consumers are less than thrilled with the idea of receiving ads on their cells. While early adopter teens are among the biggest targets, three-quarters of cell phone users ages 10 to 18 said they do not think it's OK to be marketed to on a mobile device, according to a study of 2,000 users conducted by Weekly Reader Research, Stamford, Conn., on Brandweek's behalf. Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass., found 79% of consumers are turned off by the idea of ads on their phones and a mere 3% of respondents said they trust text ads."
There are now strict guidelines, drafted by the Mobile Marketing Association, on opt-in and opt out procedures.
It's my phone! Be scrupulous about your opt-in practices, absolutely meticulous in following the mobile marketing code of ethics, and make your vendors follow them to the T. Your brand is at stake, and people will get very annoyed if they perceive you spamming them.
But this is not stopping mobile marketers who are chomping at the bit.
So, what do we know about effective mobile marketing?
Can we talk? 1. Mobile messaging should be about interaction, do not just pitch. A hard notion for advocacy organizations used to pushing email messages by the millions. Mobiles offer a unique opportunity for interaction. Advocacy organizations need to think about mobile marketing as a conversation, a way to interact two-ways with their constituents. 2. Trust is key here as the mobile medium is so very personal. Gain permission and offer relevant and timely content. 3. Pull people to mobile interaction through other media -- ads, billboards, the web and offer, in turn, mobile interaction with those media. 4. Be careful about targeting your demographics and make your ask accordingly -- asking an older constituency to upload mobile photos is probably not going to be very successful. 5. Be relevant. Offer timely news and functional updates that are of interest to your audience-- and be clever. Just by way of an idea: The American Lung Association could offer air quality updates via sms for where I live, for example. In Amnesty's case, I would like to know how many others are signing the petition and how it's going -- what are others saying and how successful is the campaign? Send me an sms with an update since signing on -- I have not heard a lick from Amnesty since I signed the petition two days ago. 6. Mobile marketing works best when it's pull, not push, and there is an opportunity for people to express themselves - to 'talk' back, to suggest, to respond. Humor works here! 7. Be multi-media. Integrate your mobile marketing and messaging into your entire media and messaging campaing; do not let mobile be an add-on - it shows, and it costs you if not done well.
This is a world that is rapidly evolving. Bandwith and technology improving al the time, we will see Internet- and TV-style ads, search, and much more branded content.
For advocacy organizations, mobile marketing is used most effectively for facilitating a dialogue with their constituents. This 'third screen' can create extended conversation, creating connections across online and traditional media exposures.
So what should Amnesty have done better here?
1. Do no ask me for my email to sign the petition, let me do it via sms. 2. Show what people are saying on the petition via sms, in real time on the blog, in ads, in public interest announcements -- in your other media campaign. 3. Tell me back how it is going -- what other people are saying, what is happening. 4. Communicate regularly with me VIA text, BUT remind me of how to opt out. 5. Ask me to forward a note, ask me to make a call, ask me to express myself in a some way in a poll, in a 160 character message, poem or statement. 6. Use humour, allow for humour -- it may be gallows humour in the case of Gitmo, but hey...
Overall: engage me, and do not let me feel that I am sinking in your typical advocacy 'push' hole that benefits you organizationally, but in the end has no impact on the issue, nor engages me in any way.
In the end, because mobiles are so personal, there is a huge opportunity for a conversation that few advocacy organizations used to messaging OUT have any idea how to do effectively. Mobiles are very much a read/write medium in the web 2.0 fashion and only those organizations willing to hear back and engage in 'it's the conversation, stupid' will end up running catchy, creative, engaging, and innovative mobile campaigns.
Telcos or mobile operators have been in the news lately, implicated in the suppression of communications, tracking and surveillance of pro-democracy and human rights activists, and in their close collaboration with repressive regimes and their security apparatuses around the world. Now there is a new initiative spearheaded by advocacy organization Access Now that advocates for mobile operators to sign a set of five principles focused on human and democratic rights in return for their licenses.
Nothing New: How Cozy Telcos Are With Repressive Regimes
This close collaboration of many operators with repressive states has been going on for some time but there is now a new activist movement forming, holding telcos accountable and to a higher standard. Led by activist shareholders and advocacy organizations like Access, activists point out that the negative publicity of this corporate behavior carries financial implications that pose a risk to telco investors.
Facebook has more 500 million users, half of which access the site through their mobile phones. Being able to communicate your message to an audience this large is exceptionally valuable. At the same time your activities on the site generate very detailed information about you and your networks. If you are concerned about surveillance, this information can put you at risk.
Assess Your Facebook Mobile Risks
Like Twitter, Facebook is a way to get your messages to a potentially large audience. It is not a secure method of communication for sensitive information.
This article offers advice about how to mitigate risks when using Facebook as a dissemination and organizing tool. In particular, we consider the following risks:
The risk that your public activities on Facebook reveal compromising information about you or your networks - for example, revealing the identity of supporters or identifying people who were present at a particular event.
The risk of your private information being revealed to a third party without your consent.
The risk that your account details (username and password) are discovered, and that someone may impersonate you.
The risk of your account being deleted or suspended.
The risk that Facebook is blocked or becomes inaccessible.
in general, you should only use Facebook to share information that you consider public. Public information can be freely distributed by you, your organization, and your supporters, without any risk to individuals or organizational operations. In communicating public information, you can send and receive this information without taking any precautions.
We are developing a global database of SIM cards registrations by country, and we need your help. Please fill out this short survey. We ask you a few questions about a particular country's requirements.
Note: This survey will not track identifying information. We will publish the complete database on the site shortly with the data that we have gathered to date. The survey is here. Thanks!
HTTP, the Hypertext Transfer Protocol, is the data communication protocol you use when you broswe the web - as you probably know if you've noticed that website addresses usually begin with http://. HTTPS is the secure version of HTTP, which you might have seen being used for sensitive transactions like online banking and online shopping. When you are using the secure part of a site, the web address will begin with https://.
When using your mobile phone for sensitive communications, it is important to ensure that your online activities - whether researching or reading about an issue, sending an email, writing a blog post or uploading photos - are done over a secure connection. There are three elements of secure web browsing:
Smartphones (iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Symbian) and many feature phones allow you to download and install mobile applications (“apps”). Apps do many useful things. However, some apps (and other types of software, such as your mobile operating system) can also present security risks. These include:
Apps and other software may have access to information stored on or generated by your phone.
Apps and other software may have the ability to transmit this information using your phone’s Internet connection.
Maliciousapps or other mobile software installed on your mobile device can expose you to the following risks:
With smartphones gaining market share, malicious apps are beginning to pose a serious threat. In an article titled “YourAppsAreWatchingYou”, the Wall Street Journal tested popular iPhone and Android apps, and found that of 101 apps tested, 56 transmitted a unique identifier for the phone without informing the user or asking for consent. 47 apps also transmitted the phone’s location, while 5 sent age, gender or other personal details to various companies. The AppGenomeProject reports that 28% of all apps in the Android Market and 34% of all free apps in the Apple App Store have the capability to access location, while 7.5% of Android Market apps and 11% of Apple App Store apps have the capability to access users’ contacts.
It can be very difficult to tell which apps are safe and which are not. App behaviours that might not bother most users, such as transmitting the phone’s location to an advertising server, can be unacceptable to people with higher privacy and security requirements.
This article offers suggestions on how to assess risks to security and privacy posed by apps.
Despite the smartphone craze of the past 5 years, featurephones are still king in much of the world. From the perspective of activists, rights defenders, and journalists, they cannot be ignored. And feature phones have plenty of built-in capability to help users stay safer. During the course of our research, we've uncovered valuable features that even the most experienced users may not be aware of.
As a part of SaferMobile, a project of MobileActive.org, we've focused on documenting the most important ways that a user can lock down a mobile handsets. No external apps or special tools are required, just a charged battery. We've condensed these tips into single-page, device-specific reference guides for a variety of makes & models that get straight to the point. And yes, we made sure to cover smartphones and featurephones.
Dear MobileActives from around the World. You may have noticed that we have had an inordinate number of funky site issues - slow-loading pages and 406 errors. We have reached the end of the useful life of this site which is three years old and it has gotten creaky.
We are a small organization and this site has, with the exception of a start-up grant from the amazing Surdna Foundation, NEVER received general funding. That is to say, we have funded this site from individual contributions, your donations, and overhead charged on contracts and project grants. Clearly, this is not a very sustainable way to run things as the site and readership has grown to more than 3,000 unique readers a day now.
Twitter is a way to get your messages to a wider audience. However, you should know that from any platform (computer or mobile phone), it is not a secure method of communicating sensitive information. Consider the following guidelines:
Your Tweets should only contain information you want to widely and publicly share. This should be public information that can be freely distributed by you, your organization, and your supporters, without any risk to individuals or organizational operations.
Even if you protect your tweets so that only followers can see them, followers can easily retweet your messages, or access them over an insecure connection.
According to the Wall Street Journal, “[Data produced by the use of mobile phones] generates immense commercial databases that reveal the ways we arrange ourselves into networks of power, money, love and trust.” As mobile phone use increases and applications become increasingly sophisticated, the volume of mobile data we create continues to grow at an incredible rate, creating new possibilities and posing new challenges to notions of privacy.
Businesses want this data for marketing. Congress wants to regulate it. Activists and privacy advocates want to ensure that it is not used to compromise their safety or freedoms. Meanwhile, projects such as UN Global Pulse want to use information gleaned from mobile phone use to detect and prevent slow-onset humanitarian crises. We invite you to join us on the evening of June 30th for our next New York City-based Mobile Tech Salon as we explore these tough questions:
How do we determine socially beneficial uses for mobile data?
How can the safety, security, and privacy of individuals be respected while using mobile data to benefit them?
How can our mobile data be effectively aggregated and anonymized? Or can’t it?
A Guide to Mobile Security Risk Assessment data sheet 2309 Views
You are an activist, rights defender, or journalist. You use a mobile device. And you work in sometimes risky situations in your country.
This guide will help you implement mobile security practices in your work. It will help you assess the particular risks that face you and then assist you in developing a plan to mitigate those risks.
We have previously published a Mobile Risk Primer that describes general security vulnerabilities associated with mobile technology and communication. Read it!
Throughout this guide, we'll also highlight the fictitious case of Asima, a blogger and activist in Egypt. Examples of how Asima might complete the assessment worksheet and create a security plan for her work are highlighted in this guide.
Asima lives in Cairo, Egypt and is a blogger and an activist. She used to maintain a blog on Blogspot, but now mostly uses Facebook and Twitter to follow current events, to share information, and to communicate with colleagues. She tweets from her mobile phone while in traffic and at cafes and protests and from her computer when she is at work or at home.
We've heard much recently about information that is being tracked by mobile phone companies (see our recent post) and app developers. However, there are more overt security threats that are potentially more dangerous.
One of these threats is referred to as either a “roving bug” or a “remote listening” application. It is essentially the same concept as a conventional audio bug, except that it requires no hardware other than a smartphone. Once installed, remote listening software enables a 3rd party to call a phone, activate its speakerphone capabilities, and secretly transmit any sounds picked by its microphone to another phone number, where it can be monitored and recorded.
One of the main goals of the SaferMobile project is to release software tools that allow activists and rights defenders to use their mobile phones as network monitors and sensors. The goal is to help them, and the mobile developers, human rights organizations and people on the street they work with, to monitor network performance and proactively detect blocking, filtering and censorship. SMSTester is the first tool we are publicly releasing within this category, and it is free, freely licensed and open-source. Our first trial run with Short Message Service Tester (SMSTester) was completed in April 2011. The results are written up here.
Mobile Tactics for Participants in Peaceful Assemblies data sheet 5832 Views
If you are participating in a peaceful assembly as a journalist, rights defender, or activist, your mobile phone is an invaluable asset. It allows you to communicate with allies, to document the event, and bear witness to what is happening around you. At the same time, you should take certain precautions in your mobile use and communications. The following Guide can help you to utilize your mobile phone during peaceful assemblies effectively and, at the same time, better protect yourself.
Assess Mobile Risks
In most public assemblies, you face risks from:
Loss and seizure of your mobile phone;
Disruptions to service from hardware or network failures;
Surveillance of your communications.
Each of these risks can be mitigated to some extent so long as you plan ahead, know your phone, and the basics of how mobile communications works. Remember though that every situation is different and that mobile phones are inherently insecure communication devices. We urge you to review this Primer on Mobile Risks for more guidance in assessing your mobile risks.
Targeting women with mobile phones and mobile-based projects can bring great benefits and opportunities, as we outlined in Part 1 of our series on women and mobiles. But, there is a “darker side” to this world, which includes changes in gender relations and power dynamic, a potential increase in violence, substitution of money or a change in expenditures, invasion of privacy, and increased control by a male partner.
Changes in Gender Relations and Power Dynamics
When the traditional social dynamic of a household is patriarchal, introducing a mobile phone into the hands of the woman can challenge the existing gender structure. Trina DasGupta, mWomen Programme Director for the GSMA Development Fund, writes in an e-mail to MobileActive.org, “threats to the status quo have sometimes been viewed negatively by community leaders and we have seen examples of this gender discrimination manifesting itself when women gain greater access to empowering tools, such as the Internet or mobile phones.”
Women themselves may not agree. The GRACE project study in Kenya, for example, finds that women do not perceive mobiles at tools for males. “Unlike our literature review that suggested that the mobile phone is culturally construed as a male tool, the women entrepreneurs did not perceive the phone as such. However, the study does indicate that usage of the phone is culturally construed, with an increase in responsibilities and empowerment for one or other profession socially construed as women’s work.”
A paper by Aramanzan Madanda looks at gender relations and ICT adoption in Uganda (the work will soon be published in book format) and finds that “existing gender structures have been dented and that patriarchy is stressed by adoption of the technologies especially mobile phones leading to transformation of gender relations to an extent.”
Activists, rights defenders, and journalists use mobile devices for reporting, organizing, mobilizing, and documenting. We have written about many of these uses for years now, describing how mobile phones provide countless benefits to activists and rights defenders. Mobile tech is relatively low cost and allows for increased efficiencies and vast reach, for example. But, there is a darker side.
Mobile Phones present specific risks to rights defenders, journalists, and activists. We believe that is is critically important to know that mobile communication is inherently insecure and exposes rights defenders and those working in sensitive environment to risks that are not easy to detect or overcome. (We provide an overview of those risks in this Primer, for instance)
To address mobile safety and security for rights defenders, we are introducing SaferMobile, to help activists, human rights defenders, and journalists assess the mobile communications risks that they are facing, and then use appropriate mitigation techniques to increase their ability to organize, report, and work more safely.
What is SaferMobile?
Online and offline educational and tactical resources (risk evaluation tools, case studies, how-to guides, security tool reviews);
Trainings and curricula for use in various countries and with different constituencies;
Specific mobile security software focused on the needs of rights defenders, activists, and journalists.
As will all that we do, we believe that there certain values and principles that are paramount in this work. For SaferMobile, we are following these principles:
We believe that skilled, trained, and knowledgeable activists, journalists, and rights defenders are key to democratic changes. We also believe that the smart and effective use of technology constitutes an integral piece of their skill set.
The better activists, journalists, and rights defender are able to work, the more safely they are able to organize and communicate, the more likely it is that their work is effective and heard.
We are committed to accessible, useful, actionable, and technically accurate and secure content, materials, and software.
We are also committed to describing technological vulnerabilities in terms that non-technical users can easily understand.
We work with activists on the ground to ensure that the content we produce addresses real uses and risks.
We also seek responsive connections between activists and security professionals so that both are more able to assess and respond to changing risks.
Lastly, we are maintaining information that reflects current security risks and technological vulnerabilities and is vetted for security and technological accuracy by knowledgeable experts.
Roadmap and Process
The SaferMobile project is just beginning its second Phase. Phase 1 included needs assessment with users and peers – activists, rights defenders, journalists, technologists, security experts, and mobile developers. Through this research, we outlined plans for web content, training curriculum and tools (software) and are now creating these pieces in Phase 2 of the project (May-August 2011).
Assess Mobile Risks