There are some questions in life that just shouldn't be asked, and if someone does ask them, should be ignored or answered with great trepidation–at least if the responder values his or her health and/or reputation.
Examples that come to mind are things like: "Honey, what do you think of this dress?" "Honey, do I look fat in this dress?" and "Dahling, where did your husband get that fabulous new dress he's wearing?"
Some 50 years ago, a quiz show on CBS television asked married men such a question–one with potentially disastrous consequences for a wrong answer–"Do You Trust Your Wife?" On the show, the husband and wife were contestants and the husband had to decide whether or not he trusted his wife to answer the question (and win the money), or if he would answer it himself.
Now I'm not old enough to remember this show, but I would bet there were some red-faced husbands and indignant wives walking out of that studio at the program's conclusion. Given the fact that so many marital arguments are about money, one has to wonder whether some marriages were damaged or broken by the "trust" decisions made on that show.
So, why have I led you down this rabbit trail? The reason is that who you trust can have a significant impact on your business, and on your life as a whole. To wit, I have recently been toying with a new service offering, , which basically allows individuals and small businesses to store their vital information in a virtual lock box on the Internet.
According to Brandon, Miss.-based 2020 Innovations, LLC, the service uses the World Wide Web "as a critical emergency tool to help people through a natural disaster, evacuation, network failure, identity theft, fire, robbery, death, and other potentially devastating situations." The company suggests that users could store crucial information, such as medical records, credit card and bank account numbers, Internet passwords, birth certificate data, Social Security and driver's license numbers "all in one secure place."
So if you are a user, you are being asked to trust the company and the Web itself to keep your vital information safe. But if you've been paying any attention at all to this column, you know that cyberspace is anything but a secure place. What reassurance can the company give that your information won't be compromised by the host of threats that daily assault computer systems via the Internet?
