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VOLUME XXI
September 14, 2023
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September 27, 2021
Strategies to Help Protect Your Digital Footprint
You can’t erase your digital footprint, but you can take steps to safeguard it.
You’ve likely heard of the term “digital footprint,” but you may not fully understand what that means or how to optimize your online presence for greater privacy and security. In our increasingly digital world, it’s important to be knowledgeable about these matters, so let’s review the basics.
What’s a Digital Footprint?
A digital footprint is an accumulation of all your activities online. Think about the routine things you do each day—crafting a social media post, making a purchase, activating an account, registering for a newsletter, checking the weather, completing a survey or sharing an article.
All these actions leave a digital trail, which can include your IP address as well as any personal details of your life that you’ve shared online. (An IP address is a unique series of numbers that’s assigned to each internet-connected device. It may reveal the city, area code or ZIP code from where you’re connecting, but not your name, mailing address or phone number.) This data can be tracked and analyzed by marketers, credit card issuers, advertisers, law enforcement agencies and other organizations to learn about your habits and create a customized profile.
In short, your digital footprint is similar to the footprints you leave when walking on a fresh blanket of snow. Others will be able to see where you’ve been. And while snow footprints will eventually fade away, digital footprints can be permanent.
Digital Footprints: The Good and Bad
Digital footprints can actually be beneficial. They can enhance the time you spend online by providing a more personalized, convenient experience—such as remembering your last food order or enabling you to receive targeted, exclusive offers that align with your interests.
You can even help create a “positive” footprint of yourself for others you might want to impress online—such as your boss, future employers or college admissions officers—by shaping your image through the messages, photos and other information you provide on social media or other online platforms.
But your digital footprint can also lead to a variety of negatives, such as unwanted solicitations, decreased privacy and identity theft. Cybercriminals can use your footprint to unleash more targeted, effective social engineering schemes, such as phishing attacks, and other scams against you.
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Safeguarding Your Digital Footprint
Fortunately, you can limit the potentially damaging impacts of your digital footprint by taking the following measures:
Search for yourself: Doing an online search about yourself may seem a bit vain. But it’s a good way to see the type of information that’s readily available about you. Try this with multiple search engines and explore the first several pages of results.
Be prepared to be surprised, though, by what you uncover. It can be alarming. If you find sensitive data you don’t want revealed—or if you come across information that’s incorrect, misleading or inappropriate—contact the site administrator to request removal of the material.
Set alerts: After performing your search, consider setting up alerts to more easily keep track of your online mentions in the future. With an alert, you’ll receive a notification whenever your name appears online.
To help eliminate results from other individuals with your same name, you can add keywords to your search that are associated with you (such as your hometown).
Use tighter privacy settings: Service providers for social media, e-commerce, email, search engines, web browsers, online conferencing and more often give their users the ability to manage the privacy settings for their accounts.
Using more restrictive settings can reduce your digital footprint and give you greater peace of mind. The National Cybersecurity Alliance provides direct links to manage privacy settings for many popular sites.
Just be aware, though, that increasing your security may interfere with some of the usability of the site or lead to other drawbacks. For example, deleting your search history can make it more inconvenient when doing future searches. Or blocking pop-up ads may prevent you from seeing ads or offers you’d normally welcome. Although the benefit of greater privacy is often worth these trade-offs, you should understand the implications of your actions before making any changes.
Also, when managing your privacy settings, take a couple of minutes to review the company’s privacy policy. It’s important to understand how an organization collects, stores, protects and utilizes your personal data. If you feel a policy is too intrusive, it’s best to just move along. Your privacy and security are too valuable.
Be cautious with social media: Even if you adopt stronger privacy settings, you still should be judicious about what you choose to reveal about yourself online. For example, use caution when responding to social media surveys as they can reveal personal information.
Or, you might want to proudly post a picture of your new grandchild on a social media account. But remember that anything you share online can be re-shared by friends, family members and colleagues without your consent.
And once that happens, it’s out of your control who will end up seeing your information.
Restrict mobile app permissions: Whenever you grant a mobile app access to your photos, location, camera, contacts and other information, it makes your data available to the app owner. So, be selective before giving an app permission to all the types of information it requests. Keep in mind that many apps will still work even if all permissions aren’t granted.
Limit your online accounts: Having a lot of online accounts leads to a bigger footprint. However, you can quickly reduce your footprint by deleting or deactivating accounts you no longer need. For example, is it necessary to have several email accounts? And what about that account you opened three years ago with an online retailer that you haven’t used since?
Be selective about opening new accounts, too. If you have the choice of checking out as a guest with a retailer instead of creating an account, it’s better to use that option unless you plan to be a frequent customer.
Use a password manager: A password manager is a software tool that securely creates, encrypts and stores unique, complex passwords for you. And since you should have a different password for each account, this saves you from the headache of remembering all those passwords.
Enable Multi-Factor Authentication (sometimes called Two-Factor Authentication) as well for any accounts where it’s offered.
Think before linking accounts: Some service providers allow you to register with their business by using an account you have with another company. For instance, maybe they’ll invite you to sign in through your Facebook or Google account.
Doing so grants these other organizations access to even more information about your online activities, which means you’ll need to decide if the convenience is worth the potential added exposure.
September 27, 2021
Starboard Value fund takes 8%-plus stake in Huntsman – WSJ
Sep. 27, 2021 5:27 PM ETHuntsman Corporation (HUN)By: Carl Surran, SA News Editor1 Comment
- Huntsman (NYSE:HUN) +3.8% post-market after the Wall Street Journal reports activist hedge fund Starboard Value has taken a stake of more than 8% in the company, which would be valued at $500M or more.
- Starboard also plans to seek changes to improve the company’s stock performance, according to the report, although the exact nature of the intended changes is not certain.
- Huntsman shares are little changed since the company’s IPO in 2005, closing today at $28.07 vs. $24.50 on its first day of trading, according to WSJ.
September 27, 2021
Starboard Value fund takes 8%-plus stake in Huntsman – WSJ
Sep. 27, 2021 5:27 PM ETHuntsman Corporation (HUN)By: Carl Surran, SA News Editor1 Comment
- Huntsman (NYSE:HUN) +3.8% post-market after the Wall Street Journal reports activist hedge fund Starboard Value has taken a stake of more than 8% in the company, which would be valued at $500M or more.
- Starboard also plans to seek changes to improve the company’s stock performance, according to the report, although the exact nature of the intended changes is not certain.
- Huntsman shares are little changed since the company’s IPO in 2005, closing today at $28.07 vs. $24.50 on its first day of trading, according to WSJ.
September 27, 2021
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Spandex prices continued surging in recent one year and current price has hit the highest level since 2008. Recently, export orders did not chase up smoothly and domestic demand was soft. Some dealers started revising down price. Will spandex price plunge later? Does market fundamentals of spandex change?  Supply There will be above 110kt/year of new spandex capacity to be launched in the second half of 2021 in Chinese mainland and it may bring about 30kt of production increase according to the startup time. By Sep 26, the operating rate of spandex plants declined to 93% from 97% in end-Aug. The control of total amount and the intensity of energy consumption is expected to affect spandex supply in short run. Some spandex plants scaled down production by around 10-40%. Xiamen Lilong suspended production due to the pandemic, affecting near 2% of spandex operation rate. Most old spandex units are still expected to run at above 90% of capacity and new units will gradually start operation. Spandex production is anticipated to gradually ascend in Q4.  Inventory The spandex inventory inched up but remained low now (the normal level was 30 days), supportive to price. By Sep 26, spandex inventory rose by around 8.5 days to above 13 days compared with early-Aug. Supply tightness of conventional spandex varieties has eased, while stocks of medium-to-high denier spandex rose rapidly. The order change still should be concerned in Oct. If orders chase up, spandex inventory may accumulate slowly even if fabric mills only purchase spandex on a need-to-basis. That means price of spandex may be late to reduce. The price competition is supposed to be fierce again if the gap between production and sales expands demand.The tempo of traditional peak season and dull season has been disrupted by the pandemic. The operating rate of downstream fabric mills was around 20 percentage points higher on the year in Jan-Aug, 2021 and around 10 percentage points higher than the 2019 level. However, the run rate apparently dipped after Aug. Affected by the control of total amount and intensity of energy consumption, dyeing plants’ operating rate obviously dropped in Zhejiang and Jiangsu, which will be bearish for the later operating rate of fabric mills.  The inventory of elastic fabrics was not high now. Stocks of some nylon/spandex air covered yarn, dralon fabrics and small circular knitting fabrics were above 1 month, mainly for the production of autumn and winter clothes. The stocks of high-density circular knitted fabric, polyester/spandex air covered yarn, cotton core-spun yarn and warp knitting super soft fabric were at 10-15 days. Downstream buyers were unwilling to hoard up stocks when price of polyester and cotton was weak and that of NFY rose limitedly. Price of spandex stopped rising and turned to shiver recently. Supported by low inventory, stable spandex price was supportive to the stabilizing of grey fabric price and the processing fee of covered yarn. If spandex price dips apparently, earlier spandex inventory will be depreciated and it will have negative influence on later orders for fabrics. Cost Prices of PTMEG and BDO apparently rose and major feedstock cost of spandex was above 41,000yuan/mt for the first time, while spandex price shivered at high level. The price spread between spandex and its major feedstock has apparently narrowed to 7,500yuan/mt since end-Jul. Spandex price may be peaked affected by limited downstream orders and the control of total amount and intensity of energy consumption. Weakening demand surrenders weaker support to spandex price. Some spandex suppliers have revised down price. Spandex market are turning to be buyers’ market. Many buyers require discounts in actual transactions. Few dealers and fabric mills start underselling spandex. Price of spandex is not expected to plunge in short run supported by low inventory and firm feedstock price. New spandex units are scheduled to gradually commission operation and stocks of spandex may not rise much in short run. Therefore, price of spandex is expected to be firm in short run but weak in long run. |
https://www.ccfgroup.com/newscenter/newsview.php?Class_ID=D00000&Info_ID=2021092730047
September 27, 2021
Text size
| Spandex prices continued surging in recent one year and current price has hit the highest level since 2008. Recently, export orders did not chase up smoothly and domestic demand was soft. Some dealers started revising down price. Will spandex price plunge later? Does market fundamentals of spandex change? Supply There will be above 110kt/year of new spandex capacity to be launched in the second half of 2021 in Chinese mainland and it may bring about 30kt of production increase according to the startup time. By Sep 26, the operating rate of spandex plants declined to 93% from 97% in end-Aug. The control of total amount and the intensity of energy consumption is expected to affect spandex supply in short run. Some spandex plants scaled down production by around 10-40%. Xiamen Lilong suspended production due to the pandemic, affecting near 2% of spandex operation rate. Most old spandex units are still expected to run at above 90% of capacity and new units will gradually start operation. Spandex production is anticipated to gradually ascend in Q4. Inventory The spandex inventory inched up but remained low now (the normal level was 30 days), supportive to price. By Sep 26, spandex inventory rose by around 8.5 days to above 13 days compared with early-Aug. Supply tightness of conventional spandex varieties has eased, while stocks of medium-to-high denier spandex rose rapidly. The order change still should be concerned in Oct. If orders chase up, spandex inventory may accumulate slowly even if fabric mills only purchase spandex on a need-to-basis. That means price of spandex may be late to reduce. The price competition is supposed to be fierce again if the gap between production and sales expands demand.The tempo of traditional peak season and dull season has been disrupted by the pandemic. The operating rate of downstream fabric mills was around 20 percentage points higher on the year in Jan-Aug, 2021 and around 10 percentage points higher than the 2019 level. However, the run rate apparently dipped after Aug. Affected by the control of total amount and intensity of energy consumption, dyeing plants’ operating rate obviously dropped in Zhejiang and Jiangsu, which will be bearish for the later operating rate of fabric mills. The inventory of elastic fabrics was not high now. Stocks of some nylon/spandex air covered yarn, dralon fabrics and small circular knitting fabrics were above 1 month, mainly for the production of autumn and winter clothes. The stocks of high-density circular knitted fabric, polyester/spandex air covered yarn, cotton core-spun yarn and warp knitting super soft fabric were at 10-15 days. Downstream buyers were unwilling to hoard up stocks when price of polyester and cotton was weak and that of NFY rose limitedly. Price of spandex stopped rising and turned to shiver recently. Supported by low inventory, stable spandex price was supportive to the stabilizing of grey fabric price and the processing fee of covered yarn. If spandex price dips apparently, earlier spandex inventory will be depreciated and it will have negative influence on later orders for fabrics. Cost Prices of PTMEG and BDO apparently rose and major feedstock cost of spandex was above 41,000yuan/mt for the first time, while spandex price shivered at high level. The price spread between spandex and its major feedstock has apparently narrowed to 7,500yuan/mt since end-Jul. Spandex price may be peaked affected by limited downstream orders and the control of total amount and intensity of energy consumption. Weakening demand surrenders weaker support to spandex price. Some spandex suppliers have revised down price. Spandex market are turning to be buyers’ market. Many buyers require discounts in actual transactions. Few dealers and fabric mills start underselling spandex. Price of spandex is not expected to plunge in short run supported by low inventory and firm feedstock price. New spandex units are scheduled to gradually commission operation and stocks of spandex may not rise much in short run. Therefore, price of spandex is expected to be firm in short run but weak in long run. |
https://www.ccfgroup.com/newscenter/newsview.php?Class_ID=D00000&Info_ID=2021092730047
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