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Stephen Johnston

Founder at Economy Is Community

Highlights

Aug 30 · linkedin

Scam Alert…

I tweeted about my wife’s awful ongoing Air France experience and almost fell for a scam after being contacted by fake AirFrance customer support reps on Twitter, then WhatsApp.

They seemed to be from AF and offered to refund me - and in order to do that I needed to download Remitly and enter my credit card or bank details.

They had helpfully created an account with my email and gave me a password to use. A few more red flags that it took me too long to cotton on:

  • Twitter usernames were similar but not AF
  • Multiple people contacted me, weren’t coordinated
  • Everthing via WhatsApp, no email domains
  • Some WhatsApp accounts were from Kenya
  • Heavily accented reps - African not French
  • Trying too hard and spending too much time
  • Asked me to download an app
  • Gave me the username and password
  • Suggested I enter in a credit card “to get paid”
  • Offered overly generous compensation Etc

Obvious in hindsight, but amazing how I went along with it for a while, happy to be doing something at least in the face of a frustrating experience waiting at the end of a phone for updates on a delayed flight. If I’d have entered my bank info they’d have presumably done a transfer out immediately as they had the password.

Beware folks, there are scammers everywhere, and what’s more they prey on the vulnerable and distracted.

Jul 12 · linkedin

Any decent, affordable, simple, wearable wandering solutions for dementia patients out there? Looking for use by dementia programs with relative freedom for participants (i.e. not door sensors, but wearables).

Criteria would be:

  • wearable and unobtrusive. no stigma.
  • battery life of weeks or months not days
  • easy to deploy, use and manage by staff
  • ability for staff and families to both see / track the person
  • mature / proven case study of efficacy in enterprise settings
  • cheap - one-off purchase or low pmpm cost (say $10/mo)
  • doesn't need additional features - screens, falls, communications

Most watches seem over-engineered and GPS ones have limited battery life, are super expensive and / or ugly (see stigma point above). Apple AirTags is one solution that does a lot of this, but doesn't seem to be set up to operate with an enterprise portal, have a limited number of tags per account, and only good for areas populated by other Apple devices.

After a decade looking at these kinds of issues, this feels like it should be a solved problem....? 🤷‍♂️ [Pic below for color, not looking for an Apple Watch that needs charging every day]

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Stephen Johnston
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Experience

Founder at Economy Is Community
Senior Manager, Business Development at Nokia

Education

Master Of Business Administration In Business, Harvard Business School
Master Of Arts, Bachelor Of Arts In Economics, University Of Cambridge

Location

San Francisco, California, United States