【推荐2】What is identity theft?

Identity theft occurs when someone steals your personal information to take over your credit accounts, open new ones, access bank accounts, or commit many other crimes in your name and at your expense. When it strikes, the effects can be disastrous. What’s more, because it frequently involves no physical theft, identity theft may not be noticed by its victims until significant damage has already been done-often several months and thousands of pounds later. It’s estimated that more than 100, 000 people are affected by identity theft in the UK each year, costing the British economy over £1.3 billion annually.

How does it happen?

These are some of the ways crooks get hold of your personal information:

• Fake emails

You may receive an email seemingly from, say, your bank requesting that you follow a link and key information into a website that looks very similar to your bank’s own site but is in fact a fake.

• Pretext phone calls

A crook pretending to be an official from, for example, your bank may phone up asking you to give personal or account details as a security check.

• Dishonest people

Sometimes sales assistants,unbeknown(不知情的) to you, swipe your card through a machine which records its details. At the workplace, a fellow employee can use your personal details fraudulently.

How can you protect yourself?

Be careful who you give your personal details to, and tear up documents like credit-card slips before you throw them away. Don’t make this serious crime easy for crooks!

【推荐3】Men aren’t typically known for their shopping power. As the “She economy” became a buzz phrase in business magazines, the ever-expanding Chinese female middle class has been eagerly pursued by consumer brands from cosmetics to electronics. For some companies, that means there is a huge missed opportunity in the male market, especially given the fast-rising living standards across the most populous country on the earth and a male population that’s increasingly longing for a better quality of life.

Those instincts appear to be largely on point, according to the latest report on male consumption trends conducted by Suning Institute of Finance. The author of the report, the institute’s Senior Researcher Fu Yifu, concluded the male-oriented (男性导向的) market in China has great potential after observing three specific shopping habits of Chinese men in recent years: widened category, improved awareness and increased online consumption.

These trends are particularly noticeable in the country’s tech-adapted Millennial and Gen-Z populations, who have warmly embraced some special-interest consumer culture in other parts of the world through the Internet, such as the sneakerhead subculture, as a way to express their individuality. More importantly, many are willing to spend a fortune on it.

Also, nowadays, many Chinese men are definitely looking to lead more refined lives. The desire for “refined lives” has been channeled strongly through the pursuance of a more polished look-lighter skin, longer eyelashes and bigger eyes. These features are widely considered to be desirable traits for modern Chinese men.

JACB, which stands for “just a cool brand”, is one of the Chinese start-ups looking to capitalize on men’s increasing desire for a finer appearance. While most male cosmetic products today still focus on fixing skin problems such as acne (粉刺), JACB is pioneering the “men makeup” category with products such as BB cream for men. And the company mainly targets men in their 20s and early 30s, as they are more accepting of the new trends.

“The individual’s awakening in consumption has helped drive the men-oriented market to new heights that we are seeing today,” Fu said. “Chinese men have learned to buy skincare products, expensive suits, watches and luxury cars as a way to show their personal abilities.”

【推荐2】Colour saturation(饱和) refers to the intensity(强度) of the reds, greens and blues. Photos high in colour saturation make food look fresher and tastier to viewers, which increases their willingness to order the menu items, a new study suggests. “In the restaurant business, these results provide a simple method to increase sales,” said Stephanie Liu, lead author of the study and associate professor of hospitality management at the Ohio State University. “On Instagram, it means using the ‘X-Pro Ⅱ’ filter(滤镜) on your food photos rather than the ‘Early bird’ filter. It costs nothing, so it’s an easy win for restaurant marketers.

In one survey, 267 participants were asked to imagine themselves looking through options on an online food-ordering platform. They were shown photos of a poke bowl, a Hawaiian dish featuring fish, vegetables and sauce over rice. They were randomly asked to view one of the four different photos with either high or low colour saturation and either close or farther away visual distance. The food in the more highly-saturated photos looked fresher and tastier to participants, and that led them to be more likely to purchase the food. But colour saturation had a stronger effect when the food appeared more distant in the photos. “When the food is shown close up, it’s already easy for the viewers to imagine how fresh and tasty the food would be,” Liu said. “Colour saturation is not as necessary.”

In the second survey, 222 online participants were asked to imagine they were looking through photos of pizza from a restaurant near their home. They were told they would either be eating alone or with their family. As in the previous study, the food in the colour-saturated photo was always seen as fresher and tastier and one that people would be more likely to buy. But that effect was stronger for people who were told they would be eating alone. “When people are eating with others, the social experience is a big part of what people look forward to,” Liu said. “But when they are eating alone, they focus more on the food itself.”

“These findings are more important now than ever before,” Liu said. “With people ordering online, restaurants have to post pictures of their food on online ordering platforms. They should pay more attention to the photos they post as they do to the text. Colour saturation is one key element they need to focus on.”