There are some things that happen to other people, but never happen to you, right?

For example, identity fraud, credit card cloning and thieving of personal data.

Well, it happened to me today. While making a simple online transaction with a major UK retailer, one of my personal cards was refused three times.

When I rang the card issuer I was told that an outfit called Usenet was trying to obtain a payment. They knew the name, so blocked the card immediately. No money was lost to either side.

But it just shows you how easily your identity and financial infrastructure can be compromised by clever hacks and villains.

The only loss to me is having to wait a week for a new card to arrive.

Just another level of inconvenience to add to the new age of anxiety.

I’ve been writing about my interest in the economics of the retail sector for a year without very much happening. Now the long-gestated project is beginning to come to life thanks to our contacts with a number of specialist retail analysts.

One of the reasons I moved into the content business online was because of a long-term plan to create specialist information products for high-worth niches, published privately or behind subscription walls.

The idea goes back to my initial training in information science at the Central Office of Information in London. The COI is part of the Foreign Office, for which I also produced specialist information packages for Britain’s Embassies abroad. These were mainly product and technology based.

Now, working with a small team of retail analysts, we’ve hatched the first of these new projects aimed at large retail corporations. The project will have its own corporality separate from Syntagma Media, which will own a share of the business.

Given Google’s sudden froideur towards digital networks, this will provide much-needed diversification away from our reliance on Google traffic and rankings.

The retail product will be followed by others of a similar nature. They won’t be visible to a general audience, although some of the knowledge-base may trickle down into Syntagma sites.

The quality of the product is everything, of course. High-worth clients are not going to pay real money for information generally available in the press. Expertise and relevance are essential. I believe our team has that, and coupled with Syntagma’s in-house information skills, the result will be a killer product for the industry.

Year 3 of the Syntagma odyssey begins with a bang.

You always knew it would.