SPAM - Are You Part of the Problem?
I feel like griping about something today – so I’ll gripe about SPAM. I’m sure you have noticed that every day your email inbox fills up with messages from people selling everything from online dates to Viagra to pharmaceutical products or even the latest hot stick tip. Friends and family even bombard you daily, telling you the latest jokes, admonishing you to pass on a message - or risk bad luck for the next ten years if you don’t. I am mentioning this because I read an interesting article about how the United States is listed as one of the top SPAM relaying countries in the world.
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=44780
We are spreading SPAM at an incredible rate. We can’t just blame it on the online marketers and scam artists. We are blindly relaying thousands of messages with cute cartoons, jokes, warnings about going to hell if we don’t forward this prayer to 10 friends.
Now to be honest with you – I think all that email that we forward is just innocent fun. A lot of those stories are real tear-jerkers, and at least make us stop and think. But one thing that we should pay attention to a little more is the validity of some of it. I saw one the other day that talked about how Mars was going to pass earth at its closest point in 5,000 years, and be as big as the moon to the naked eye. The email is taken out of context - what they mean is that with 75x magnification that Mars will look as big as the moon - but that's not even the point. The event of Mars coming this close to the earth happened two or three years ago. I have been getting an in-box full of this one this whole week. Mars is over 35 million miles away. C’mon – does that really sound plausible to you that Mars would appear as large as the moon to the naked eye?!
Another of my favorites is the one about the lives of the soldiers who guard the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Some pretty interesting facts, mingled in with some hyperbole about how they can never drink alcohol or swear for the rest of their lives. Those specifc points turned out to be false, by the way. Or the one about Paul Harvey's essay on school prayer. The email makes some really good points, but it wasn't written by Paul Harvey. The points that the essay make are valid, but is it somehow more credible because Paul Harvey was the one who wrote it? Why not just give the true author credit? Read up on some of these hoaxes before you pass them on. One good site to check is http://www.snopes.com/. Many of these hoaxes are listed there.
The other issue I have is that if people get in the habit of blindly forwarding everything, then they won’t think twice about passing along cleverly crafted messages that can do damage and spread viruses. Even worse - emails of virus hoaxes telling you to delete critical files from your computer are worse than real viruses. The lazy-ass virus perpetrators are too stupid to write their own virus code, so they just get YOU to do their damage for them, and they know that YOU will forward this hoax to all your friends and get them to blindly follow the instructions and hose up their computers.
Furthermore, and as the article I linked above puts it so well, people will believe anything that comes in a nicely packaged email. Get in the habit of maybe scrutinizing this stuff a little, and be more selective about the stuff you pass on. I’m looking at this from purely the perspective of the security geek that I am - so go ahead and call me a party pooper.
This is a problem we’re all going to have to live with, but let’s not be part of the problem. At the very least, keep your email filters tuned up, your virus programs up to date, and be a little more selective about what you pass on to others.
Gotta run - someone just sent me an email about Mars coming close to earth and appearing as big as the moon next month - where's my camera?!
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=44780
We are spreading SPAM at an incredible rate. We can’t just blame it on the online marketers and scam artists. We are blindly relaying thousands of messages with cute cartoons, jokes, warnings about going to hell if we don’t forward this prayer to 10 friends.
Now to be honest with you – I think all that email that we forward is just innocent fun. A lot of those stories are real tear-jerkers, and at least make us stop and think. But one thing that we should pay attention to a little more is the validity of some of it. I saw one the other day that talked about how Mars was going to pass earth at its closest point in 5,000 years, and be as big as the moon to the naked eye. The email is taken out of context - what they mean is that with 75x magnification that Mars will look as big as the moon - but that's not even the point. The event of Mars coming this close to the earth happened two or three years ago. I have been getting an in-box full of this one this whole week. Mars is over 35 million miles away. C’mon – does that really sound plausible to you that Mars would appear as large as the moon to the naked eye?!
Another of my favorites is the one about the lives of the soldiers who guard the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Some pretty interesting facts, mingled in with some hyperbole about how they can never drink alcohol or swear for the rest of their lives. Those specifc points turned out to be false, by the way. Or the one about Paul Harvey's essay on school prayer. The email makes some really good points, but it wasn't written by Paul Harvey. The points that the essay make are valid, but is it somehow more credible because Paul Harvey was the one who wrote it? Why not just give the true author credit? Read up on some of these hoaxes before you pass them on. One good site to check is http://www.snopes.com/. Many of these hoaxes are listed there.
The other issue I have is that if people get in the habit of blindly forwarding everything, then they won’t think twice about passing along cleverly crafted messages that can do damage and spread viruses. Even worse - emails of virus hoaxes telling you to delete critical files from your computer are worse than real viruses. The lazy-ass virus perpetrators are too stupid to write their own virus code, so they just get YOU to do their damage for them, and they know that YOU will forward this hoax to all your friends and get them to blindly follow the instructions and hose up their computers.
Furthermore, and as the article I linked above puts it so well, people will believe anything that comes in a nicely packaged email. Get in the habit of maybe scrutinizing this stuff a little, and be more selective about the stuff you pass on. I’m looking at this from purely the perspective of the security geek that I am - so go ahead and call me a party pooper.
This is a problem we’re all going to have to live with, but let’s not be part of the problem. At the very least, keep your email filters tuned up, your virus programs up to date, and be a little more selective about what you pass on to others.
Gotta run - someone just sent me an email about Mars coming close to earth and appearing as big as the moon next month - where's my camera?!
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