Learn to delete
It’s the weekend, and I’ve just received a troubling long distance call from someone who has a complaint. He received a phishing message that is was redirected from my employer’s domain. One that invited him to log in and give his account information.
This person was good at research, in that he tracked me down at home. It helps to have a unique name in any given area; the phone people can actually be helpful when you make things easy for them. The only thing is that I have worked on the assumption that anyone that good at research is also able to reject spam for what it is. Junk. Period.
He wasn’t alone; I have also received two emails to point out how our server was hosting vermin. I’ve done the obvious; I’ve renamed the offending file, and come Monday we will try to figure out how the file was installed. Something in the back of my mind reminds me that our log files were turned off to save hard drive space, but the devil is in the details. There’ll be a lot of blank looks and some “pass the blame game”; the reality is that this is a minor detail in the day to day of the Internet. That’s why the keyboard has a key clearly marked with DEL. It’s spam; get over it.
I’m too frigging cheap to start trying long distance lookup for spam messages. The president of the Royal Bank probably wouldn’t take my call, or offer timely redress. Nor should he (she?). With the spam content of email estimated to be as high as 80% there is no doubt that the phisher is looking for the stupid among us. I now have a vow for the new year: to ignore with prejudice anyone who claims that the email they’ve received is meaningful. Believe me, if I wanted your intimate financial codes, I’d ask you, and I wouldn’t do it on behalf of Paypal. They already have enough cash on hand.
