Michael Gracie

Despite all the “altruistic” services warning people of dangerous websites (via paid clients, of course), Jose Nazario has found one that just won’t die. Note: various contributors are “ready to take action.” I’d personally love to hear why action has been so absent for so long.

The news says “N.Y. Lawmaker Drops Google Porn Lawsuit”.

The lawmaker spins it so the everyday citizen will believe he won some huge corporate battle (for the kids, of course), and that Google is begging for a meeting. Google, on the other hand, says the suit was baseless nonsense, ranking among the silliest they’ve ever seen. The lawmaker says Google is readying for a meeting with him. Google says if the guy wants a meeting, to please say so via normal human means (like a letter or phone call).

Let me guess…this politico is up for re-election?

It is a good fifteen degrees cooler at higher altitude, and I have no trout in my bathtub. Hence, you get the rest of today’s security oriented events sans my asinine commentary:

- Spyware finds religion, or the other way around;

- World Cup streakers hit your inbox;

- AT&T decides you have no identity;

- College students say to hell with loan rates - we’ve got bigger problems;

- Ohio University shot the messenger before flurry of hacks; and

- Phishers reel in your cell phone.

Have a great weekend!

It may shorten your productive workday by clogging up your inbox. But someone is benefitting from all that spam, besides, of course, the spammers’ pocketbooks. The anti-spam market saw nearly 14% growth this last year - revenues for reducing your aggravation have hit $4 billion.

So, we have spam, but we also have anti-spam jobs, and happy anti-spam investors. Nice.

Reuters says that two FTC laptops were stolen, and the report is a whopping 110 people be affected. Wow, 110!

This follows the VA data theft debacle, which resulting in a significant number of records (like over 26 million significant) and the resulting upward estimate to include active servicemen and women. First estimates are almost always understated. I wonder if the FTC spokesperson just forgot about a few zeros.

We’ll soon find out.

First, ignore some existing laws. Second, grease the lawmakers. Third, pull investigators pants down to their knees just as they start running after the problem. What do you get after that? According to some high profile attorneys, you get anti-competitive telco mergers.

How does the government fund these shenanigans, and ensure their telco buddies can stay on the public dole? Uh, they tax the competition.

Looks like the transition will happen sometime in 2008, roughly two years ahead of the Microsoft Windows Vista revised release date.

Of course, the transition to IPv6 is already happening over here. Sounds like Google doesn’t want to wait either.

Loopholes in CAN-SPAM, along with various legislative tweaks, make it easy for politicos to spam the daylights out of you this election season. Laws or no laws, they’d probably do it anyway. Since political advertisement in election seasons usually involves a whole lotta mudslinging, that is what you should expect. Techdirt thinks it will get downright ugly, and with shadow 527s, net anonymity, and general stupidity, don’t be shocked at what is coming your way.

With all the talk of net neutrality, government snooping, and telco conspiracies, you’d think that web companies would be worried sick. Yet, nobody is running around like a chicken with their head cut off. Techdirt Mike thinks government meddling is going to increase the use of encryption technologies, and I could not agree more. I also believe that is exactly why those slaughtered chicken imitators are so scarce. Internet buffs (and drooling entrepreneurs) know something the bureaucrats can’t ever figure out - like life itself, technology always seems “to find a way.”

Get ready for open, cheap, hardcore stealth communications of the likes you may have never dreamed about (unless you are Kevin Mitnick or Bruce Schneier or Phil Zimmerman). It will be here sooner than you think.

PS: to add to the mess and the potential for distraction: as EmailBattles notes, more data is stolen from governments via burglary than hacking. The government should be worrying more about lock and key, security door, and window bar manufacturers, which in all their intelligence and glory they will probably move to regulate forthwith.

First it was your inbox. Then your blog. Now it is social networks geared around promoting news stories, as Seth Godin shows us. Furl, Digg and all the open source clones popping up are vulnerable.

Why? I think age. Primacy/recency theory notwithstanding, the popularity of these venues, combined with the neophyte composition of their userbase, was bound to attract scammers. Meanwhile, those sites with established user groups, with their loyalty and intolerance of trollers, tend to self-regulate much better - almost by default at this stage of the game. I say, so much for the death of Slashdot at the hands of Digg - it ain’t going to happen.