Michael Gracie

Help! I am dwelling on all the computer security issues I have to think about for Spamroll: spam, spyware, phishing, id theft, and all the bickering going on around companies and politicians. Luckily, I don’t know jack about any of this stuff, so I just type happily away on my Mac behind multiple firewalls, and all is well. Or is it?
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Paul Murphy over at CIO Today put together an interesting piece on the ubiquity of authentication, the jurisdictional and timing issues involved with nabbing phishers, and some of the underlying reasons why the powers that be don’t just stop the problem in its tracks. But hope is on the horizon, from an unlikely source.
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Just as VOIP is beginning to take off, fraudsters are embracing the medium as a tool for money conversion. Using caller ID spoofing, scammers are blasting VOIP voicemails and foiling verfication of wire tranfer instructions. But that is not all.
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There has been a lot of recent speculation about everyone’s favorite search engine getting into the phone business, as well as a lot of chatter as to why anyone would think such a thing. So I thought I would put my two cents in, in as practical (and sarcastic) a manner as possible.
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I had little doubt that Jeffrey Citron, which has a history of bucking the establishment with his business models, would get his calls unblocked. While the news is a bit old, the culprits and terms of settlement are nice to have in the cache: Telco agrees to stop blocking VoIP calls | CNET News.com.

Good job, Mr. Citron

We have seen a flurry of telecomm deals in the past few weeks. SBC gets AT&T for the enterprise book, and MCI finds a suitor in Verizon (hopefully ending their saga once and for all). But does it matter?

The markets feelings on the situation swing between exuberant to non-existent, depending on whether the deal was a foregone conclusion (see Forbes.com: Stocks Narrowly Mixed on Verizon-MCI Deal), or what after-effects the signed contract will bring (SBC to Cut 13,000 Jobs After Buying AT&T).

Again, what benefits are we going to see? I suspect there will be some alternating pleasures and pains.
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