spam

There was a time--2004 to be precise--when spam "only" consumed 70 percent of all e-mail. Those were the good old days. Today, as Barracuda Networks' annual spam report shows, upwards of 95 percent of all e-mail is spam. In 2001, the number was 5 percent.

We've come a long way, baby.

Ironically (or not), the United States' Can-Spam Act has done absolutely nothing (zip!) to stop the spam onslaught. It has come to the point that, as a separate Barracuda survey of 261 business professionals shows, we increasingly prefer telemarketing to e-mail spam. (I find that I'm much more willing to give my home address and phone number than my e-mail address these days. You?)

Some salient numbers from the reports:… Read more

I wrote awhile back about this cursed trend of spamming your resume. I got five of these today and guess what? Not only am I not going to hire you but I am going to start publishing your names as people who are clearly unable to manage their careers so that they have to rely on SPAM tactics to annoy hiring companies.

And guess what morons? I am not the hiring manager for every job at my company. So, the least you can do is research it and spam the right person.

By the way, all of this resume spam … Read more

There is an incredibly annoying trend that I am suffering where candidates are sending me resumes using a service that basically requires me to opt-out if I don't respond to the first email. This is actually more annoying than Plaxo, which was the bane of early 2000's and has now righted its course (though I still don't use it.)

Let me just tell anyone that thinks that this is a good idea that they are dead wrong. An impersonal email to the CEO that gets resent every few days will force me to write you off and … Read more

A few weeks ago at Digital Life, I attended the Virtual Army Experience, a big promotional "virtual reality" game that emulated a mission in the U.S. Army. It was pretty fun, and I generally enjoyed the experience despite its poorly masked primary purpose as a recruitment tool.

Unfortunately, the Army hasn't stopped calling me since I tried the Virtual Army Experience.

When I took the Virtual Army Experience, I had to give contact information. This didn't surprise me, and I used my work e-mail and phone number. I thought maybe I'd get an e-mail … Read more

I was combing through the piles of uncollected e-mail this afternoon when this nugget grabbed my attention: "OnlineBootyCall message for Daniel Terdiman."

Putting aside the entertainment such a message might contain, it got me thinking about the subconscious filtering system I use to sift through the mounds of e-mail I get, looking for the ones I actually need to read.

There are all kinds of cues that signal spam: poor spelling; no caps when there should be; caps when there shouldn't be; extra periods; the whole, "I'm responding to your message" thing from some … Read more

Discussions about spam seem passe in the security world these days. Spam was topical around 2003. Now we've progressed to other threats like botnets, Trojans and rootkits. Heck, in 2005 there were widespread reports that spam traffic had stabilized or even decreased.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but there is more spam today than there was last year at this time (probably almost two times as much) and there will probably be another exponential increase in 2008. Today's spam is also more bandwidth hungry as a greater percentage of it includes graphics.

IT executives, … Read more

I spent some time last week talking with Dean Drako, CEO of Barracuda Networks. I'd wanted to talk with Dean for some time, as I've been an admirer of the company for many years. Barracuda recognized the strength of open source, and capitalized on it, well before most people were willing to even give open source a chance.

The conversation was particularly interesting because of Barracuda's announced intention to join the Open Invention Network, as well as some research it had done on perceived customer value for open source.

I started by asking Dean, Why do you care about open source?… Read more