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Winning the battles, losing the war

The FTC is a touch too self-congratulatory over spam; it's catching spammers but for every one it takes two more spring up to take over.

 

CAN-SPAM was a start and the action taken against Alan Ralsky (although I preferred the direct action route) has made spammers resident in the US to either shut up shop or take a much lower profile. I look forward to more of these, but doubt they are going to cope with the flood of spam many mailboxes receive daily.

 

But as any economist will tell you if profits are high and demand is strong then supply rises to meet demand. A

US

spammer drops out, then the spam users switch to suppliers in the Far East or

Europe

.

 

Going after the spammers is only half the battle. We need to go after the people using the spam – the herbal Viagra dealers, mail order universities and credit agencies. We could cut some of the spam off at the source, although we'll never be entirely free of it.

December 23, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Microsoft's open vista

I'm getting more and more sceptical about

Vista

, despite what Microsoft say.

 

Maybe I'm just jaded, but this is my fourth Microsoft operating system launch (95, 98, 2000 and XP – I, like the rest of the industry try to forget Windows Me) and when it finally comes I suspect it'll be a bit of a let down.

 

Of course we're only getting early information but beefed up anti spam software and a smarter firewall? They might have been years in development but hackers are going to go through them like a hot knife through butter. Not because it's bad code, although they might be, but because it's written by Microsoft and is going to be the operating system most people use.

 

I can't use his name but the MD of a UK security firm, full of Christmas cheer the other week, gave me what I think will be the collective reaction to the improvements in Windows.

 

"Microsoft's firewall, ah bless. But seriously…"

December 23, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack