I just dropped by to check my Gmail account (which is almost never used, and the address has never been published anywhere), and found quite a surprise. The spam box currently has 7,026 spam messages!
Keeping in mind that spam is deleted after 30 days, that means I’m getting 7,000 spam messages a month to an unknown, unpublished account! All of my other email accounts use two layers of filtering, one at the server, the other in the client. With this much spam going to an almost secret account, I can only image the spam going to my published accounts.
I actively use six separate email accounts, if each gets 7,000 spam messages a month, I’d be spending my entire week without sleeping just going through spam. Spam just seems that much more evil every day.
Update 3: In 2014 the FTC filed a complaint against Snapchat for their failure to provide the level of security they promised. The findings listed below were sent to the founders of Snapchat, that email was quoted in the FTC compliant as proof that Snapchat was aware of these issues.
Update 2: The Snapchat API has changed to address the issues I pointed out to them – and the new API has issues as well.
Back in March, I switched from The Bat! to Outlook as a result of being annoyed with using two different clients (work & home)*. So today, I’m running The Bat again, thanks to Gmail.
Moving to Gmail I had been thinking about moving to Gmail for a while, the other day I decided to bite the bullet and do it. There was some pain involved, but not as bad as I expected.
Over the next three months or so I plan on more-or-less rebuilding all of my computers, and the network they sit on. This is going to be a fairly time consuming process, though I expect should be well worth it. This includes the addition on a couple new computers, as well as new hardware for the existing ones. Among the various changes is the move to a rack-mount environment, away from normal tower cases.
When I buy something, I expect support. When I buy something expensive, I expect really good support. That may be asking too much, but that’s just how I think. Now, when I contact the vendor for support, I expect to talk to somebody that understands the product. When I bring up an issue that gets me on a conference call with a Vice President and a Project Manager, I expect them to give me accurate data.
It’s time for everyone from the industry, developers, and the government to declare war on ransomware and make it as hard as possible for them to ply their insidious trade. There have been false starts and baby steps, diligent fighters without enough resources, and vendors that have only given a nod to the issue. It’s time to use every tool reasonably available to stop this scourge.
For so many in the industry that have dedicated so much of their time and effort to this fight, this statement may seem to diminish their efforts, but that is not my intent.
