I have a friend who does network administration for a large company. Many years ago, she got a frantic call from a VP saying he was in Asia, losing a deal because he could not log into the VPN to get a powerpoint. He could give many of the details of the company to make you think he was that VP.

She was wrong to trust this person.

Why?

Later, when the FBI came to interview her, she found out she had been socially engineered by the infamous Kevin Mitnick. Hackers, don’t need packet sniffers or brute force attacks to be successful. The weak link is usually just a person who already has access and is willing to aid those who don’t. This why you need to follow the policy of your company because people like me know it is better to do a phone call that have machines runing code to get into the network via math.

Technorati Tags: Hacking, Social Engineering

It is beyond agile, it is Plucky! Betsy Aoki’s post on Plucky Project Management™ is a must read for all geeks, especially EXMSFTers.

Technorati Tags: Betsy Aoki, Microsoft, Plucky, Project Management, Agile

I really love it when someone sends me a high priority email wanting something from me then when I reply to it, I get a return mail saying please fill out a survey on why the recievers spam system should let the mail I sent go through.

Let’s see, you want me to drop everything and pay attention to you but then I find out it so important that you have not put me on your approved senders list.

Well, when this happens it makes me go down the decision tree. You must get a yes to one of them to get me to fill out a survey when the above has happend

• Are you God?
• Will you be giving me at least 1 million dollars for a project I’m working on?
• Did I setup your e-mail and did not do a good job teaching you how to use it?
• You are the press and I will get free story about project or product I’m working on

Sadly for the mail above, the answer is no to all of them. I’m not just posting about this since I had over 100 hi pri emails this morning to reply to and want to blow off some steam. I’m posting this because people are going too far sometimes to block spam and are losing or alienating customers and partners over it.

Is spam a problem, Yes. I get over 500 pieces of spam a day across my mail accounts. I also get anywhere from 400 to 1000 real e-mail messages a day. Which is a ton less from my days at the empire.

But I would never ask anyone to file out a survey to have their mail get to my inbox.

I do use filters to move Spam to it’s own folder on my mail system and other tools but the sender never sees what I’m doing to block Spam which isgood because not only does it mean no one will ever get a survey mail back to them, it also keeps the spammers guessing on what systems I’m using to thwart their effort.

Also if I have to pick between letting some spam thru or missing an importnat e-mail for a client, press, partner, or friends- I will let the spam through to communicate with the above everytime.

So whatever you do to block spam take a look on how it can make you look to people who may be new customers,partners, etc. Do you want that to be the first impression they get of you and your firm?

I will say that sometimes spam can make you step back and consider your life. Some of the spam I’ve received has included enlargement offers for both male and female anotomical parts, maybe the spammers were trying to ferret something out of my subconscious.

Technorati Tags: E-mail, Etiquette, Spam

Google Talk = Google’s new IM service that they’re announcing tomorrow.

It is based on or is compatable with Jabber protocol, so all you need is a Gmail account and a Jabber-compatible instant messaging client such as Apple’s iChat.

Go over to smashsworld to get the full 411 on how to setup your client.

Technorati Tags: Google, Google Talk, Apple, iChat, Jabber

Below is mail from my pal Mr. Bonds, which might be helpful for those of you with kids who use computers.

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Hi Gang,

For those of you with school age children, nephews & nieces etc - I thought this might be of interest:

Problem with Kids and computers I’ve found is you buy them games & edutainment titles and the CDs go missing… then you can’t play the games anymore and have these useless icons on the desktop that lead nowhere. Kids bug ya about where they went and it’s a hassle.

I’ve found a way around that. It’s nothing new and is in fact the way in the nefariously-minded get up to no good… but my application is strictly legit. Do not steal Software

It’s actually REALLY easy to do. You need three tools. The first one is a 21 day trial software, which, if your diligent, is plenty of time for this. The second two are both freeware.

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