Spam, meaning unsolicited e-mail is illegal in many countries and quite rightly.
Spam to me, though, still brings instantly to mind the famousMonty Python sketch, led by Michael Palin.
The subject of this blogpost is more serious unfortunately.
Last week I found in my Yahoo inbox two spam e-mails which, among the other stuff about increasing my sexual prowess, caught my attention.
The first was disguised as being from the National Lottery Commission in the UK, claiming that my e-mail address had won me a prize of £730,000. After a micro second of elation, the stink of a decomposing rat drifted to my nostrils. Non-UK residents like me cannot enter the National Lottery! At the end of the mail I was asked to confirm my name, address and telephone number in an e-mail to a gmail address. That rat decomposed more quickly then. I visited the National Lottery website, which I found to be full of warnings about scam e-mails. The National Lottery Commission, it said, do not advise winners by e-mail, and if they did, a branch of Her Majesty's Government would not stoop to using free e-mail, such as hotmail, gmail, yahoomail etc.
The second spam mail came from, apparently, Western Union, saying that I had won a prize of US$550,000. This one came straight to the point. Send an e-mail to receive our bank account details and then pay into it $355 and we 'll send you the winnings. This one came from a rocketmail address, not a Western Union address.
So two dead stinking rats!
I have forwarded these to the ISP, Yahoo, also to Western Union and the National Lottery Commission. Please do the same if you receive mails like this.
Who are the neanderthals out there who are taken in by spam like this?
Should we call in theInquisition?
Friday, July 3, 2009
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Protecting Your Business Secrets-Learn from the Spooks
Many businesses have secrets.
Often these secrets are so important that disclosure could ruin the business completely. For Swiss banks it used to be the names of the numbered account holders, although the Swiss government has now forced more transparency on the country's banks. For manufacturers of processed foods and sauces it is often the recipe. For software writers it is the source codes, for intelligence agencies it is the codenames and the real identity of their sources in foreign countries. For many businesses participating in competitive international bidding for multi-million dollar projects it is the the price they bid and their copies of the submitted bid.
The reference to intelligence agencies was included deliberately for it is from the world of espionnage that some guidance must be learnt on the subject of protecting secrets.
Disclose company secrets only on a strict "need to know" basis. If a person does not need to know the secret to carry out his job do not tell him.
If secrets must be communicated in writing, either do it by hand or by marking the envelope "Strictly Confidential-Mr X eyes only", and call him to let him know it is coming so he briefs his secretary not to open it. Secretaries, especially if poorly paid or temporary can often be the source of leaks, for money or love.
If you must discuss company confidential business on the telephone, or even by e-mail, devise a system of codenames, known only to yourself and the other party. In the Third World try to avoid telephone calls from or to your hotel room. They are often listened to. Call from your local office or Embassy, or a cellphone call in the street is often safer.
Have a combination lock fitted to your office door, or, if not, you must clear all your papers in to a safe place before leaving the office, even to go to the bathroom. Lock all your documents away, always, before you leave the office for the night, or for prolonged absences.
When travelling by plane put all confidential documents in your carry on baggage, not the check in cases. If travelling by car do not leave confidential documents in your briefcase in the car, alarmed or not. The car may be stolen.
Have a filing cabinet with a combination lock in your office to keep your confidential documents in while you are absent for more than two hours.
Keep a high capacity fine shredder in your office and make sure you empty it yourself and put the contents in a garbage bag. If possible have the garbage bag burnt.
It may be wise to keep some of the very secret stuff at home, or in a safety deposit box at a bank. If you have domestic staff at home, you need the combination safe there as well and take the same precautions as you do at the office.
Alright, this all seems like something from John Le Carré or Tom Clancy but the writer knows from bitter experience that it is necessary, having once had a copy of a highly compettive tender stolen by an employee for a few hours. It was obviously copied elsewhere and then offered for sale to a competitor. Fortunately, the competitor refused to buy it and called the writer. The employee was promptly dismissed and his office and his car was searched before he left. Any further evidence of stolen documents would have lead to a call to the police.
Remember, in a highly compettive business environment some unscrupulous company may try to bribe one of your employees to steal your secrets.
Often these secrets are so important that disclosure could ruin the business completely. For Swiss banks it used to be the names of the numbered account holders, although the Swiss government has now forced more transparency on the country's banks. For manufacturers of processed foods and sauces it is often the recipe. For software writers it is the source codes, for intelligence agencies it is the codenames and the real identity of their sources in foreign countries. For many businesses participating in competitive international bidding for multi-million dollar projects it is the the price they bid and their copies of the submitted bid.
The reference to intelligence agencies was included deliberately for it is from the world of espionnage that some guidance must be learnt on the subject of protecting secrets.
Disclose company secrets only on a strict "need to know" basis. If a person does not need to know the secret to carry out his job do not tell him.
If secrets must be communicated in writing, either do it by hand or by marking the envelope "Strictly Confidential-Mr X eyes only", and call him to let him know it is coming so he briefs his secretary not to open it. Secretaries, especially if poorly paid or temporary can often be the source of leaks, for money or love.
If you must discuss company confidential business on the telephone, or even by e-mail, devise a system of codenames, known only to yourself and the other party. In the Third World try to avoid telephone calls from or to your hotel room. They are often listened to. Call from your local office or Embassy, or a cellphone call in the street is often safer.
Have a combination lock fitted to your office door, or, if not, you must clear all your papers in to a safe place before leaving the office, even to go to the bathroom. Lock all your documents away, always, before you leave the office for the night, or for prolonged absences.
When travelling by plane put all confidential documents in your carry on baggage, not the check in cases. If travelling by car do not leave confidential documents in your briefcase in the car, alarmed or not. The car may be stolen.
Have a filing cabinet with a combination lock in your office to keep your confidential documents in while you are absent for more than two hours.
Keep a high capacity fine shredder in your office and make sure you empty it yourself and put the contents in a garbage bag. If possible have the garbage bag burnt.
It may be wise to keep some of the very secret stuff at home, or in a safety deposit box at a bank. If you have domestic staff at home, you need the combination safe there as well and take the same precautions as you do at the office.
Alright, this all seems like something from John Le Carré or Tom Clancy but the writer knows from bitter experience that it is necessary, having once had a copy of a highly compettive tender stolen by an employee for a few hours. It was obviously copied elsewhere and then offered for sale to a competitor. Fortunately, the competitor refused to buy it and called the writer. The employee was promptly dismissed and his office and his car was searched before he left. Any further evidence of stolen documents would have lead to a call to the police.
Remember, in a highly compettive business environment some unscrupulous company may try to bribe one of your employees to steal your secrets.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
A BREAK IN A SUBMARINE CABLE CAN CAUSE SEVERE PROBLEMS
Christmas Day has always been the busiest day of the year for international telephone calls. People based overseas always want to call their relatives and friends in their home country on that day.
This Christmas, December 25, 2008, became a problem for such callers. Calls proved either impossible to make or were terminated in mid call. The voice quality was also bad.
Even voice over internet calls on Skype, for example, had problems.
In addition internet connection to overseas websites were very slow and the waiting time often unacceptable. This, in January, 2009 is still the case
So what caused these problems?
On December 19th, 2008, three high capacity submarine fibre optic cables were either cut or severely damaged, probably by a large ship’s dragging anchors. The cables involved in this accident were SEA-ME-WE 3(South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe) and SEA-ME-WE 4. In addition FLAG FE (Fibre Link Around the Globe. Far East) was involved. The incident took place in the Mediterranean, off Sicily.
A heavy ship like a supertanker sails on for many miles even when the engines are running astern, and they need big, weighty anchors.
A cable ship, Raymond Croze, owned by France Telecom, one of the owners of the cables, is on the scene to effect the necessary repairs.
First however the ship had to find the cables. A dragging anchor can pull a cable a long way from its original as laid position. For this purpose a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) is used, connected to the ship by and umbilical cable for navigation and transmitting video of the sea bottom.
Once the cables were found the damaged sections are hauled out of the water aboard the cable ship where the repairs take place. This takes time. In the latest very high capacity submarine there are many fibres in the core. SEA-ME-WE 4 has 192 fibres which enable the cable to have a transmission speed of more than 1 Terabit per second Each fibre has to be repaired individually with a strong, clean joint that does not impair its optical transmission capability.
When cables like these are out of service massive disruption and damage can be done to business world wide. Many companies worldwide, especially the multi national corporations, have set up high capacity private networks to carry data and voice traffic between their many offices. Banks, stock exchanges, currency and commodity markets depend on them every second. For example a fall in the Dow Jones Index, instantly seen on the monitors in the trading rooms of other countries can trigger a similar fall, in the FTSE 100 for example. Then there is the vast amount of e-mail sent around the globe every day.
Data has overtaken voice as the main medium of communication for at least 10 years now.
Can these problems be avoided?
The answer is yes, most of the time, but breaks in three submarine cables in the same place is virtually unknown. Navigation charts show the marine crew the whereabouts of submarine cable zones and anchoring or deep sea trawling is usually prohibited in these areas. The trawler skippers often ignore the warnings, driven by the desire to get a large catch to port to sell it at the best prices. Large ships however, usually only drop their anchors in an emergency.
Fibre optic cable planners rely on achieving redundancy which means the ability to restore traffic over one or more other cables. Telecommunication companies sign reciprocal agreements with other cable system owners to achieve this. Redundancy was forcibly abandoned in this case by the fact that three cables were put out of service at the same time.
Let us hope that those anchors were dropped in a real emergency.
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