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Millions Continue To Click On Spam
An anonymous reader writes "Even though over 80% of email users are aware of the existence of bots, tens of millions respond to spam in ways that could leave them vulnerable to a malware infection, according to a Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) survey. In the survey, half of users said they had opened spam, clicked on a link in spam, opened a spam attachment, replied or forwarded it — activities that leave consumers susceptible to fraud, phishing, identity theft, and infection. While most consumers said they were aware of the existence of bots, only one-third believed they were vulnerable to an infection."
FIRST POST!!
which is totally what she said
there will be no end of this, not until we let morons use computers
Humans will always be the weak link in security.
And then they call the IT Dept. claiming that they did nothing..It's just started acting weird..all by itself.. I was just reading this cute mail I got about penises and viagra!
I didn't even know you could enlarge your penis?! SWEET!!!! no more laughing at me in the locker room
Users are ignorant to computers. Users have always been ignorant. We can do whatever we can to protect them, either through education, security, antivirus, and anti-malware, but the problem is they aren't geeky tech-people that keep us and like this stuff enough to learn it.
How about we just have a TV show or a movie they want to watch, but teaches them? We could make it a romantic comedy for the ladies or a war movie for the guys, but insert in proper computer use and warnings about spam, viruses, phishing, fraud, etc. We need some kind of mass media to actually teach the masses, and it needs to be a regular interval to keep up with the problems.
Millions of computer users are idiots.
is this why my mom keeps sending me letters from an African Prince with millions?
~Mekkah
I propose we link spam filters into some kind of device which shocks the user if a link is clicked or attachment opened in a spam message. Maybe it'll make them finally learn not to open those things, much like how one teaches stubborn dogs not to pee against the couch.
Site & blog: http://www.mayaposch.com
nm
I continue to complain "SLOW NEWS DAY!" like that makes any differnece.
On the other hand, taco can post a "new" story pointing out this comment: "oldhack continues to complain."
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
I'm sure they're only clicking because the link sounds interesting, completely ignoring their safety because they're not paranoid like us /.'ers.
Congratulations!!!
Your name has been picked. You have just won millions of dollars worth of software. You are also granted the permission to give this software to all of your friends and family.
Click on this link to claim your prize...
CLICK HERE TO GET FREE SOFTWARE!
They're probably the users who believe that computers run off magic. For any above-absolute-beginner, common sense should kick in naturally.
This goes to show the level of incompetence, and talking from experience too:
Me: "Okay you're logged into the system?" ...(proceed a barrage of troubleshooting)...
Cust: "Uh-yes"
Me: Click on the Reports menu item"
Cust: (silence) I don't see it.
Me: "Any errors pop up recently?"
Me: "What DO you see?"
Cust: "Just a white page with an image, that says 'Google'"
date: Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 6:22 PM
subject: Huge old mommy
Under no circumstances should email programs open network connections to anything but the mail servers associated with the email account(s). No active ingredients (scripts) should ever be executed by an email program, neither natively nor in plugins. All requests for receive- or read-notifications should be silently ignored. Reading an email should simply have no effect beyond displaying the contents of the email on the screen. If that is not how your system is configured, you're doing it wrong.
However, I run Linux so I don't worry about viruses, trojans, pedophiles and other malware.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
... look legitimate (from the subject) and you have to see if they are spam or real email. Some spam generators have been getting better.
From TF pdf, under methodology
"Survey participants are all members of Ipsos' opt-in consumer panels in each of the six markets and were invited to participate via email".
So, people who respond to spam also respond to bullshit surveys via email.
Who'd a thunk it ?
Anyone quoted by a reporter knows how little they understand
Don't believe what you read is the truth.
How about some crusaders who mount spam campaigns that, when clicked, scare the holy living hell out of the recipient? Display your geo-location info and a big flashing progress meter that says, "withdrawing funds from your bank account...55%...100%...done" and then a dialog box pops up and says, "Why'd you click on a spam link, sucker? I'll be enjoying your money while I vacation in the Cayman Islands!" Of course no money would be stolen but it would at least give a few idiots the scare of their lives and get them to stop clicking on spam.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
The other day I was walking my mother through launching Windows Live Messenger, so we could video-chat and she could see the kids.
Here was the conversation:
Me: "Click on the icon on your start bar that looks like a little man."
Her: "I don't see it."
Me: "It's on your start bar."
Her: "Ok, I see All Programs..."
Me: "No. Not under Start, it's on your START BAR."
Her: "I don't know what that is".
Me: "Where is your clock."
Her: "Uh....I don't know..."
Me: "It's either at the top right or bottom right of your screen."
Her: "OHHH! There it is! It's at the bottom right!"
Me: "Congratulations, now you know what a clock looks like. OK, next to the clock are a bunch of icons. Double-click on the one that looks like a little man."
This was literally the conversation I had not two nights ago.
With people of this level of computer competence, they are going to fall for anything and everything. There's just nothing you can do for them.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
The best way to keep users from clicking on spam links to to keep that spam out of the user's mailbox in the first place. In our shops we run a mix of Exchange (with McAfee's spam product), old school POP3 (not sure what is running there), and Gmail premier. By far Google's spam filter (Postini) wins out over the other two.
"I'm not a quack, I'm a mad scientist! There's a difference." - Dr. Cockroach
- Water is wet!
- Grass is green!
- The Sky is Blue!
- Democrats passed a bill 55% of the American people didn't want!
- I will get mod'd down for stating 4 things that are 100% true!
Foxnews? That's one of the worst online parasites!! They won't suck your bank account dry - instead, they hoover up your BRAINZ!!!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I religiously click on spam, esp if it looks like malware or phishing... just to see where it takes me. It's even more fun if you find some funky scripts on the site! :D
It’s called “natural selection”. It’s a good thing. It gives the more intelligent an advantage that they deserve, while making it harder for the not so wise to live.
If we’d remove it, we’d only allow more idiots to live. And you know where that would lead to.
To the exact same thing that it lead, that you now don’t even have to get up all day long, or face any challenge at all in your padded XXXXXXL suit, and demand that lifestyle as a “right”, while being able to watch the stupid shit that runs on TV, without making any single thought for yourself.
If any, if we want us to advance, we should make it harder.
Ok, that sounds like a misunderstanding hazard. Let me rephrase it:
There is a mechanism in life, where the amount of motivation is based on how close the abilities and the difficulty of the challenges are. If they match up nearly perfect, you get a genius. (Ok, it’s one factor. The main factor.)
And more motivation leads to more challenges which leads to more learning.
Now you can fall off that fine line on both sides. On the “too hard” side, you get frustrated. And on the “too easy” side, you get bored. (This is a the basic mechanism used to make any game fun.)
But this is not just one global value. But one for every aspect of your life.
So you can obviously have a too hard life in some aspects, and a too easy one in others.
E.g. in a slum in some poor African country’s main capital, it will be frustratingly hard, and that slows down advancement.
But in our “western” world, most of our life is so easy, that we are bored all the time. Which, by the laws of efficiency, means that we can scale down our abilities, and go backwards, until it becomes hard enough to be motivating again. But since we constantly make our lives easier, we counteract the natural force of advancement, and just bop a bit up and down around that sweet spot.
And this is what I meant up there with “harder”.
It would make more sense, to make our life more efficient, instead of just easier. :)
Because we should get better and better, at keeping the difficulty of our challenges closer and closer to the sweet spot of perfect motivation.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Modern civilization allows idiots to reproduce.
On the other side of the table, legitimate mailing lists are having more and more trouble working because millions report emails as spam.
I run a medium sized mailing list which implements most security measures you can think of : confirmed opt-in, simplified unsubscription, such as header shortcuts and "1-click unsubcription", SPF and DKIM, bounce management and so on and yet on average between 1 and 5 subscribers out of 1 000, reports our email as spam, which -I suppose- is mistaken for "I want to unsubscribe from this mailing list".
The lesson I learned is that you have to account for damage caused by stupid users when you reach a significant amount of people.
Traditionally, the party who pays for a thing expects that the party that has been paid has made the thing usable, and not booby-trapped.
"I can't imagine how things could get any worse!" (some guy) "That could just be failure of imaginatioÂn on your p
"continue to....forward it"!!!?!?!?!?!
FORWARD IT?!!
* apocalyptic seizure *
wha'? where am i?
... or you get a lot of email with embedded remote-linked images. Which, of course, most of us do.
I agree on the scripting/active content part, but it's not quite as simple as only opening network connections to the email server. HTML email means that your email client is really a web browser in disguise.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
Why not force users to copy/paste a URL if they really want to see the webpage their "friend" sent them?
Survey detects idiots are plenyful. What next??!?
I've been using computers for 30-odd years and I don't have a clue what a "start bar" is.
By deduction I think you might be referring to Windows' "system tray" but I wouldn't expect anybody's mother to understand that term either - not even if I told them in ALL CAPS.
No sig today...
Who's to say that since all these people are likely infected by some malware, that some of that malware isn't auto downloading/clicking on some of this spam? I mean, the people sending out the spam are already lowlifes, why wouldn't they scam their own clients (the spam products) to boost their own clickthrough ratios ;-)
CmdrTaco has been spamming us today with this story and "Yootoob iz dOWn!!!" stories
one of the few things i really can't stand about my iphone is that mobilemail, afaict, has no "don't auto-load pictures" setting. i worry from time to time about getting tracked or hacked by IMG links in spam that makes it past my filters. (this is particularly ironic given the 1.0.1 PNG jailbreak....)
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
I just clicked on it...
Have you ever looked at a "normal" user interact with a computer? In my experience is more or less like this:
What's that? A mail about some interesting photos I must check out by clicking here... Uhm, I don't know the guy sending it... and I have really no time for photos, but I have to check it to be able to drop it from my mind.
What's that? The Internet opened up. Ah! the photos must be there, but there is some stupid error message that stops me moving Yes! Yes! I said YES! Stupid machine!
What's that? Didn't work. No photos. Again the same message, or it's another one. Impossible to know since I never read the first one, they are all equal, anyway.
What's that? Again the same message. I'll have to read the message to see why I'm not moving forward. Stupid messages! What's an "X active" anyway, do they think I have time for all that. Oh! It seems that to go forward I have really to click "No" on the second message. Must be to avoid stupid users clicking blindly on "OK" all the time. Ain't I smart? I can now move. What? Installing what? Always waiting. Well, it seems to work now. Oh! Those are porn photos! Close, close, close. If the boss sees me I'm dead. Damn SPUM mail!
Ok, next point in my to-do list, banking. What's that? Yes , I want to ALLOW that program to access the site "allOfYourMoney.AreBelong.to.us". Stupid firewall. Won't let me alone to do my work. ...
People, probably due to a nomadic origin or something, think in computers in terms of "going" places, "reaching" things and "routes" they know (To open the Excel you go here, press here). Messages from the computer are interpreted as obstacles that one must overcome to reach the goal. Some other paradigm has to be found for security in computers. I have some ideas, but too tired to write more. If some rich company making OS's is interested, I do expensive consulting.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
The claim "millions continue to click on spam" is not supported by the information they gathered; the portion of the population which has at some point or another ever clicked upon spam. The rate of spam clicks could be sloping up, down, steady, zero; there isn't enough evidence in TFA to determine that.
Millions of computer users are idiots.
Ignorant != stupid. The difference is, there's a cure for ignorance, none for stupidity. But everyone is ignorant. I know about as much about running a bar and construction company as Mike knows about running a computer. I have as little interest in learning about construction as he does about running a computer -- little to none. I just want a house to live in, he just wants his computer to work.
stupid != Ignorant. The issue here is if you are given the opportunity to learn and can't or refuse to, you get to move from the ignorant box to the stupid box.
So Mike uses a computer a lot and knows nothing about it? Is there ANYTHING else in Mike's life where this sort of policy is acceptable? Mike drives to work but knows nothing about driving, he just wants to get to work. When Mike was in the Marines he knew nothing about his gun he just wanted it to shoot.
You probably spend close to 0 time running a construction company, Mike probably lives in front of the computer which runs his Construction company. Are you seeing a difference here? Mike doesn't like knowing about things that are important to his life, you fail to care about what may be useless trivia. Mike doesn't like to waste calories thinking I'm betting.
I never click on advertisements. They all meet the criteria of spam.
>"Taskbar Notification Area" and "System Tray" are both perfectly acceptable, and non-ambiguous, terms to refer to the icon area that sits to the left of the clock in Windows.
The problem is if I told my mom to click on the "Taskbar", or the "System Tray", she would have had absolutely no idea what I was talking about, and I would have ended up having to describe it as the big blue bar with START on one end, anyway.
It seemed obvious to me that calling it a "start bar" from the beginning would save some time. Obviously I was wrong, but I can assure you, it would have taken even longer if I had started out calling it a taskbar.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
I thought I might have moved it to the top of her screen when I set up the system, but could not remember.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
And again, calling it a taskbar would only have led to me having to describe what a taskbar was, which would have led me to the start bar description anyway.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
There's no legitimate reason for embedding remote images. It's always done for tracking purposes, which is just wrong: When I read email is none of their business. Spammer or not doesn't make a difference. Images can be sent with the email.