If you read the sourced article, disabling HTML email would not be sufficient. The tracking marker is actually embedded in an attached document. Once embedded it turns invisible, so there may be some macro associated as well. It seems that a cascade of nefarious and default behavior of a suite of MSFT products allows unsophisticated users to be duped. Suggested steps to mitigate, if not entirely eliminate, the risk of PattyMail
1) Assiduously avoid MSFT products where possible. 2) If you can avoid all, avoid MSFT Word, the probably culprit in this case. Use OpenOffice instead. 3) If you can't do that, disable automatic macro execution in MSFT Word. 4) Do not use HTML email. HTML makes things PRETTIER, not more useful. Anyone in favor of HTML mail is either a spammer or cares more for form than function. HTML mail is a useless abomination. But I digress. 5) Install something like ZoneAlarm on your individual workstation and explicitly ban all MSFT Office products from accessing the Internet, without at least popping up a dialog box. This way, if there is a "phone home" mechanism hidden in a document, you'll know when it tries and you can intercede. 6) Set your email program to alert you and request permission before sending read receipts. Never auto-send them, and do not auto-reject them either. It's useful to know who's trying to check up on you. Then, once you know someone's trying to check up on you, refuse to send the read receipt. 7) If you must follow a questionable URL of dubious provenance, consider actually using an OLDER browser version. For example, Netscape v4.7 or older. It won't render many pretty things correctly, but who cares. More importantly, it also will simply ignore a lot of the more recent tags and syntax as being noise.
If you read the sourced article, disabling HTML email would not be sufficient. The tracking market is actually embedded in an attached document. Once embedded it turns invisible, so there may be some macro associated as well. It seems that a cascade of nefarious and default behavior of a suite of MSFT products allows unsophisticated users to be duped. Suggested steps to mitigate, if not entirely eliminate, the risk of PattyMail
1) Assiduously avoid MSFT products where possible. 2) If you can avoid all, avoid MSFT Word, the probably culprit in this case. Use OpenOffice instead. 3) If you can't do that, disable automatic macro execution in MSFT Word. 4) Do not use HTML email. HTML makes things PRETTIER, not more useful. Anyone in favor of HTML mail is either a spammer or cares more for form than function. HTML mail is a useless abomination. But I digress. 5) Install something like ZoneAlarm on your individual workstation and explicitly ban all MSFT Office products from accessing the Internet, without at least popping up a dialog box. This way, if there is a "phone home" mechanism hidden in a document, you'll know when it tries and you can intercede. 6) Set your email program to alert you and request permission before sending read receipts. Never auto-send them, and do not auto-reject them either. It's useful to know who's trying to check up on you. Then, once you know someone's trying to check up on you, refuse to send the read receipt. 7) If you must follow a questionable URL of dubious provenance, consider actually using an OLDER browser version. For example, Netscape v4.7 or older. It won't render many pretty things correctly, but who cares. More importantly, it also will simply ignore a lot of the more recent tags and syntax as being noise.
I've got a 4 year old Epson Stylus 1280. That plus pics from my Nikon Coolpix 990 have served me well, older generation tech notwithstanding. biggest problem is having to exercise/clean the heads before each printing session, usually 3 or 4 times lest you get streaky printouts, thus wasting ink and paper. But... the pay off comes when it's 2am and you realize you need a gift for your mother-in-law in the morning and the local photo shop or drug store is closed. A quick printout of the grandkid's latest foibles always does the trick (recommend keeping a small store of 3x5 photos on hand just in case).
For science fiction fans, an extreme version of this was predicted in the novel Mother of Storms (John Barnes, 1995, http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0812 533453/qid=1057945184/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/103-897443 2-9869404?v=glance&s=books).
Basic gist: instead of mob bloggers with video cameras and cell phones, imagine thousands of people "broadcasting" the sensory experiences of being in a food riot, etc. in real-time to people around the globe. (also like a real-time version of the wire-tripping in the film Strange Days, http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/flex-sign-in/ref =cm_rate_rev_pagepos4/103-8974432-9869404#rated-re view)
He raises a good point. The drivers behind technology vary substantially from country to country. Cell phone technology took longer, in part, to explode in the US because of the maturity and reliability of the land line system. A similar ubiquitous wired phone system was not as common or reliable in many other parts of the world.
Also, Americans (I'm one) tend to identify more heavily with their cars than their mobile phones. Based on ads I've seen for phones in Europe and the UK, and in speaking with folks while traveling there, the mobile phone for many seems to be a bit of a personality tag. The relationship in the US for most is "it's just a phone" - much more utilitarian.
one possible contributor to the explosion in spam - dying dotcoms looking for a some quick cash in the dying days, selling email addresses, etc. of clients and downloaders. The explosion seems to be timed closely with the dotcom crash. Thoughts?
I think I remember reading way back that Iridium only supports up to 2400 baud. The article (pre-Iridium blowup) predicted that as a reason for a then-future demise of Iridium. Funny that.
Slashdot Mirror
If you read the sourced article, disabling HTML email would not be sufficient. The tracking marker is actually embedded in an attached document. Once embedded it turns invisible, so there may be some macro associated as well. It seems that a cascade of nefarious and default behavior of a suite of MSFT products allows unsophisticated users to be duped. Suggested steps to mitigate, if not entirely eliminate, the risk of PattyMail
1) Assiduously avoid MSFT products where possible.
2) If you can avoid all, avoid MSFT Word, the probably culprit in this case. Use OpenOffice instead.
3) If you can't do that, disable automatic macro execution in MSFT Word.
4) Do not use HTML email. HTML makes things PRETTIER, not more useful. Anyone in favor of HTML mail is either a spammer or cares more for form than function. HTML mail is a useless abomination. But I digress.
5) Install something like ZoneAlarm on your individual workstation and explicitly ban all MSFT Office products from accessing the Internet, without at least popping up a dialog box. This way, if there is a "phone home" mechanism hidden in a document, you'll know when it tries and you can intercede.
6) Set your email program to alert you and request permission before sending read receipts. Never auto-send them, and do not auto-reject them either. It's useful to know who's trying to check up on you. Then, once you know someone's trying to check up on you, refuse to send the read receipt.
7) If you must follow a questionable URL of dubious provenance, consider actually using an OLDER browser version. For example, Netscape v4.7 or older. It won't render many pretty things correctly, but who cares. More importantly, it also will simply ignore a lot of the more recent tags and syntax as being noise.
If you read the sourced article, disabling HTML email would not be sufficient. The tracking market is actually embedded in an attached document. Once embedded it turns invisible, so there may be some macro associated as well. It seems that a cascade of nefarious and default behavior of a suite of MSFT products allows unsophisticated users to be duped. Suggested steps to mitigate, if not entirely eliminate, the risk of PattyMail
1) Assiduously avoid MSFT products where possible.
2) If you can avoid all, avoid MSFT Word, the probably culprit in this case. Use OpenOffice instead.
3) If you can't do that, disable automatic macro execution in MSFT Word.
4) Do not use HTML email. HTML makes things PRETTIER, not more useful. Anyone in favor of HTML mail is either a spammer or cares more for form than function. HTML mail is a useless abomination. But I digress.
5) Install something like ZoneAlarm on your individual workstation and explicitly ban all MSFT Office products from accessing the Internet, without at least popping up a dialog box. This way, if there is a "phone home" mechanism hidden in a document, you'll know when it tries and you can intercede.
6) Set your email program to alert you and request permission before sending read receipts. Never auto-send them, and do not auto-reject them either. It's useful to know who's trying to check up on you. Then, once you know someone's trying to check up on you, refuse to send the read receipt.
7) If you must follow a questionable URL of dubious provenance, consider actually using an OLDER browser version. For example, Netscape v4.7 or older. It won't render many pretty things correctly, but who cares. More importantly, it also will simply ignore a lot of the more recent tags and syntax as being noise.
I've got a 4 year old Epson Stylus 1280. That plus pics from my Nikon Coolpix 990 have served me well, older generation tech notwithstanding. biggest problem is having to exercise/clean the heads before each printing session, usually 3 or 4 times lest you get streaky printouts, thus wasting ink and paper. But... the pay off comes when it's 2am and you realize you need a gift for your mother-in-law in the morning and the local photo shop or drug store is closed. A quick printout of the grandkid's latest foibles always does the trick (recommend keeping a small store of 3x5 photos on hand just in case).
For science fiction fans, an extreme version of this was predicted in the novel Mother of Storms (John Barnes, 1995, http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0812 533453/qid=1057945184/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/103-897443 2-9869404?v=glance&s=books).
f =cm_rate_rev_pagepos4/103-8974432-9869404#rated-re view)
Basic gist: instead of mob bloggers with video cameras and cell phones, imagine thousands of people "broadcasting" the sensory experiences of being in a food riot, etc. in real-time to people around the globe. (also like a real-time version of the wire-tripping in the film Strange Days, http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/flex-sign-in/re
This is easy enough if you read e-Books (ie, peanut press, aka palm.com). bookmark the page in the book, cut, memo pad, paste, sync. done.
He raises a good point. The drivers behind technology vary substantially from country to country. Cell phone technology took longer, in part, to explode in the US because of the maturity and reliability of the land line system. A similar ubiquitous wired phone system was not as common or reliable in many other parts of the world.
Also, Americans (I'm one) tend to identify more heavily with their cars than their mobile phones. Based on ads I've seen for phones in Europe and the UK, and in speaking with folks while traveling there, the mobile phone for many seems to be a bit of a personality tag. The relationship in the US for most is "it's just a phone" - much more utilitarian.
one possible contributor to the explosion in spam - dying dotcoms looking for a some quick cash in the dying days, selling email addresses, etc. of clients and downloaders. The explosion seems to be timed closely with the dotcom crash. Thoughts?
I think I remember reading way back that Iridium only supports up to 2400 baud. The article (pre-Iridium blowup) predicted that as a reason for a then-future demise of Iridium. Funny that.
As the original poster said, very poor digital coverage in Iowa. Further, I'd bet there's darn near zero GSM coverage in Iowa.