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November 8 2004

Beware of emails from relatives seeking accident money 

Elderly people in Japan were duped out of 2.9 billion yen by scammers pretending to be relatives involved in a recent accident and needing money. The scam has come to be known as the "It's me" scam by virtue of the devious methods used to entice the victims to open email, and their pocket books.

 

Lesson of the day

If little Johnny, whom you haven't seen in ions, sends you an email out of the blue, saying he was just hit by a Guinness truck and needs money to pay his hospital bills - don't just transfer money to the blighter - call him up. Check the story out.

Don't let your good nature turn you into a sucker. A poorer sucker.

Call to Action

To all you frustrated, under appreciated security programmers and developers out there in your Dogbert infested pens, now is your chance to do something noble for mankind.

Send us your ideas for Tip of the Week and we will publish the best. It must be in language that your granny would understand and be able to follow. Assuming your granny is not an MIT graduate.

We are trying to build a body of knowledge that helps the average user, as well as more sophisticated folk who already have wads of techno babble infested sites to turn to.

We believe the average user gets little help from anyone, and we sorely need his or her co-operation to secure cyberspace. The vendors try to communicate with them, but don’t seem to comprehend how truly mystified the well- educated (non lunk headed) user really is. They make a lot of ill judged assumptions about what people know, and as a result the message falls flat.

Bill Gates supposedly once said ‘ we don’t talk to end users’.

Needless to say, that far sighted strategic insight has long died a death and Microsoft are positively falling over themselves to get down and dirty with the common man, or woman, as the case may be.

So keep it simple. An ABC of ‘what to do, how to do it, or what to look out for’ is particularly useful.

Remember- you may not be appreciated in your pen, but you can be in cyberspace.

 

So what's headfry?

Headfry is a common, much used and loved expression in Ireland, the UK and Australia. read more...

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