BBC's done it again - on their Technology News website an article entitled 'How to sell your self for a song' explains how, lo-and-behold, many computer users will happily give out personal information. Also, lacking any reasonable pictures to go with the story, the BBC has opted for a picture of a dog with the title - 'Many of those questioned [in the survey] revealed pet names too'. I mean - come on... find something relevant... I know it's often difficult on the BBC Technology News website, as someone in the know told me, but really - this is pathetic.
On to the topic of the article - the matter of users giving out information like this is nothing new. As most system administrators of large office systems will know - many computer users are often stupid. I'm not criticising anyone (although I suppose I am), they need more education about things like email-use... and companies should be providing that. For home users that don't have access to company resources, they should consider going along to some evening classes (although I understand the quality of many of these is currently quite poor - and people are simply told to 'click here' and 'drag there' without too much thought to what they are actually doing).
Maybe it would be worth the government creating some advisories for computer users in relation to this, rather than just offering services like the new publically funded Internet Security alert system (which, I note, has already told me of problems that happened days previously - so they've got that right, not!).
Perhaps - even better than that - have a banner on all Email Clients and Web Mail interfaces saying 'Email you recieve may come from users/organisations trying to trick you' ... which sounds just as stupid as they old American saying - 'things in the rear view mirror often appear closer than they are' which is engraved on some car mirrors in the US.
So, I suppose some lessons from this are: 1) computer users should be more defensive online, 2) BBC Technology News needs a good slap.
Thursday, March 24, 2005
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