Training Intelligence

Oh boy.

Here I'm going to ask for what is probably impossible.

I am hoping that I live long enough to see us as IT folks to train intelligence to our end users.

Why? Because it is in there best interests.

As a electronics geek, I've always had a bit of a bleeding edge, excuse me, leading edge leaning. So I have a number of email accounts, including Gmail.

I noticed enough attempts actually getting through to my inbox to join some Google Group, asking me to verify my account request, not just saying, no such group.

It got to a point where I am going, WTF?

I got the answer, and it is here.

Damn!

I get things change. I have learned to roll with that.

And clearly, we are not going to stop spam by a single great idea, like Sender Policy Framework (SPF).

The 'final' answer is to make Spam unattractive from a reward standpoint. That will only happen when we as IT geeks educate our people to not buy stuff sold in spam. AND to not accept "baiting" that something was taken from them. AND to not follow links to "racy" topics.

This is a high bar. Probably impossible. Maybe we can train our users (and ourselves) to a point where spam is a less attractive business, thereby reducing spam.

It's a sad day when CAPCHA has been "had" by the black hats. Again, this isn't theory. I'm seeing it myself in my own inbox. For the readers that want the "how data", here you go.
http://securitylabs.websense.com/content/Blogs/2919.aspx

I have faith that the Googlers can control this.
I have hope that we who care of, the end users, make all this not worth while by not responding. Get rid of the demand and the supply will dry up. Simple math. Hard solution.

Tcat