My name is Justin Grimes and I reside in southern Maine, in the small town of Ogunquit. It's bizarre going to a university that is nearly 18x the size of my town...do the math (or "wikipedia" it if you're so inclined…shout out to Maren for that reference). I worked at a small Inn this past summer in Maine located 2 minutes from the Bush compound (love it or hate it). It was a fairly dull experience except for when G.W. Bush and Vlad Putin (and 800 protestors) came to meet for peace talks in the end of June/beginning of July. During that time I got to meet the Russian Foreign Minister (his name is Sergei, and he likes white water rafting…go figure). I am currently a junior in the Hotel School where I am a Hotel School Ambassador; basically meaning I give tours to your younger brothers and sisters. I'd like to eventually own and operate my own restaurant, or spa, or restaurant spa…I’m still figuring it out. I’m very interested in European Team Handball and if anyone is down to play it as a club sport let me know, I’d really like to start it up here at Cornell.
An area of interest for me in the online world is deceptive “junk mail”. While email is undoubtedly one of the most useful and popular methods of communication, spam and junk mail has tainted it with frustration and fraud. Over the summer I was responding to online reservation requests via email and received one from a man claiming he was from a foreign country, needed 10 rooms and wanted to know what the total bill would be. It looked fishy, so I “googled” the man’s name and found out it was a scam that would have wasted 10 perishable rooms and involved us in illegal money transfer. Had I been in a rush, or less observant I would have proceeded with the reservation and put my employer (and myself) in a tough spot. What causes people to use deception as a means to become profitable on the Internet? What type of punishment and legislature is put in place to protect us from these predators, if any?
Deceptive junk mail exists in the electronic mail environment; junk mail is a form of the mail received in this environment. To quote Wallace, “it (email) is widespread in colleges and universities, government agencies, corporations, and homes”. And while she likely did not foresee it, deceptive junk mail will exist and unfortunately plague the places previously listed as a result of its widespread use.
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3 comments:
the problem with spam nowadays is that it is getting too smart for spam filters. Spammers uses images and random word orders to get past spam filters. The only problem with these techniques is that they also make the spam significantly less intelligible. Half the time you don't even know what body part the spam is trying to enlarge its so jumbled. ;-) Anyway, it is a problem, and I dont think it is a problem with an easy solution.
Spam is a major problem because it is very economical. Sending out 1000 emails a day entails virtually no cost. All that's needed is ONE person to buy the product advertised in the email in order for the spammer's time to be worthwhile. This equation needs to change somehow; perhaps by charging a very small amount (1 or 2 cents) for each email sent, or charging for sending email in bulk. This would rapidly make spamming infeasible, without resorting to techniques that inconvenience the recipient (such as filtering, blacklisting, and whitelisting).
Phishing emails are particularly bad. I get the impression that a lot of people from older generations are wary of banking online because it is difficult for them to distinguish a phishing email from a valid one. And this is only going to get more true, not less, over time as phishing emails get more sophisticated.
Justin, you are my hotel school ambassador, and I know that you probably don't care or think I'm stalking you, but I'd figure that I'd leave a comment anyway. It makes for a nice, easy intro. Spam is the most annoying part of my email and has personally affected my Cornell experience. I get about 85 messages a day, about 4 of which I want to read. This summer, I worked so much and began using my phone much more than my email. My email backed up so far that I had 900 messages, one of which was, unbeknownst to me, my freshman housing contract. Needless to say, I didn't feel like fishing through and deleting 880 of 900 emails in one or even multiple sittings. I eventually got a phone call and did check for this important email, but had I not, I would not have housing right now.
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