After many years of being reasonably smug about how little email spam I receive (which I put down to having a relatively uncommon name and, over the years, being relatively careful about where I use my email address online), I have found in recent months a big increase.
That escalation has been due to my increasing use of social networking services. The spam takes two forms… friendly young ladies who want to be my friend on Twitter, and then regular infringements of friends' and acquaintances' Facebook, Twitter or Linked In accounts to allow me to find out about (usually) another haphazard get-rich-quick scheme.
As my friend Sharron in Canada put it yesterday after her account had somehow been hacked, this is a right “pain in the arse”.
Password-based security has a stack of challenges, API's that allow for entire clients to be built up (do you know where the passwords you enter into your Twitter client really end up?) also, and the possibility that security had not necessarily scaled with the explosion of some Web 2.0 services are all probably partly to blame. However, like water seeping through a leaky ceiling, the inexorable drive for some to make money through slightly dodgy means will always eventually force open the cracks in what are otherwise seen as secure services.
At the root of that? Well, sadly, some of us are just plain greedy. And the rest slightly gullible.
mmitII 