I see a lot of people are signing up to see Nigel Farage in the USA. Quite a cool idea – set up a series of events with free tickets. Design the event to attract a specific target group. Hey presto – you have harvested all of their email addresses (and other information) with their permission.
Now I am not saying that is what is going on here – but it could be. In this case it would be names, emails and telephone (all required for the booking).
I recently had to update my email account. That meant changing details on accounts. When I went through the list there were a number of dead accounts that I didn’t use, several with different email addresses – but I counted over 100 accounts in total. And I think I limit the number of accounts I have.
I think the worst I came across were the old BT email accounts that people used to have – for some reason they never deleted address books when the accounts were closed. A spammers paradise.
I’ve started to wonder where we are heading. How are we going to secure all of these accounts but keep them all safe? How many different security questions can we have? My feeling is that everything that makes life easier seems to open up another vulnerability.
You go buy a book on Amazon – or you go buy a book at your local bookstore. One is easier to hack than the other. But it isn’t the one that is the most sociable, or the one that takes the most effort.
I’m not sure if I will become a luddite in the future, but I do wonder whether the easy life is the most rewarding. Browsing a bookshop is so much better than browsing a web page.