David Curling
Whenever the question of productivity increases, brought about through the use of computers and networks, are discussed we have to address the growing menace of viruses, hackers, spoofers and spammers. These bad guys are waging a ferocious war against the most important communications initiative since the advent of the post office. If this keeps up they will destroy the hard earned productivity increases that are just emerging after long gestation period of IT system development and implementation. This is a significant impediment to effective global project management communications.
For the past six months the PMFORUM has been subject to constant attack from the bad guys of the Web who have:
We are not alone in receiving the attentions of the bad guys. Max Wideman owner of a popular resource for PM knowledge writes:
"Lately, I've been getting Emails from strangers to say that the recipients of Emails from me have been blocked mostly due to the detection of viruses. Please note that these Emails are not sent by me. My system is protected by anti-virus, checked regularly and as of this date is virus free. The problem is that some viruses propagate themselves by sending virus-infected Emails to everyone in the address book of an infected PC. They use a false return address, often plucked from that same person's address book. Nothing I can do about that. Sorry!"
Email Lists are under attack and popular PM mailing lists using the such automated services as ListServ are changing their format to Web-based bulletin boards or augmenting their discussions with RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds, a popular content-distribution format used by bloggers and news sites. Internet pundit Clay Shirky, who teaches a graduate course in networking at New York University, said "The viability of mail lists is rapidly declining," Shirky said. "Fewer people are reading in e-mail directly. It's getting clear that the ordinary Web plus RSS feeds are better." This is in keeping with Rainer Volz's article in the March - April 2004 Issue of PM World Today where he describes RSS as a spam free alternative to automatic PM mailing lists.
There are two viewpoints on the issue of current email spamming and viruses..
The first is to stop accepting any kind of attachment and use email for sending plain text only.In this world email would revert to short text messages as electronic messaging was originally designed.
The second is believe that there are different solutions in the mill and they are all going to work together. That is, the belief that an evolutionary path to safe email will be found and we will learn what works best. That is, e-mail collaboration suites, email management systems including instant messaging and Really Simple Syndication (RSS) where people are learning to use different tools for select type of messages. For example, Rainer Volz in a recent Education Section of PM World Today, believes that RSS offers a safer email option. Also,urgent requests can be sent using Instant Messaging while other messages which are not time sensitive can be made by e-mail.
While spam dominates the Internet scene, because it is a ubiquitous and obvious problem. Another top of the list issue is that of spyware, a technology that helps collect information from a computer about an individual or company without their knowledge.Craig Wallace CEO of AOL Canada Inc. says "spyware is an electronic stalker, secretly watching online activity of millions of unsupecting daily" The key issue here is the lack of a standard as to what constitutes spyware from other advertising-related programs.
The Forum uses a couple of popular spyware killing software applications. Adware is free and is particularly useful in holding the fort against embedded spyware. StopZilla is another that helps in the continual defense against spyware. StopZilla recommends that a check for spyware should be made daily, because a spyware application can easily appear soon after a PC has been cleaned.
To thwart the spam email address harvesting robots I now Java script all email addresses. That is, I will for all future PM FORUM page preparation and in particular the current year ( 2004) and future PM World Today pages. Further, I have gone through the business of changing all my email addresses because of spammers. This is not an easy exercise for an enterprise that has been doing business on the web since 1999.
Further, I have now started to insist on the exchange of encrypted email being accepted only from authorized business contacts.This requires the use of PDP encryption. This encryption is a nuisance but it appears to be another useful approach to help guard against spam and unasked for and unwanted business letters from unknown correspondents.
To ensure that I did not miss out with the old email address the ISP made it an alias to a new number. This allows me to control the spam and virus issues where I now have email addresses for PMFORUM Requests, Letters to the Editor, PM World Today Updates where I try to control the spammers with an on line review of my mail server. This is a gross review and eliminates the majority of bad guy messages with entreaties to click on the attached virus file. All suspect email attachments are deleted on the remote server immediately.
For spam control I use a client application called MailWasher that lets me download individual email addresses. Those that I do not want are quickly deleted on the email Server. That is, I download from the Mail Server only those messages that I want to read. Additionally, I have another application called Matador which takes a second look at the email that I download and sorts the incoming email into Friend and Junk. Matador is learning who are classified by me as Friends and those which I have not categorized are selected as Matador Challenged Mail and Matador Junk.
A second review of the incoming email is needed because it is clear that content and other filtering has failed as a defense against spam.
Of course, all this is also subject to incoming review by Symantic Email Anti Virus. The virus traffic has been huge and it is a trial to avoid downloading an email that has a virus attached. As I receive up to 200 spams a day it makes for a tedious but necessary daily review of mail on the PMFORUM Mail Server.
If this outrageous spamming were to continue to grow. as it has exponentially over the last year, then it will become unbearable and force the PMFORUM to use a Challenge-Response systems such as SpamArrest. I do not like this approach, which requires a response from an email correspondent, as it would hinder the effective issue of the PM World Today Heads Up Newsletter. So you see the losers in all of this, are legitimate companies, as outlined in a recent News.com story. RSS, though widely promoted, has less than a million users. If you run any sort of filtering software, please add @pmforum.org to your "Friends List" or ask your system administrator to. This will ensure that PMFORUM emails get through, while junk does not.
The need to delete the regular issue of the PM World Today Newsletter as an exe or zip file was a direct result of the exponential growth of corporate and personal on line virus checkers and the stripping of the attachment. A particularly annoying but necessary companion of the need for corporations to continually firm up anti virus defenses. This cut out the useful distribution of the complete monthly PM World Newsletter for personal review on a local machine and obviated the need to contact the PMFORUM for the entire PM World Today Issue.
All of the above is now in place and I am on constant patrol to see that the perimeters are under guard. While building a security electronic fence is not how I would like to spend the few precious minutes of my regular email in basket review, it is the only way to keep out the bad guys and get on with the job. The solution to the problem is a matter of vigilance, that is an active and responsible ISP ( AEI Canada in the case of the PMFORUM ) and unceasing validation on the part of a site owner and webmaster.
The project management community must take computer hacking, spamming and spyware seriously. This is particularly true of the project management business where so many sites are those of a small group of consultants or PM service providers. Hacker victims are increasingly small businesses (SBE) where individual computer/web site owners cannot afford the elaborate defenses that are being employed by large companies of technology consultants and in-house security officers.
The death of the open web and Internet has taken place without our knowing it and we have moved to to "gated Internet communities' much like the gated communities of our society with special guards and barriers. Maintenance of this defence is time consuming and does not contribute to increased productivity in the business of conducting PM work in a global context.
The Internet of the wild west is over. We must cope with the onslaught of those who, if not controlled, will destroy the web and the vast improvement in PM global communications that has resulted.
David Curling, Editor PM World Today
"Connecting the World of Project Management"
http://www.pmforum.org
Antispam references:
For most of the following organizations, there are links which you can copy and paste on to your Web site. You'll find even more on these sites..