I've just had a panicked e-mail from Johnathan V; he's in the Ukraine, with his family, has been mugged, is getting no support from the embassy and needs me to send him two thousand quid. Which is odd given that his last post makes little mention of any of this. Could this be a scam?
Yes, of course. It was fairly well done I suppose; it had his picture and everything but I don't think that it'll fool anyone. [I'm kind-of pleased that I must be in his system somewhere to be so targeted ]
But it got me thinking, we now live in an age where our ape common-sense may work against us; social engineering is so very easy to do, and not always used for evil. How are normal people to cope?
I work in a security-related job and I'm interested in all things on-line-security, still I can be easily fooled. I know this, so I build barriers against my own stupidity, mainly by never going on-line with admin privilages. I don't use virus checkers etc. etc. because ... well they don't work like you think they do and they cost money. I have the luxury of being the right type of arse: able to know what my firewall logs mean and run to see what wireshark is telling me.
Non me-mad people have no chance, you are going to be fleeced coming and going. Take my Dad, a much cleverer man than myself, it always shocks-and-awes when we discuss his on-line life. He pays way too much for dodgy product and leaves himself wide-open to all kinds of www rougery. And he has money to steal.
So should we all become like me? Or should the computer scientists just plug the dyke? Neither nor both are options, given time us clever apes will sort it out but will we have the time?