Thursday - Apr 7, 2011
William Cronon is a respected author, president-elect of the American Historical Association, and a distinguished professor at the University of Wisconsin. He’s also under attack by the Wisconsin Republican Party, which has filed a Freedom of Information request to see all of Professor Cronon’s email that contain any of these twenty keywords: Republican, Scott Walker, recall, collective bargaining, AFSCME, WEAC, rally, union, Alberta Darling, Randy Hopper, Dan Kapanke, Rob Cowles, Scott Fitzgerald, Sheila Harsdorf, Luther Olsen, Glenn Grothman, Mary Lazich, Jeff Fitzgerald, Marty Beil, or Mary Bell.
Why is he under attack? You can probably guess from the above terms.
Professor Cronon writes a personal blog, “Scholar as Citizen.” A few weeks ago he wrote a post about a conservative organization, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which drafts and circulates proposed legislation to Republican legislators. Cronon alleged that ALEC played a role in the union-busting legislation championed by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.
The post went viral, garnering over 500,000 hits in two days. And two days after Cronon’s post, the Wisconsin Republican Party filed its request with the university.
Professor Cronon and many others have charged that this is a shameless attempt to intimidate him and stifle academic freedom. He claims that the Wisconsin GOP wants to discredit him by showing that he misused state email resources.
Regardless of the motive, my takeaway from this story is that you should always keep your professional and personal correspondence separate. The first rule of email is to have two accounts. (By the way, there’s no indication that Professor Cronon did anything wrong.)
Your business email may be subject to discovery pending on the laws in your state or country. Gaining access to your private Gmail or Yahoo! account, for instance, is a whole other matter. While it may be faster to just dash off a quick note to a friend from your business account, resist the urge. You never know how it may come back to bite you.
Wednesday - Jan 26, 2011
My cousin, let’s call her Susan, told me am amusing story the other day. Her teenage son, Eric (not his real name either), wanted to borrow the car, but his dad refused. (It might have been due to the 3 foot snow drifts.) Eric texted his friend that he couldn’t get the car, because, as he put it, ”my dad is an a-hole.” Unfortunately for Eric, he inadvertently sent the message to his dad, who, as you might expect, went ballistic.
Susan, however, saw the humor in the situation. She regarded her son’s faux pas as a teaching moment, an opportunity to remind him that all his electronic communications are on the record and don’t go away. How many celebrities, politicians and now even nations have been embarrassed by their own words?
While it’s worth considering what you text or email and the consequences should your message land in the wrong Inbox, here’s the problem: If you weigh every word too carefully and then censor yourself, it makes communication bland and ineffective. You either have to express yourself honestly, like Eric did, or force the recipient to read between the lines. But what if Eric had texted that “my dad is being unreasonable”. Same outcome–no car–but a good cover for a slip of the finger.
Should we all lower the volume? What do you think?
Monday - Dec 13, 2010
I hate spam. Not the canned luncheon meat; the junk e-mail messages that clog my Inbox. I’ve had the same e-mail address since 1995, so you can imagine how many mailing lists I’m on and how much spam I receive. Despite using two spam filters–one on the mail server and another with Outlook–hundreds of messages still manage to sneak through every day.
So it was great news to learn that Oleg Nikolaenko, a 23-year-old Russian, had been apprehended by the FBI while attending an auto show in Las Vegas. Why? Because Nikolaenko has been called the “King of Spam.” Investigators claim that he’s been responsible for as much as one-third of the world’s spam, sending out 10 billion–yes, BILLION–messages a day.
Nikolaenko accomplished this dastardly deed by creating a vast botnet–an army of over 500,000 computers that he secretly commandeered (yours could be a soldier in the Russian’s army), using them to spam the world with pitches for phony products, like counterfeit Rolex watches. Jody M. Smith, the Rolex scammer. paid Nikolaenko to send out his messages; he was apprehended last year and helped authorities nail Nikolaenko.
The international sting operation reads like a good spy story. If you’re a fan of the genre, read how it went down in the Wall Street Journal.
Nikolaenko is now under Federal indictment for violating the CAN-SPAM Act, America’s anti-spam law. He’s being held without bail and faces a $250,000 fine and three years in prison. But given how much money this guy has already raked in from his spam operation–a least $465,000 according to the FBI, and probably much, much more–it’s just a slap on the wrist.
If Nikolaenko is convicted and sent to the pen, my advice to prison officials: Don’t give this guy access to a computer. My advice to you: Watch the video to get tips on protecting your computer from being Shanghaied into a botnet.
