jumbo shrimp, corporate intelligence, anonymous e-mail ..... have I got your
attention? Thanks, Barbara Patterson and Gary Zimmerman, for both of your
excellent postings on the abilities and limitations of anonymous e-mail. Like
you, Gary, I am no expert on these telecom/email type systems but have made
most of my living in the adult years of my life programming, designing and
apologizing for computerized systems. Here's a couple rules of thumb that you
(gentle readers out there in cyberspace) might want to consider .... I try to
use them to guide my own conduct on computers (which some of you probably
think is outrageous anyway .... but, I digress). Here goes:
1. there is no such thing as anonymous in a computer system
2. daily backups, weekly backups, monthly backups ... your messages and
notes echo and will continue to echo down the halls of cyberspace
forever. Bo knows about that Air Thang, go ask Ollie North about that
electro thang. It may look like a PC keyboard but folks, you are
playing a mighty wurlitzer of intercontinental dimensions. .
3. wherever there are locks, there are little systems engineer type
computer elves with keys (remember folks, there have to
be ways for the worker bees to get into this logical machinery for
maintenance and repair type reasons).
4. when a pickpocket looks at a saint, all he sees is pockets - as sure as
the empirically correct association between thunder and lightning,
if there are locks, keys and computer elves ..... there are also the
darker cthonic forces of life trying to destroy what has been put
together. Hackers and other creeps love to get into these
"hidden" routines. Funny? Sure, as a fer instance of the
gentle work these boys can do .. consider this - they have a variety
of this behavior out in some of the "chat" areas of the
cyber-services where as a person "enters" the chat area the hacker
"steals" the person's id and starts spewing forth their best
Exorcist type material attached to YOUR id. Talk about a bad hair day,
folks... (don't tell me this couldn't happen to your anonymous posting
about chains, whips and num-chucks aw-shucks experiences in the
bedroom)
enuf said, folks, about a subject at best of ancillary interest to our list.
Just my 2 centavos on the subject. And, to piggyback on one last remark by
Gary Z ..... e-mail is not secure but neither is the USPO - and (my 3rd and
final centavo) please remember the "weight/sensitivity" of your subject
matter and your computerized ability to hit one button and send your message
to 899 separate id-nodes has created something different than what we were
dealing with when writing letters to friends before the days of
modem-relationships. Perhaps we might think of it as my newly found ability
to perform a techo-slip and end up with 899 eggs on my face ... now that's
what I call leveraging ...
regards,
Don Anderson (one of the many avatars of SandRodent, rat of the desert)
