Spam takes a holiday

Last week the Federal Trade Commission tossed its bureaucratic hands skyward and confessed an utter inability to deliver a workable "Do Not Spam" list of the kind envisioned by lawmakers last year when they passed CAN-SPAM.

Such a list was always a pipe dream designed for political consumption, so the FTC's concession shouldn't have come as a shock.

However, a Network World reader might have stumbled upon a genuinely effective way of reducing the overall volume of spam: Give government employees more holidays. Jack O'Callaghan, systems officer at Martha's Vineyard Co-operative Bank, explains:

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Last week the Federal Trade Commission tossed its bureaucratic hands skyward and confessed an utter inability to deliver a workable "Do Not Spam" list of the kind envisioned by lawmakers last year when they passed CAN-SPAM.

Such a list was always a pipe dream designed for political consumption, so the FTC's concession shouldn't have come as a shock.

However, a Network World reader might have stumbled upon a genuinely effective way of reducing the overall volume of spam: Give government employees more holidays. Jack O'Callaghan, systems officer at Martha's Vineyard Co-operative Bank, explains:

"I've got some PCs here at work with ancient e-mail clients that I cannot filter for spam. I found it most interesting that today, a day when most state and federal offices were closed out of respect for President Reagan's funeral, I saw a huge reduction in the amount of spam messages I received. I'd say it was about one-quarter to one-third of the normal volume . . . really!

"Now I know the government shutdown affected a whole lot of computers, but this seems out of proportion, no? I'm only half kidding when I suggest that perhaps the government needs to do a much better job of ensuring that employee's PCs are virus-free and not being used as spam relays. I'd be interested in your thoughts and if anybody else has had a similar experience to mine today."

Well, I suppose it's possible that a whole bunch of high-volume spammers were moved to suspend operations out of respect for Reagan. After all, spammers are known to be a respectful and courteous lot.

Then again, it could be that a whole bunch of government employees moonlight as spammers using taxpayer-funded machines and networks. Making ends meet on a government paycheck can be a stretch.

Wall Street was also closed on that Friday, which might explain . . . well, I don't know what it explains; I just toss it out there.

Any theories?

What's wrong with this picture?

Technology marches ever onward, never in reverse, right? Not so.

Witness the Sprint PCS Vision Smart Device Treo 600 by palmOne, which after you bust through all that marketing gobbledygook is a high-end cell phone/PDA. The thing does almost everything you'd want a handheld to do, and one thing some corporate security professionals would rather it not do: take pictures.

Which prompted Sprint to jam the Treo into reverse.

"Since the launch of the original Treo 600 in 2003, Sprint has received significant feedback from business customers interested in a non-camera version, particularly from customers in the manufacturing, financial services and government segments," a Sprint spokeswoman says. "Policies vary, but range from prohibiting camera phones in certain areas to complete bans on the premises."

Sprint declined to speculate as to what percentage of Treo buyers will choose the non-camera version, but one might guess that it will be popular among those who also have health club memberships, since a growing number of such facilities are banning camera phones as well.