State of the Internet Report

Symantec releases two Internet Security Threat Reports each year, and the new one just came out. I’m heading to Symantec to get the lowdown on how bad things are, especially as phishing becomes more common and more of a “for profit” con job.

As you can see from the top story on the right, the security vendor Postini says spam remains a constant 75 percent to 80 percent of all e-mail traffic for most of the year. For some odd reason, four days after Valentine’s day showed a peak spam load of 82 percent of all e-mail traffic. I hope those weren’t all electronic “Dear John” or “Dear Marsha” letters, showing romance wilting even faster than a dozen overpriced grocery store roses.

The gobble of BellSouth by Southwestern Bell nee SBC nee AT&T brings my big fear closer: Ma Bell returns, this time as StepMa Bell, the younger, meaner version. I’m still a little too aggravated at all this to write about it in family-friendly fashion, but we’ll discuss this soon.

Speaking of discussions, I’m working on a way to honor the best resellers serving small and medium businesses. Any ideas? Send them along, please, and we’ll get this rolling.