"Spam, the Law, and E-mail Marketers " from ClickZ

I thought this article about e-mail spam was interesting because we were just talking about phishing and such. Derek said that spam makes up 70-90% of all e-mail sent!! That's crazy!! He went on to show that this happens to everyone and that just one of their small servers receives just over 200,000 spam emails per week, up from 40,000 per week 6 months ago. How are ISP's and e-mail access providers able o keep up with this craze?! I like how they try to filter, but then sometimes the guard is so high that they filter out things that e-mails WANT to see. for example, my whole family has an e-mail list and we send like 60 e-mails to everyone on the list each day. A lot of times, some of my family doesn't get my messages when I "reply all" because their ISP or e-mail access provider thinks that I am a spammer!!!! Geez... what is there to do??

I love celeb gossip....

So I just added a blog feed to my bloglines account and it's http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/. For some crazy reason, my family and I thrive on celebrity gossip and we are always emailing about the latest news! This will help me get the latest breaking news!! :)

Comment regarding Nick Baldini's post about SKYPE

I just read Nick's post about SKYPE's new '"community-generated guide" to businesses' for their users. The only time I have ever been exposed to SKYPE was in our class and I don't really know much about the company. However, the idea of bringing small business owners to a "meeting place" to share their knowledge for a fee seems logical when looking at how successful the company has been thus far. I also didn't know that they were owned by eBay... thought that was interesting!

Required Blog #1-Story behind Facebook’s new security guy

I just read a Scobleizer blog post from Saturday about Facebook (link). I know that I am probably nieve but the idea of ANYONE being able to retrieve my information scares me. It is kind of interesting that Facebook actually hired one of their hackers. I mean, at least they are making the best of the situation. I can only imagine how many other companies use this tactic.

Wikipedia edit: Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)

I just made an edit to the article about ALS on Wikipedia. In the Resources section, I added, "In addition, the ALS Association holds an annual event called The Walk to D'Feet ALS where walkers raise awareness and money for patient services programs and research. " Here is the link. There is a walk on September 29, 2007 in Ocean City, New Jersey that my family and I plan on attending because my Grandfather is suffering from the disease. If you don't have anyting to do that Saturday you should come out!

Trunk Bay Wikipedia

So I checked out Trunk Bay in Wikipedia to see if my picture and I received a message, notifying me that I don't have a copyright tag on my picture. So I went into the image and added "Photographed by: Jessica Williams" although I have no idea if that's what I am supposed to do. Anyone have an idea? Here's the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Trunk_bay.jpg

Phishing comment

Yesterday in class we were discussing phishing and how it can affect businesses online. I pay most of my bills online, one of them being my credit card. With online fraudulent activities on the rise, my credit card company has increasingly been adding features to protect their customers' privacy. I was asked to choose 4 different random questions to answer initially. Now, each time I make a payment or changes to my account, I am prompted to answer one question. I think that this can get annoying but is extremely important to protect online customers from identity theft.