Email Scams, phishing and Weckler

I’ve mentioned phishing scams in the past. Some of them are very well crafted, whereas others are pretty amateurish.
Today being the first Sunday of the month you can get Computers in Business with the Sunday Business Post. If you are involved in the Irish ICT industry you may find this publication to be worthy of reading. You may want to reassess that view if you read this month’s editorial.

“Email fraud? Don’t come crying to me” says Adrian Weckler.
I’m sure that nobody would have anyway, but after reading this piece you can be sure that nobody would even want to consider that as an option.
Although Weckler does point out some of the obvious weaknesses of email fraud his attitude to it is that of someone with no experience dealing with such matters. If Weckler worked in a real IT environment where he dealt with real users and real businesses on a day to day basis he might not be so flippant.
Stating that “Email is not high-tech. Time to stop playing the victim” is the kind of thing you would expect to hear from a 20 something year old geek who has had no real experience of email users.
Email fraud is a serious issue. Although a lot of people may not be duped by 419 scams or falsified ebay or paypal emails that does not mean that a problem does not exist.
For a lot of people there is still a psychological barrier when computers and the ‘net come into play. Does that make the people involved any less intelligent? Does it render the duped victims of phishing fraud valid targets for a journalist’s scorn?
I think not, but maybe I’m just old-fashioned. Maybe my views of journalists and journalism and general are naive. Maybe the notions that I hold dear are no longer valid.