[JDEV] News: Company crippled over alleged ICQ leaks

[mark at mjwilcox.com]

And the same thing could even more easily happen with e-mail, 
which transfers here to everywhere during its transmission.

You worry about economic stability with IM? hell, that's new 
enough and we've got the past too look at, we *might* get it right.

Email is used by many more people and the economic impact of 
its disasterous security (in particular the disaster of an email client, 
a certain major software provider has given us) has already been 
felt by millions (even made the major new) with a wave of virus 
attacks (of which at least one was written with a virus writer).

Nothing will be solved until we have a way to make our system 
providers accountable. and the only way we'll be able to do that is 
when we can make choices based on security. And that won't 
happen until the bean counters see the risk. And that won't happen 
until we can buy security insurance (check out this month's 
cryptogram at www.counterpane.com for more info on the topic). 
Basically when I know I can pay $$ for insurance in case I get 
hacked then that reduces my risk. And then I can make informed 
choices that reduce improve my chances of not being hacked & 
getting lower premiums by using the programs that the insurance 
company picks (and they won't easily be swayed by big industry 
because they're even bigger than most software companies & more 
importantly they have to pay out when things go bad). For example 
I get 10% off my premium if I use Jabber over ICQ. Or Bastille 
Linux over Windows 2000. Then things will begin to change.

Don't think so? Well most of our safety inovations (seat belts, 
sprinkler systems, etc) are the result of insurance companies and 
government regulation (usually through the push of insurance 
companies).

You want to make a *real* difference. Move beyond the protocol 
and get your insurance company to take security insurance as a 
viable business option.

Mark

On 15 Mar 01, at 21:05, object at intelectronica.net wrote:

> 
> http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,5079593,00.html?chkpt=zd
> nn_rt_latest
> 
> hey,
> did anyone see this funny news item? gives you a pretty good
> idea about why it is nice to have one IM system that allows you
> to encrypt messages (and also makes it even more clear why a
> technology market led by a bunch of incompetent playboys isn't
> going to provide much economical stability for this)...
> 
> tom
> 
> http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,5079593,00.html?chkpt=zd
> nn_rt_latest
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> jdev mailing list
> jdev at jabber.org
> http://mailman.jabber.org/listinfo/jdev
> 
> 


Mark Wilcox
mark at mjwilcox.com
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