We all know that the internet is a dangerous place, with lots of bad actors trying to scam us, spam us, doxx us, phish us, and troll us. And then there’s Facebook. In many ways, however, the real cyberthreat comes instead from all the IT people ostensibly trying to keep us safe. It all startedContinue reading “Two-factor abomination”
Tag Archives: e-mail
X marks the Spott
The University of Not-Bielefeld recently wrapped up its biennial exercise in democracy by holding elections for both the Senate as well as the Boards for each of its six faculties. (And, no, that isn’t a typo in the title but a bilingual play on words. Spot does exist in German and pretty much means theContinue reading “X marks the Spott”
Corporate resign
Some time ago, I wrote how admin here at the University of Not-Bielefeld (if not admin types the world over) like to send chain e-mails, where some e-mail from central admin is successively forwarded down the chain of responsibility (central admin to faculty to department to …) with no one bothering to clean up allContinue reading “Corporate resign”
To serve and reject
Since Gutenberg, the single, greatest invention to further the nefarious causes of admin has undoubtedly been e-mail. (Now spelled increasingly frequently without the hyphen for greater efficiency.) Whereas before the printing, folding, and stuffing of countless pieces of paper into countless numbers of envelopes meant time, effort, and the omnipresent threat of paper cut relatedContinue reading “To serve and reject”
Private Data meets General Stupidity
Data privacy is a big thing in Germany. Really big. For instance, Germans guard their PIN numbers with utmost ferocity, hunching over the keypad to such a degree that it’s a wonder that there’s even enough light to see which keys they’re actually pressing. However, in addition to being a repetitive redundancy, PIN numbers areContinue reading “Private Data meets General Stupidity”
When labels meet fables
A painfully short time ago, I wrote about how the IT Department here at the University of Not-Bielefeld spent the better part of a coffee break designing a foolproof system to save its employees from themselves. Spam and phishing e-mails were multiplying exponentially to pandemic proportions so something desperate and drastic had to be done.Continue reading “When labels meet fables”
Belabelling a point
Every time that I start to worry that I’m running out of material for this blog, admin comes through for me. I suppose that means that I should be grateful somehow … … but definitely not in this case. We all know the drill. Once we set up an e-mail account, the very first andContinue reading “Belabelling a point”
Working the chain gang
Remember the good ol’ days of the internet? The days before endless numbers of spam e-mails about penis enlargements or from Nigerian princes? (Or about penis enlargements for Nigerian princes? I mean, they have to invest those millions somewhere, right?) When life was simpler and people were so unsavvy that you actually had to explainContinue reading “Working the chain gang”
An open-and-shut case
For our “protection”, the IT Department here at the University of Not-Bielefeld recently restricted the types of attachments that could be received via e-mail. Most affected by this were the older Microsoft Office documents (e.g., .doc or .xls files), which could be compromised with vicious macros and other similarly evil stuff. Instead, for the pastContinue reading “An open-and-shut case”
The Blog About Fog 