Wednesday, 10. September 2003
DUMB: Credulity
credulity\Cre*du"li*ty\, n. [L. credulitas, fr. credulus: cf. F. cr['e]dulit['e]. See Credulous.] Readiness of belief; a disposition to believe on slight evidence.
That implicit credulity is the mark of a feeble mind will not be disputed. --Sir W. Hamilton.
<RANT mode="incoherent">
Maybe I'm just getting old, but I am getting less tolerant of all forms of stupidity. One of the worst, at least when it comes to IT, is the evident willingness of users to believe anything no matter what the source, how poorly corroborated and in so many cases no matter how self contradictory that thing is.
Some examples:
419 - You know those emails that come from the former second assistant to the brother of the head chef of the late head of state of [insert random African country], who just happens to know where to lay his hands on a huge pile of cash and is desperate to share it with you, a total stranger.
How credulous do you have to be to fall for that? And yet there are plenty of stories of people who have. And so long as any takers remain for the scam, there will be scammers lining up to take their money.
Virus hoaxes - Got one of these myself the other day from my account manager at a very large and respected IT company which I choose not to name here.
Yes, a representative of an IT company sent me email urging me to seek out and destroy by any means necessary a file named JDBGMGR.EXE with a teddy bear icon (just can't trust teddy bears these days, can you?).
Email worms sent as executable file attachments - User receives an email with a single attachment named "something.pif". Text of email simply says "please refer to attached file".
Hands up who even knows what a .pif file is? OK, now hands down all you geeks; I'm talking to the users here. [Look. Not one hand remains up.]
Yet people line up to run the things every time some low life decides to seed a new worm in an adult binaries newsgroup.
Phishers and the like - I reported an example here yesterday (not a phish, but someone using a phishing technique to try to seed a virus).
User receives an email apparently from, oh I don't know, Paypal or someone and it asks him/her to send details of his/her credit card number, expiry date and PIN. Email uses the correct style (colours, fonts, logo) and comes from an address that appears to be something to do with Paypal, so user obliges and hands over the requested information without a second thought.
Two words people. Identity Theft
I'm going for a lie down now.
</RANT>
Category: Dumb and Dumber
Technorati: Dumb and Dumber
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