I heard a comment on some tech show last week from someone who was talking about the dangers of email bombs, and apparently there is a service out there that you can connect to, compose a "tempting" junk mail for your users, and send it off to see who will actually blow off the "be careful" policy at work and just open the message and/or corresponding attachment anyway. I assume that when someone opens the attachment, it will in turn e-mail some kind of a report back to the service (or maybe directly to you?), where you can gather stats on who/how many went for it. This guy quoted a stat -- something like 40% of users will typically open any message/attachment regardless of policy or the repeated preaching by email admins.
I got a call recently (rather irate user) trying to open an attachment from an unsupported app... user: "I can't open an attachment" me: "what is it - a word doc or spreadsheet or something?" user: "I don't know" me: "is it something you were expecting from someone?" user: "no" me: "why are you trying to open it?" user: "I just want to see what it is" me: "just ignore it" user: "but why can't I open it?" me: "you're PC doesn't recognize what it is" user: "well, I sent to so-and-so, and what's-her-name, (etc..), and they can't open it either" me: <sigh> "just delete it and I'll tell them to do the same" Our users not only dive into the unknown, but they make sure their friends are doing the same - aarhgggghhh! These guys get the sermon on a regular basis but it just doesn't sink in. When I heard about this kind of service out there, I thought "this is kind of sneaky (would it even be considered a kind of entrapment?)", but it would clearly demonstrate the problem to the managers here. Someone on another list once made a very wise comment (probably been said here too) about trying to use technology to solve behavioral problems, but that's not my intent. I'd like to use technology to raise awareness of the problem - not to solve it. The service might give us a more tangible idea if there are a lot of people here that blow off policy and just open everything they get, and it could be up to the managers here to deal with the offending staff appropriately. Is this kind of service something very new? Does anyone know anything about it? I wish I could have caught the details of that show but I was multitasking that day (my 5-year-old took over as highest priority) so I got side-tracked, but I'd like to know if anyone has any thoughts on this. thanks randy. List Charter and FAQ at: http://www.sunbelt-software.com/exchange_list_charter.htm
