Man that is funny...I need you to send that to me...keep my sanity by
watching others go crazy.

-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Holmgren [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] 
Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2002 10:35 AM
To: MS-Exchange Admin Issues
Subject: RE: OT (slightly) - how to test your users e-mail habits


We do the same type of thing, in-house.  We wrote a little program that we
send out as an attachment from time-to-time.  We send it to everyone in the
company with a forged header to appear to come from elsewhere, and we
include a nice little "pigeon-english" subject, similar to "I send you this
file to have your advice" ;-).  
If the (l)user runs it, a nice little box pops up on their PC and lets them
know that they could have just hosed their machine and seriously fzckued up
the network.  It also logs their username to a text file on one of our
servers, so we can keep tabs on who we caught.  It makes for good
entertainment on a Friday afternoon.

-Jim

Jim Holmgren MCSE, CCNA
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Network Engineer
Advertising.com

We bring innovation to interactive communication. Advertising.com --
Superior Technology. Superior Performance.


-----Original Message-----
From: Toni, Randy [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2002 11:23 AM
To: MS-Exchange Admin Issues
Subject: OT (slightly) - how to test your users e-mail habits


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.


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