Charles on… anything that comes along

Silicon.com has (I surmise) noticed the article I wrote last Saturday about the economics of the underground web. It’s been obvious for ages that crims are simply using compromised PCs as units of currency; the hard thing has been getting the numbers on them.

In its leader ‘The home user attack threat’, silicon.com says that “never has a consumer issue posed a more serious threat to businesses“.

Yes, but you know what? It was businesses that sold the junk in the first place - the broadband ISPs not offering firewalls, or insisting people use products with known big security holes. Except they called it “expanding the channel” and “growing the market”. People were their last concern.

To see how these sort of marketing people think, try reading this article by some total droid, banging on about picture messaging as though people would like getting picture messaging spam.

You have to subscribe to Media Guardian if you want to read it, so here’s a taster: Will picture messaging take off? The answer is yes, but it is important that the expectations of brand managers are managed sensitively. In the past, mobile phone network operators have been found guilty of over-claiming the success of enhanced services.

Notice how there isn’t any mention of people, who own and use the phones. In the article, the only time people are mentioned - as “consumers” - is to note how peed off we all (”they”) were with previous attempts to market rubbish to us via phones.

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• ...and a last word (for now) on link spamming (1 February 2005; score: 40.91%)
• Club Mobile, you are spamming liars.. Not! (3 August 2004; score: 40.36%)
• Ho hum, more spammer collateral damage: trackbacks are off (1 February 2005; score: 36.19%)