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The news is zooming around the Internet that two spammers have been ordered to pay $230 million for illegally sending messages to MySpace users. Spammers who do this just for the fun of the chaos it creates are a thing of the past: today’s hackers and spammers do it for money. And they make money for one reason, which is that people make it easy for them to do so.

Photo: we’re all too easily linked on the Internet.

TSR’s leading story about the huge award is coupled with some very sensible bits of advice (Fre). Here are some sources of guidelines in English: don’t be so foolish as to think you don’t need them! Do you belong to any social networks? Have you signed up online lately for prize drawings or seen your name on a group e-mail where there are names you don’t know, sent by a friend or colleague?

• "Lack of security in social networking and wifi," Best Security Tips, UK
• series of tips for home users (parents, adult users) from Stay Safe Online, US
• most universities now have student guidelines; here are the ones from the University of Santa Cruz in California, a good reminder for all of us of the basics.

The problem is not just at the international level, nor is so blatant as someone asking for your bank account number. If you are asked to supply a personal email address by someone you don’t know (use Hotmail or similar instead), the name of your employer, your nationality or other information that could be part of a database, STOP. Don’t give it. In the past two months, while editing our Events pages and some news stories, I’ve noticed that events organizers, social networks and small groups sometimes ask for information they should not. They might not have plans to misuse it, but the public doesn’t know this – and the data you supply might not stop with them, with or without their knowledge.

If you’re a company, an organization, a school group or just a small club DO NOT ask people to send you their e-mail addresses with other personal information.  Do your bit to keep the Internet safe.

Related: "Geneva Security Forum, beyond James Bond and science fiction," 24 June 2007, GenevaLunch

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