April 01, 2004

CAN-SPAM

Posted by John Quiggin
Among the offerings in today’s special edition of TidBITS, the long-running online Macintosh magazine, I found this item particularly appealing.
Canned Spam Can Can Spam with CAN-SPAM — Hormel is expected to announce today their campaign to can spam using their canned Spam with the aid of the CAN-SPAM legislation. Starting today, Hormel will print the phone number, email addresses, and other information about unsolicited email senders on cans of Spam along the lines of the “Have you seen me?” photographs published on milk cartons. Canned Spam buyers who help to can spam by canning spammers can receive cans of Spam as a reward.
Other important news includes a report that the US Department of Homeland Security is responding to the threat of Windows-specific cyberterrorism, most notably through Trojans such as Phatbot by standardising on Macs.
Posted on April 1, 2004 10:46 AM UTC
Comments

Gee, what’s the date on that “can-spam” project?

MailBITS/01-Apr-04

Ah, April First.

Don’t think that “can-spam” thing will ever make this list

K

Posted by keef · April 1, 2004 12:40 PM

Using a minority or obscure computing platform as a means of security is effective. However, it nevertheless is a form of “security through obscurity”, a strategy that experts rightly denigrate.

It’s true that the Windows platform has some inherent security vulnerabilities that others do not. But I think this is generally overstated relative to the fact that its ubiquity simply makes it the target of choice. From this perspective, switching to a minority platform for security reasons is sort of a prisoner’s dilemma—it only works if most everyone else is playing fair. It’s certainly not in a switcher’s interests to encourage other people to switch.

Posted by Keith M Ellis · April 1, 2004 05:05 PM

The deeply sneaky encourage others to switch to ensure a good resale price for the system they’re about to abandon.

Posted by clew · April 1, 2004 08:40 PM

I can’t find anywhere in the linked article where it says they are switching to Mac. Have you got a link on that?

Posted by Matt Brown · April 3, 2004 12:43 AM

Wait. Now that I’m thinking about it, I’m sure that’s an April Fool’s thing, too. I’ve been had!

Posted by Matt Brown · April 3, 2004 12:46 AM
Followups

→ Yay Hormel.
Excerpt: Via Crooked Timber I see that the Hormel corporation is putting the contact information for email telemarketers on cans of its Spam meat product, like missing children on milk cartons but with a different purpose. Kudos to Hormel. It is...

→ Yay Hormel.
Excerpt: Via Crooked Timber I see that the Hormel corporation is putting the contact information for email telemarketers on cans of its Spam meat product, like missing children on milk cartons but with a different purpose. Kudos to Hormel. It is...

This discussion has been closed. Thanks to everyone who contributed.