Someone in the Digital Divide is Coming After You
Yes, the title sounds paranoid. Putting it bluntly: got email?, got spam! John Carrol at SFGate.com provides a lengthy explanation of what is going on in the war between spam filters and spammers as unscrupulous individuals attempt to invade your inbox...and eventually your bank account. This is not geeky, just plain talk about the power of your delete key.
Sitting atop an academic perch, the Dragon would love to tell you that all people using the tools of technology are doing so for the advancement of humanity AND that technology itself (Deputy Dragon) can protect us from electronic bad guys. News Flash: You may be doing wonderful things with your newly acquired tech skills...there are those who will do otherwise and those people will take advantage of your insecurities/inexperience to screw things up royally for you!
Carrol closes his article with a poignant reference to the size of the digital divide: "According to the BBC, 80 percent of the people in the world have never heard a dial tone. " From that perspective, the small percentage of us that are affected by spammers seems pretty insignificant.