security mentor

The Security Mentor begs people to stop buying from spam. And of course, I agree with the Security Mentor! Stop buy from spam! Do you hear me? Just stop!

Except - those who need to hear our call are not likely to read our blogs. And if they do - well, it is either by accident, or by interest. If the latter, well, then I am willing to bet a beer that they do not buy from spam. 

The rest of the people out there - and they are many! - will continue to receive and buy from spam. 

Why? They lack the necessary knowledge to recognize the spam in the first place. (and those who may recognize the spam, and still buy it, is probably to embarrased to buy Vi*gra over the desk anyway, and take the risk of buying from spam). 

Both groups needs education. But they need it where they can read it, perceive it and act on it.  And that is not in my blog, nor in the blog of the Security Mentor. We need to move the information to channels that these groups do read - newspapers, magazines, perhaps even the telly. Put the message into their marketing mix. 

And the message must be adopted to their level of education (not school - but understanding of the technology). My mother is not able to tell a legitimate e-mail from a spam.  So telling her not to buy from spam does no good. I have to teach her how to spot a spam, and how to act on it.

Of course technology can help in this work - but as we (the pros) know just too well - the technology is not good enough to evade all spam. 

And even though my mother loves me, she is not one of the readers of my blog. Thus, telling her not to buy from spam here is just a waste of time and effort.  

What the mentor and I can do is to move the message from our blogs, and bring it out to the community. We may write up articles to distribute to local media, we can talk to journalists, and we can develop training sessions. 

But most importantly, I think we need to realize that the group who needs the message is a very different group than our regular readers. Perhaps if we put our effort together, we could come up a short, 5-step guide of how to avoid the spam-trap?