The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) recently published a high level report on the state of malware and how it is affecting, and will affect, the Internet economy. Aimed mainly at policy-makers, the report is also good primer on malware and Internet security for non-technical readers.

In the wake of the horrible tragedies in Myanmar and China, millions of dollars worth of donations can be expected from generous people all over the world to help those desperately in need. Unfortunately, we can also count on unscrupulous criminals taking advantage of the situation to defraud individuals. Just like after the Indian Ocean tsunami and Hurricane Katrina, we can expect phishing and spam to make the rounds very soon.

The Wall Street Journal Business Technology blog's latest post took a closer look at what might have been a phishing email. As noted in the post, sometimes mail scams as such get through your email provider or server's spam filter and past your client's, into your inbox. It is thus very important to be vigilant about clicking any links in an email unless you are 100% certain of its origin. If you do use these services, you should always include a personal message that would let the recipient know it's from a legitimate source.

On March 12, 2008 from 5:00 to 6:30 p.m., Aspiration will host a free workshop titled "Five Things Every Nonprofit Should Know About Their Hosted Data." The discussion will address the risks involved in having your data hosted remotely and steps you can take to mitigate those risks. 

Event Details:

March 12, 2008
5:00pm - 6:30pm
Nonprofit Technology Center
1370 Mission Street, 4th Floor
San Francisco, CA
Web link
Seating is limited, so RSVP to seminars@aspirationtech.org

Last Monday, November 19, TechSoup learned that it was one of the organizations affected by the Convio/GetActive break-in, in which hackers stole email addresses and passwords of subscribers to various nonprofit newsletters.

TechSoup recently republished Ethan Zuckerman's Technical Guide to Anonymous Blogging, but according to a recent Boing Boing post (quoting a Wired News article), your days of ranting anonymously may be numbered:

On Monday, the New York State Attorney General's Office said they are investigating and have subpoenaed the safety and privacy policies of the popular social networking site Facebook.

My inbox this week was flooded with email invitations to join a new social networking site, Quechup. Numerous people were caught off-guard when after joining Quechup, every person in their email address book was spammed with Quechup invitations--without their permission.

With spam making up as much as 80 percent of all email, what is being done to stop it, and why does it persist?

In the online phenomenon known as phishing, scammers impersonate legitimate businesses or organizations in order to get credit card or other sensitive information from unsuspecting users.