The Sexually Transmitted Online Infection
By Davey Winder in Editorial
Posted in phishing, Health, Blog, Spam, Security, Internet on
I was watching an episode of Embarrassing Bodies on Sky+ the other night, you know the one where the unfeasible buff Doctor with the really bad taste in shirts takes great delight in examining folk with truly disgusting things wrong with them. I have yet to understand how someone who has not gone to see his GP with that hugely swollen and oddly coloured testicle because he is ‘too embarrassed’ will happily drop his trousers and reveal the thing to millions in TV land. Then again I don’t understand how so many people cannot use condoms when the levels of sexually transmitted disease are on the rise, if you’ll please excuse the pun, across the UK.
I mention all of this for a couple of reasons which do, if you’ll just bear with me a moment longer, have some bearing on the culture of technology. Firstly, Embarrassing Bodies is what I’d classify as car crash TV: the people it features have things that are so grossly and disgustingly wrong with them that you cannot help but sneak a peek while thanking the deity of your choice it isn’t you. Admit it, you laugh when an old lady falls over in the street, you rubber neck when driving past a motorway pile up and you cannot help but watch a TV show where some fat bloke is revealing his bunch of grapes sized hemorrhoids to the nation.
I’d like to add something tech to my list of car-crash stuff, namely Internet security statistics. You know, the quarterly and yearly ‘Internet Threat’ reports that reveal the ongoing trends regarding how the bad guys are screwing us over at this particular point in time. Car crash because I’m not sure I need a report to tell me that spam is on the up, or the bad guys are making ‘loadsa money’ and yet another botnet has gone ballistic. Yet I cannot help but read them, not only that but go through them with a fine toothcomb looking for the juiciest statistics to pull out and make me feel worse about my chosen pet industry, IT security.
Which brings me to the second reason I’ve been banging on about Embarrassing Bodies, namely sexually transmitted infections. You see the latest Internet Threats Trend Report for Q1 2010 to be published by Commtouch Lab has revealed that not only do sites in the sex education categories top those (along with games) most likely to be hosting hidden phishing pages, but rather worryingly that pornography has ousted business as the web site category whose pages are most infected with malware.
So there you have it, just like in the real world the online world now has sexually transmitted infections. Luckily, just like in the real world, they can be prevented by taking precautions such as wearing a condom (using antivirus and security software) and thinking twice before getting down with something dirty.
Rated: 90% (2 votes)
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Sorry Darling, shelving NHS IT system is a false economy
By Davey Winder in Editorial
Posted in Health, Economy, Blog, Government on
So Alistair Darling, the chancellor with the funny eyebrows who looks a lot like Parker from Thunderbirds, has dropped the strongest of hints that he might cancel the NHS IT system this coming week. Speaking on the BBC One Andrew Marr show, Darling admitted that the Electronic Patient Record Scheme has been “quite expensive” so far. Quite expensive? Look, I know this is the chap who thinks nothing of doling out taxpayer money to bankers like it was going out of fashion, but to call a scheme that has so far cost an estimated £12 billion “quite expensive” is missing the point by a country mile even for the Chancellor.
And talking of missing the point, while I have not exactly been holding back in my own criticisms of the proposed system (mainly on security and privacy fronts) over the years, to scrap it this far down the road and with so much public money already spent would be something of a false economy surely?
Yet many are taking the comments that Darling made on the Andrew Marr show to say just that, and point to Wednesday’s pre-Budget report as the most likely time such an announcement would be made. Comments such as calling it something “I do not think we need to go ahead with just now” do rather suggest they could be right.
Of course, Darling is not alone in reaching this conclusion as both leaders of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties have been saying the same for some time, and more loudly with a General Election looming at the tail end of a recession. While I am in no doubt that it has been a terrible money drain, following an all too familiar pattern of public sector IT procurement going wring and wasting money without delivery much to show for it, that does not mean it should be stopped now.
What it means is that it should be done properly, that the procurement and delivery process be revised and revamped and the people who have failed so dismally made to face the music. But just to say ‘oh dear, we screwed that one up didn’t we’ and wave goodbye to £12 billion worth of work is sheer folly.
I’d be interested to hear what those health professionals who read IT Pro think: should it be scrapped or simply done properly and with tighter cost controls? If your answer is scrapped, then what if anything do you propose should take its place?
Rated: 100% (2 votes)
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