The End of the Reply All Button

By | November 22, 2011
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I did a piece for the BBC World Service on the Reply All button the other day (MP3 to follow). I’m not saying there’s a causal link, but now Nielsen have issued a memo: 

We have noticed that the “Reply to All” functionality results in unnecessary inbox clutter. Beginning Thursday we will eliminate this function, allowing you to reply only to the sender. Responders who want to copy all can do so by selecting the names or using a distribution list.

Apparently they’re not the first to do this: Standard Chartered have done it some time back, according to comments on Techcrunch.

There’s a lot of people who don’t like this; they think it’s a dumb move. I’d tend to agree, but for maybe different reasons. Why not try to understand why the Reply All button is there, and try to find another way for staff to disseminate information?

All I can imagine from this is the time wasted as employees add email addresses one by one for fear they leave someone out of a message. There’s got to be a better way. Wikis, blogs, RSS, twitter, Yammer, anyone?

Dunder Mifflin Alert! Nielsen to Disable Employees’ ‘Reply to All’ E-mail Functionality – Dylan Stableford – Blogs B2B @ FolioMag.com

The Hazards of Recommending

By | November 22, 2011
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Think twice before you agree to recommend someone on LinkedIn. They may be a logic bomber.

You may have already read about the fired Fannie Mae sysadmin who allegedly placed a virus in the mortgage giant’s software. The virus was a bad one: it

was set to execute at 9 a.m. Jan. 31, first disabling Fannie Mae’s computer monitoring system and then cutting all access to the company’s 4,000 servers, Nye wrote. Anyone trying to log in would receive a message saying “Server Graveyard.”

From there, the virus would wipe out all Fannie Mae data, replacing it with zeros, Nye wrote. Finally, the virus would shut down the servers.

Luckily the virus was found and removed. But what has yet to be removed is the suspect’s LinkedIn page which shows that since he was fired he has been working at Bank of America, something I’ve not seen mentioned in news covering the alleged incident.

(Apparently this piece mentions this fact but the information has since been removed. This raises other interesting points: What way is there for a company to police claims by people on networks like LinkedIn that they indeed worked at that company? Why was this information removed from the story or comments?)

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What must also be a bit awkward is that the suspect, Rajendrasinh Makwana, has a recommendation on his LinkedIn profile from a project manager at AT&T, who says that

he was much more knowledgable at the subject matter than I was. He demonstrated leadership at times of crisis. He helped me learn the ropes. I would love to work with Raj again.

The recommendation is a mutual one; the person in question gets a recommendation from Makwana as well. But what adds to the awkwardness is that the recommendation was posted on October 25, 2008, which was, according to an affidavit filed by FBI Special Agent Jessica Nye, the day after Makwana’s last day of work—which was when he allegedly planted the virus:

“On October 24, 2008, at 2:53 pm, a successful SSH (secure shell) login from IP address 172.17.38.29, with user ID s9urbm, assigned to Makwana, gained root access to dsysadmin01, the development server. … IP address 172.17.38.29 was last assigned to the computer named rs12h-Lap22, which was [a Fannie Mae] laptop assigned to Makwana. … The laptop and Unix workstation where Makwana was able to gain root access and create the malicious script were located in his cubicle.”

Ouch. If the FBI is right, the suspect was buffing his CV, seeking recommendations from former colleagues right after planting a script that could have deleted all of Fannie Mae’s data.

Lesson: Think hard before you recommend someone on LinkedIn. How well do you know this person?

The Problem With Memory Sticks

By | November 22, 2011
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… is that you forget you have them in your pocket. According to Credant Technologies, a Texas-based security company, about 9,000 USB sticks have been left in people’s pockets in the UK when they take their clothes to the dry cleaners.

This is based on a survey (no link available; sorry) of 500 dry cleaners across the UK who, on average, had found 2 USB sticks during the course of a year. There are, according to the Textile Services Association, some 4,500 dry cleaners in the UK. A survey by the company of taxi drivers in London and New York last September showed that over 12,500 handheld devices such as laptops, iPods and memory sticks were left in the back of cabs every 6 months.

Taking these figures with the caution they deserve—two? Is that ‘We find on average two thumb drives each year’ or ‘yeah I suppose you could say a couple’?—it doesn’t sound surprising. Indeed, you’d think it would be higher, and, indeed, in the centre of London, it is: One dry cleaner in the heart of the City of London said he is getting an average of 1 USB stick every 2 weeks, another said he had found at least 80 in the past year.

Credant want to remind us that data on thumb drives is probably going to be valuable, and there could be a lot of it. With most drives now at least 2GB in capacity, that’s a lot of files that some bad guy could have access to. Encrypt, they say (using their software, presumably.)

They have a point. Though maybe encryption isn’t so much the answer as asking whether there’s perhaps a better way to carry sensitive data around with you? Like not?

Illustration from Computer Zeitung used with permission

Still Sneaky After All These Years

By | November 22, 2011
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I still retain the capacity to get bummed out by the intrusiveness of software from companies you’d think would be trying to make us happy these days, not make us madder.

My friend Scotty, the Winpatrol watchdog, has been doing a great job of keeping an eye on these things. The culprits either try to change file associations or add a program to the boot sequence, without telling us. Some recent examples:

Windows Live Mail, without me doing anything at all, suddenly tried to wrest control of my emails by grabbing the extension EML from Thunderbird:

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This was unconnected to anything I was doing, or had asked. I didn’t even know I still had Live Mail installed. Shocking. Imagine if I hadn’t been asking Scotty to keep guard? Or that I didn’t have much of a clue what I was doing? (OK, don’t answer that one.)

(Just out of interest, launching Outlook Express will do the same thing:)

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Still, I suppose the Microsoft defence is that everyone else is doing it. I installed WordPerfect Office the other day and found that, without asking, it tried to take over handling DOC files without asking first. Luckily, Scotty woofed a warning:

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No wonder users are baffled about what is going on with their computer and end up heading off to the Apple Store for some TLC. Software companies have got to stop doing this kind of thing. (And no, I’m not saying that Apple are any better at this. It’s just they reduce the choices so people feel their computers behave more predictably. This, after all, is what people yearn for.)

Likewise with starting programs. Once again it’s about predictability: If software starts loading without the user being asked first, then a) the computer is going to slow down and b) the user will have a bunch of new icons and activities to figure out. A couple of examples:

Windows Live forces its Family Safety Client to boot without asking:

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as does eFax, the online faxing service:

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These companies need to stop this. They need to stop it now. Consumer confidence is low, but so is user confidence. I am inundated with letters from readers of the columns who talk about their bafflement and sense of alienation from their computer. (Meanwhile, I read love stories from those who switch to Macs.) The point is this: Not that people believe Macs are better computers—although they may well be—but they are simpler to use, more predictable, more understandable, more, well, user-friendly.

What’s user-friendly about changing the settings on someone’s computer without asking them? Would a company try that with someone’s car, fridge, or dishwasher?

Radio Australia stuff, Jan 23 2009

By | November 22, 2011
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For those listening to my slot on Radio Australia’s Breakfast Show, here’s what I was talking about:

  • Inauguration fever: How it may have tipped the way we use the Net, just like the election did. (People who weren’t there weren’t googling, they were twittering and facebooking.)
  • ‘Dark ages’ White House:The White House runs on ‘six year old versions of Microsoft software’; press office officials use Gmail. Website doesn’t get updated until evening of first day. Or is it a case of Macopia?
  • Shock, horror: Windows 7 might actually be quite good

and some stuff we didn’t have time to talk about, but which tickled me: