Category: Internet

Respecting your network

This article originally appeared on SmartCompany on November 25, 2008

Australia’s Spam Act is just over five years old, and it’s had some success in keeping locally sourced junk email to reasonable limits along with catching the odd perpetrator.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority has plenty of Spam Act information for business owners on its website and the requirements can be summarised in three principles – get consent, identify yourself, and make it easy to unsubscribe.

Before you can send commercial emails to people, they need to ask for them. In itself, this requirement eliminates your emails being classified as spam given the definition of spam is unsolicited emails.

Identity is important, as the recipient needs to know who the email is from. All legitimate businesses should have no problem with this.

Finally, unsubscribing is simply good manners. For a business owner there is absolutely no point in irritating potential customers and partners who don’t want your messages.

The sticking point in all of this is defining consent. The loophole in the act defines “inferred consent” if you have an “existing business relationship”. The current interpretation of a business relationship is merely having the business card of the recipient.

Sadly this gives any dolt you’ve been foolish enough to give a business card to at a networking function permission to bombard you with invites to get-rich-quick seminars and share boat schemes.

I can’t tell you how irritating I find idiots sending me three pointless emails a week because I put my card in the door prize bowl or gave the courtesy of exchanging cards while talking.

Even worse are the dills who start sending SMS messages to your mobile phone. In fact I’m amazed that anyone thinks ultra intrusive text spam is an effective way to generate goodwill for a business.

A particular difficulty with spamming people in your network is that your paths will almost certainly to cross again, which can put all parties in a difficult position.

So don’t simply add everyone who gives you their business card to your mailing list. By all means send them a follow up email, phone call or postcard, and certainly offer to connect to them on social networking sites like LinkedIn and Facebook, but spare everyone the spam.

Understanding your responsibilities under the Spam Act will help you get more from your mailing lists. Adding some common sense and manners goes a long way too.

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Why you shouldn’t use Internet Explorer

Why you shouldn’t use Internet explorer

Last week’s zero day exploit is just getting worse and wise heads are advising users to ditch Internet Explorer.

This is good advice and I expand on that on the IT Queries site today with some alternatives to IE.

I tied the zero day exploit into my Smart Company column on Tuesday. It illustrates why you shouldn’t be diving on to the net straight after starting your computer from a two week break.

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Web 2.0 is dead?

Tim O’Reilly’s Twitter feed put me onto Peter Schwartz’s Death of Web 2.0 article.

It’s an interesting idea the future of web2.0 technologies rests in the hands of social networking sites like Facebook.

Facebook incurs most of Peter’s wrath and I can understand that countless hugs, vampire bites and who knows what else is banal, but 16 year olds getting sick of this sort of thing doesn’t affect the business model.

The real question is whether Facebook can make money from those kisses and “most people like you” surveys.

Personally I think they will struggle because, as Peter points out, people aren’t prepared to pay for this stuff.

Whether this means Facebook is doomed remains to be seen, however it’s clear the site is not worth 15 billion dollars and online advertising is going to decline with the rest of the economy.

I suspect Peter’s right about Facebook being way overvalued, as was MySpace, Second Life and countless other web 2.0 properties, but that’s simply the effect of the hype that surrounded this space over the last few years. It really has nothing to have nothing to the underlying web 2.0 technologies.

Peter has a good point about the sustainability of many of these sites and it’s going to be very interesting to see how the business models develop as try to convince users these services are worth paying for.

But to call the web 2.0 as being dead simply because some web sites fail is a bit of a long bow.

What may be true is the term “web2.0” is dying. That probably wouldn’t be a bad thing as it was a bad, overused label anyway.

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Keeping Costs Down On The Net

This article originally appeared in the November 2008 Sensis “Small Business, Big Opportunity” newsletter.

There are few areas in business that change as fast as the Internet, particularly when it comes to business connection plans. What was good value two years ago can be pretty ordinary today.

Now we’re in uncertain times it’s a good opportunity to review what your Internet provider is giving you for your money. The right plan can help your business get the most from the Internet.

It’s often said there are three factors in an Internet plan: price, speed and reliability. You can choose any two of them.

I’d like to say price shouldn’t be the deciding factor, but in reality none of us have bottomless budgets. So the first step is to look at what you currently spend and decide what you can afford.

Budgets can vary dramatically between businesses. A $50 a month plan is fine for a home based business while tens of thousands per month isn’t out of the question for a larger business with heavy needs.

Regardless of your business size, forget the super cheap consumer plans. You need a supplier you can rely on. Business grade providers will also offer important add on features like fixed IP addresses and priority support.

Nothing breaks a technology consultant’s heart more than seeing a business struggling with a substandard Internet connection. The lost productivity dwarfs the fifty or hundred dollar a month saved from scrimping on connection charges.

So having set a realistic budget, we have to choose between speed and reliability.

Reliability is non-negotiable. The net, and in particular email, is a key business function and telling customers “sorry, the Internet is down” simply doesn’t wash anymore. As businesses move more towards Voice over IP, software as a service and web 2.0 applications, always-on fast Internet becomes essential.

This leaves us with speed. Internet speeds are split into two parts; download, the data that comes into your system, and upload, the data that goes out.

Internet plans usually state their speeds along the lines of 1500/256 which in this case means the download speed is 1500kbps and the outgoing speed 256. This is called an asynchronous connection which is the “A” in ADSL.

Home plans usually use ADSL connections because web surfing downloads far more data than it sends but office applications like email, remote access and Voice over IP need a higher upload speed.

So if you have lots of people working remotely, or you’re making phone calls over the Internet you’ll have to consider plans that have higher upload speeds.

There’s also data allowances, these can be tricky for all Internet subscribers as the fixed price plans shape the connection, meaning they slow you down once you go over the limit. For businesses that rely mainly on email, these plans are fine.

If your business Internet needs are more demanding though, the alternative is excess use plans where you are charged once you exceed the limit. This can mean horrendous bills if the wrong plan is chosen.

The good news with data allowances though is this is one of the areas that has dramatically changed in the last few years. So this is an area where the canny business can get more value for their Internet spending.

Even if your Internet Service Provider won’t come to the party on reducing your prices, there’s a very good chance you can negotiate a better deal in data allowances and speeds to help your business have the edge in these uncertain times.

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How the ACMA blacklist works

One of the comments to my Smart Company column took me to task on how the Australian Communications and Media Authority compiles the website blacklist. I’ve put the comment and my reply which explains the process below.

I should also add the blacklist only applies to sites hosted outside Australia. ACMA will direct an Australian hosting serivce to take down any site rated X18+ or refused classification .

Paul, you incorrectly write that it is up the classification board to decide what is blacked out. That is incorrect as they only have jurisdiction on what is published within Australia. The blacklist is currently maintained by ACMA, so which minor public servant gets the job of surfing the web looking for something they can add (as well as responding to any ministerial hints about “unwanted” material).

If it was a transparent process, the material had been vetted against Australian standards then maybe. Or rules by a court. But not a secret list. No way.

Thanks for your comment, Richard. One of the big concerns about filtering is exactly how an appeals process or independent oversight of a blacklist will work.

ACMA refers any complaint about a website to the Classification Board. The board then classifies the site under the same system used for computer games and movies. If the board refuses classification or gives the site an X18+ rating then ACMA adds the site to the blacklist. The details are on the ACMA and Classification Board websites.

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Why Internet filtering is bad for business

The proposals for an internet filter risk hurting innocent businesses by blocking websites.

This article orginally appeared in SmartCompany on the 14th November 2008

As reported in SmartCompany last week the Federal Government is proceeding with trials of internet filters that will restrict Australian access to the world wide web.

The aim of internet filtering is to block child abuse sites from Australian web surfers. While the idea is well meaning, the proposal will be an additional burden on business and won’t fix the problem.

There certainly is a problem – a study by the University of California, Berkeley, found around 1% of websites contain pornographic material. With over a billion websites indexed by Google, this translates to around 10 million sites containing things you’d rather not be seen in your workplace or by your kids.

To deal with this problem, most computer operating systems, browsers and search engines have built-in adult filters, and the Federal Government provides free software for home computer users on its NetAlert website.

The new filter will go a number of steps further, with it being compulsory for internet providers to deny access to around 10,000 sites, a number that falls dramatically short of the 10 million estimated pornographic sites and who knows how many terrorist, gambling and euthanasia sites that will probably be added to the list.

The task of deciding which of the billion websites to be blacked out will fall upon the Classification Board. In 2005-6, their 65 staff considered 9425 movies, video games and websites. To say the board will require a massive injection of resources is an understatement.

Under the current proposals, the banned list would be secret, and it’s uncertain if your business inadvertently found itself on the list how an appeal mechanism would work.

One serious risk for business is that many of the people who post illegal and inappropriate material do so on others’ computers to avoid detection. Hacked personal computers and corporate servers are frequently used by criminal gangs for exactly this purpose.

There is also the risk of sites being blocked for political reasons. Canberra has form on this, with the Federal Police using spurious copyright reasons to close down Richard Neville’s spoof John Howard site in 2006.

Recently, a staffer of the present Federal Government indirectly pressured a prominent critic of the filtering proposal through his industry association.

So there are real risks to your website if someone in your company does something illegal, messes up a security setting, or simply upsets the wrong person in a minister’s office.

However it’s not the censorship aspects of filtering that should be the main concern for businesses. The indirect consequences will be deep and far reaching for Australian commerce.

The immediate effect is filtering will increase internet costs. Given 98% of businesses use the internet, the increased ISP charges will be a tax on almost every Australian enterprise.

Business relies upon fast, reliable communications. Trials to date of the filtering systems show a decrease of speed between 2% and 84%. The filters will also add another level of complexity to the system, which in turn reduces reliability.

Those additional costs will become another barrier to entry. At the very time the Federal Government is struggling with competition in the communications industry, this proposal will eliminate many smaller operators and favour the larger incumbent providers.

Overall, this proposal will add costs and reduce the reliability of one of the modern economy’s critical business tools. The real tragedy is the filters simply won’t work.

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Are we coming to the end of spam?

The BBC reports the results of a US study on the profitability of spam networks. Seven researchers set up a fake pharmacutecal website and used the Storm network to drive traffic to it through spam messages.

Out of nearly 350 million messages sent 28 people attempted to buy something which the researchers estimate would have returned about $US 100 a day.

Not bad money, but hardly worth the effort of setting up a fake site, arranging the merchant facilities and getting on to the Storm botnet. 

The return also assumes all the potential purchases were genuine. There’s a good chance many of them would have been fraudulent which would have further eroded the returns.

If those returns are typical, then we’re probably seeing the end of the mass spam, although I’m worried that a new breed of 419 type scammers might take advantage of people in financial straits as the economy worsens.

The full study is available at the UCSD website.

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