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Dumb As A Bag Of Hammers

Startup Blue Security is now the second vendor to enter in the thrill-packed contest for Dumbest Technology of 2005. Blue Security introduced technology to hit back at spammers. When Blue Security receives spam, it follows the links contained in the message, looks for forms that accept text, and then automatically fills out the fields with messages demanding that the recipient's e-mail address be removed from the spammer's list. The goal is to overwhelm the spammer with the volume of complaints. Blue Security's idea is so monumentally crazy it makes Michael Jackson look sane.

Let's tally up how many ways it can go wrong:

Denial-of-service attacks are illegal. They are, as a matter of fact, criminal acts. Of course, the company says it's not launching a denial-of-service attack — it's just complaining. It said so repeatedly, as a matter of fact. However, just saying you're not doing something doesn't count if you go ahead and do it — although life would sure be simpler if it worked that way.

I don't blame Blue Security for failing to grasp this point. My three-year-old nephew fails to grasp it, too; he hits his sister and then denies that he did it.

It's vigilante justice, and vigilante justice is wrong. If the law doesn't suit you, fix the law. Vigilante justice leads to a breakdown of rule of law. If you want to live in a society where the rule of law has broken down, try North Korea or Iraq. Leave my country alone, please.

Vigilante justice often gets the wrong guy. Blue Security is going to make mistakes, which leads to innocent victims getting hit with denial-of-service attacks. Lawsuits will follow.

E-mail headers are easy to spoof. E-mail headers can easily be altered, making any e-mail message appear to come from anywhere that the sender wants it to appear to come from. If you hate your brother-in-law, and he runs his own Web business, then send out a whole bunch of spam, making it appear to come from your brother-in-law's business. Stand back, and watch the fun! Of course, your joy will be diminished after your brother-in-law sues Blue Security and makes a bundle of money.

If Blue Security has paid you by check, cash it right away.

Blue Security has only one other company competing for the Dumbest Technology of 2005. The other contender is United Virtualities, which developed technology to un-delete browser cookies after users delete them. The company's rationale (and I am not making this up): Users are too dumb to decide for themselves whether they should have cookies on their machine. For more on why that's such a dumb idea, see my old blog.

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