War Spamming, Job Hopping, RFID Tagging

It's called "war spamming." It refers to a combination of "war driving"--cruising a neighborhood with a laptop looking for unprotected wireless access points--and using those access points to send a flood of spam E-mail. Most wireless routers and access points sold by retailers don't have encryption protection and are therefore susceptible to war driving. Last week, in what the U.S. Attorney's office says is the first conviction under the Can-Spam Act of 2003, a Hollywood, Calif., man pled guilty to war spamming. Nicholas Tombros, 28, admitted that he went war driving around a Venice Beach community with a laptop computer looking for unprotected wireless access points. When Tombros' laptop found a connection, he spammed numerous victims by sending multiple E-mails advertising pornographic Web sites. Tombros pled guilty to one count of unauthorized access to a computer to send multiple commercial E-mail messages. He's scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 6 and faces a maximum sentence of three years in prison.

Roy Dunbar, former CIO of Eli Lilly and InformationWeek's Chief of the Year last year, has taken a new job as president of MasterCard International's global technology and operations unit. Dunbar, 43, succeeds Jerry McElhatton, who's retiring after 10 years on the job. Since January, Dunbar had been president of Eli Lilly's intercontinental region, with responsibilities for operations in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, the Middle East, and Russia. Before that, as Lilly's VP of IT and CIO, Dunbar oversaw a staff of more than 2,700 technology pros, delivering a number of key IT systems that helped shorten product-development cycles, enhance knowledge management, increase productivity, and improve customer relationships. Dunbar was born in Jamaica and raised in England. He graduated from Manchester University with a degree in pharmacy, and later received an MBA.

Speaking of InformationWeek chiefs of the year, Dawn Lepore, former CIO of Charles Schwab and InformationWeek's top chief in 2000 (along with Schwab president and co-CEO David Pottruck), never has been one to follow fads. Lepore resisted all dot-com suitors (and there had to be plenty) during the crazy days, only to go dot-com now. Lepore, who moved up from Schwab CIO to vice chairman of technology and administration in 2001, is taking the chairman and CEO jobs at fast-growing Drugstore.com. As a result of that move, Lepore also resigned her position on the board of Wal-Mart.

My colleague Laurie Sullivan, one of the best supply-chain reporters in the business, bar none (see story), sent me this E-mail last week. "I got my badge to attend the RFID Forum 2004 at UCLA on Oct. 12," she wrote. "The badge has an RFID tag in it."

RFID forever! Go ahead and tag me now--if it helps me keep track of my expenses, I'm all for it. I'm all for an industry tip, so send it to [email protected] or phone 516-562-5326. If you want to talk about war spamming, job hopping, or RFID tagging, meet me at InformationWeek.com's Listening Post: informationweek.com/forum/johnsoat.

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