Death By Email Blog

What Does Your Email Language Say About You?

40 percent of Brits make judgments about a sender's intelligence, while 20 percent said they determine the sender's age from the content of the email, according to a study by British web mail service GMX. A further 16 percent said they make assumptions about people's social status from the language they use in an email.  More than half of web users make judgements about the sender of an email based on the language they use.

GMX also said that email is frequently used by Brits to avoid stressful face-to-face or telephone conversations. Of those surveyed, 27 percent said they prefer to use email to converse with companies that make them nervous while 36 percent revealed they would use email in a bid to ask someone on a date.

The study also found that 26 percent of women hide their true feelings by using emoticons in emails, compared to just 13 percent of men.  (PC Advisor)

Salma Hayek's Email Hacked

By now, you should know to create a strong password for your email account.  Add to your list a strong password hint.  Apparently, world-famous actress Salma Hayek did not know that.  Her personal email on MobileMe using mac.com was broken into by hackers and pieces were revealed on the 4chan web site by resetting her password.

Breaking into the account was a simple matter of knowing Hayek's birthday — September 2 — and guessing at her security word (they claim it was the name of her best known movie role) to reset the account's password.  This is what Electronic Pulp had to say about the process:

By choosing “forgot password,” one is taken to a page that asks for the user’s birthday for verification. Salma Hayek’s own Wikipedia page revealed that she was indeed born on September 2, and by entering this, one is taken to a next page asking for an answer for a secret question. The secret question reads simply: “favorite character.” It would take anyone who knows Salma Hayek as an actress only a few guesses to arrive at “frida” and strike the pot of gold which is her Apple MobileMe e-mail account.

So, what did we learn -- other than to create stronger passwords?  The Gawker reports:

"The glimpses into Hayek's life revealed by her inbox are fascinating, even if mundane: The stranger-suckling actress has been invited to America Ferreira's 25th birthday party. She downloads a bunch of iPhone applications from the iTunes App Store — and she gets spam from Apple, just like the rest of us. As for the perks of being famous, a driver was scheduled to meet her flight arriving in Abu Dhabi. American Express has given her a new Gold card. (What, she doesn't rate the exclusive black Centurion Card?) Balenciaga and Stella McCartney deliver designer clothes to her apartment. She schedules "Japanese face massages." And she gets scans of stories about her in the celebrity weeklies."

Suggestions?  For passwords, include a mix of capital letters, lower case letters and numbers.  Make it something obvious to you, but not to others.  (Please, do not use your street address!)  As for password hints, make the hits obscure references or abbreviations that only you will guess.

Email Used To Identify Aledged "Craigslist Killer"

Philip Markoff, the Boston University medical student charged with the murder of Julissa Brisman, was traced down using email, according to Suffolk County (MA) District Attorney Daniel Conley. 

Markoff, who is accused of contacting women who placed massage ads in Craigslist used an email account that he had opened just the day before.  A friend of Brisman, who asked the Boston Globe to withhold her full name, said she looked at Brisman's email account the morning she learned of her death and saw messages from a man Brisman was scheduled to see the night before for a massage. The friend immediately forwarded the email to detectives.  Boston homicide investigator Sergeant Detective Daniel Duff said that tip allowed them to "leapfrog" over myriad steps they would have had to take to track down Markoff.

From those emails, police were able to locate his Internet service provider and get an address for Markoff's apartment in Quincy, Mass.  (Daily News)

"They (police) followed high-tech leads and they used old-fashioned shoe leather. They connected computer IP addresses to physical locations," Conley said.

Sexual Emails Found During Unrelated FBI Investigation

What may have started as an FBI investigation into the construction in Fr. Meyers, including a new Spring Training baseball complex in for the Boston Red Sox, has turned into the release of racy and explicit emails written to and from Lee County Manager Donald Stilwell.  You never know when your work PC can be investigated.

The story begins with an FBI request that Lee County officials turn over 10,000 emails and electronic documents containing 36 search terms, including several related to the building of the Red Sox's planned Spring Training complex, according to published reports.  Among the terms included in the request were "biodiesel," "Galvano," "Waterman," "Freeman," "Edison Farms," and "University," which the Ft. Meyers News-Press said were related to developers competing for the Spring Training complex project.  The Red Sox learned of the request on Tuesday. (MLB.COM)

As news outlets requested copies of the email messages to learn what was going on, many explicit emails were uncovered. (Text of emails and NBC TV news report.)

Lee County Commissioner Tammy Hall called it “very disappointing” and “upsetting” that emails of nude women and crude jokes were found in e-mails County Manager Don Stilwell gave to the FBI. 

The county commission intends to fully explore whether Stilwell violated county policies by having the messages in his work emails before commissioners make a determination on how to proceed, Hall said. The issue will probably be discussed at the commission meeting Tuesday. (News-Press)

Stilwell said Wednesday that he didn't believe the FBI would find anything wrong with the emails they requested.

"I can tell you without any reservation at all I have total confidence in the integrity of all four of those people, myself included. Those people are good people, they work hard… there's nothing out of the way that anyone's done. They're good people, I have no doubt," Stilwell said. (NBC-2)

Plant A Tree To Fight Spam on Earth Day

Join me today in planting a tree to offset the impact of spam on the environment.

The energy consumed in transmitting and deleting spam is equivalent to the electricity used in 2.4 million U.S. homes, with greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions equivalent to 3.1 million passenger cars, according to a new report from climate-change consultant ICF International (and commissioned by McAfee) entitled The Carbon Footprint of Email Spam Report,

Yes, I laughed the first time I heard this.  Yes, I thought it was some cheap stunt to capitalize on Earth Day -- although the report was announced before today.  I did not realize that email was a serious carbon polluter.

How is this possible?  It is not that an individual message causes a lot of pollution.  The carbon footprint of a spam message is a mere 0.3 grams of CO2-equivalent (CO2-e) -- the equivalent of driving three feet. This is far less than the four grams of CO2 ICF associates with the average legitimate email.  How did they even get that much?  This is what ICF International included:  Harvesting addresses, Creating spam campaigns, Sending spam from zombies and mail servers, Transmitting spam from sender to receiver via the Internet, Processing of spam by incoming mail servers, Storing messages, Viewing and deleting spam, and Filtering spam and searching for false positives.

"The overwhelming majority of spam’s GHG emissions — nearly 80 percent — results from energy used to view and delete spam or search for legitimate email erroneously trapped in spam filters (false positives). At 16 percent, carbon emissions from spam filtering account for the next largest portion of spam’s total footprint.," the report says.

Now, multiply this by the estimated worldwide total of 62 trillion spam emails in 2008 and you get some astonishing numbers.  While a single spam message may be like driving three feet, when multiplied by the annual volume of spam, it’s like driving around the Earth 1.6 million times, the ICF concluded.

The report also states that globally, annual spam energy use totals 33 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh), or 33 terawatt hours (TWh).  That’s equivalent to the electricity used in 2.4 million homes, with the same GHG emissions as 3.1 million passenger cars using two billion U.S. gallons of gasoline.

It is not a shock that the report, sponsored by an anti-spam company, would recommend spam filtering as a way to reduce the environmental impact.  (My company, InBoxer, also sells anti-spam filters.)

But, I think it is important.  So, in honor of those who fight spam, InBoxer has made a donation to the National Arbor Day Foundation.

For this Earth Day, and in advance for Arbor day on Friday, I ask you -- and all email readers -- to join me in planting a tree to counter the impact of spam.  If you like, you can do it at the Arbor Day Foundation, too.  Or, list your favorite organization as a comment.  (A tip of the hat to my daughter, Kira Matus, for spotting this report.)

Smear Emails From No. 10

Always think twice before you press send.  In what some U.K. newspapers are calling "The No. 10 Email Scandal," a senior aide to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown resigned over the weekend after an email was released that suggested he was preparing a smear campaign against several members of the opposition Conservative Party.

Damian McBride, an adviser to the PM who was previously his political spokesperson -- some say his "attack dog", suggested spreading gossip, entirely unfounded, in a blog entitled Red Rag, the Guardian reported.  Here are some of the things that could have appeared:

• McBride suggested the website spread false rumors that pictures exist of Osborne "posing in a bra, knickers and suspenders" and "with his face 'blacked up'," adding: "He wouldn't be the first student to do some cross-dressing at university. But ... why would a student in the late 1980s black up his face for the amusement of friends in their private college rooms? This in the era when young Tories wore 'Hang Mandela' T-shirts."
• McBride wrote: "Embarrassing photos have followed George Osborne around throughout his career: posing in his Bullingdon Club uniform at Oxford, lying on the carpet at home in his permed mullet, playing Monopoly with his fellow viscounts and standing in an ... embrace with a prostitute at a party in London. But he knows that the most embarrassing photos from his past have yet to emerge."  (This is in a reference to pictures published in 2005 of shadow chancellor George Osborne with a prostitute, Natalie Rowe, taken 12 years earlier, and a notorious Bullingdon Club photograph of Osborne taken when he was at Oxford.  The Bullingdon Club is well-known for its members wealth and rowdiness.)
• McBride suggested spreading gossip, entirely unfounded, that Conservative Party leader David Cameron may have suffered from a sexually transmitted disease.
• He wrote that Cameron should be challenged to publish his "full financial and medical records".
• He also suggested "inserting [a] picture of Dr Christian Jessen", who appears on the Channel 4 program Embarrassing Bodies. There was no suggestion the two men knew each other.

"The recipient of that email was one Derek Draper, a larky, well-connected Labor braggart who has a reputation for cheering on his party from some fairly shadowy sidelines. Just to add tabloid pepper to the stew, the ill-shaven Draper is married to one of London's breakfast telly queens, GMTV presenter Kate Garraway. Furthermore, he used to work for Lord Mandelson, pantomime baddie of British politics," said Quentin Letts, in Forbes.com.  "McBride's email proposed "a few ideas" for a pro-Labor blog Draper was thinking about starting. It had the name of "Red Rag" and was designed to match some sparky right-wing politics blogs, which have prospered in London in recent years. The British left has yet to find much of a voice on the Internet."

Gordon Brown has said the scandal is a "matter of great regret", he has stopped short of actually apologizing - allowing the Tories to keep hammering away until he does.

Another University Sends False Admission Emails

Last week, I reported on a blunder by the University of California San Diego where admission emails were sent to those who were rejected.  A small consolation is that the emails were not sent on April Fool's Day.

No such luck for NYU.

On April 1, New York University sent out 489 acceptance emails to Wagner Graduate School of Public Service applicants who had been previously rejected or wait listed, according to Washington Square News.

“Congratulations! We are delighted to offer you a place in the Fall 2009 class at NYU Wagner,” the official email said.

You can just hear the happy people.  But, one hour later ......

“The letter you received today via email was sent in error,” the new e-mail said. “Unfortunately, your previous decision is final and must remain. ...  Please accept our best in all your future endeavors.”

“I think all of us vividly remember the admissions process — our excitement at getting into a top choice, and our disappointment at being rejected,” University spokesman John Beckman said. “To hear first that you were waitlisted or didn’t get in, then to hear contradictory good news, then to be told in turn that the first word was correct — well, that must compound the disappointment with frustration. NYU regrets the mistake and any additional disappointment it may have caused, and we will strive to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Congrats, Your'e Admitted to U.C. San Diego! Not.

29,000 applicants were probably thrilled on Tuesday to receive their acceptance notice from the University of California at San Diego (UCSD).  But, their hopes were dashed two hours later, when the school said "oops".  The school made a "colossal screw-up," as one parent told the Los Angeles Times.

The incident is an important reminder that we should always check the TO: list and that we should always double check distribution lists,

46,377 students who applied for admission at UCSD this year, according to the local NBC station.  17,000 students were genuinely offered admission for the fall.  They received notices earlier this month. 

But, a second letter went out with two mistakes:  (1)  It went to ALL 46,377 applicants.  (2)  It congratulated everyone on their admission, including those who were rejected, and advised them to come to campus on Saturday for Admit Day.  A half-hour later, school officials said, they realized their mistake, according to the NBC station. Almost two hours after the first note went out, a second email was sent, apologizing to 28,889 freshmen applicants for the mistake.

The mistake was all the more dire because this year is shaping up as one of the toughest in recent years at San Diego and other UC campuses. In response to a UC-wide enrollment cap ordered because of the state’s budget crisis, San Diego reduced its freshman enrollment target by 520 students, to 3,775, the Times reported.

The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Cornell University and Northwestern University’s prestigious Kellogg School of Management have experienced similar goof-ups in recent years, but the UCSD incident Monday was by far the largest, reported The Times.  (A tip of the hat to Gregory D. Shelton and his excellent blog, Northwest Education Law.)

Google Introduces The Intelligent Email Autoresponder

"Email will never be a thing of the past, but actually reading and writing messages is about to be. Gmail Autopilot automatically manages your inbox better than you can, with zero effort from you," begins the April 1st announcement on Gmail from Google.  The key points:

• Keep in touch:   Brand-new CADIE technology enables Autopilot to scan every one of your incoming messages and automatically send the perfect reply.

• Manage relationships:  Impress everyone with your prompt and insightful responses to everything from urgent notes from your boss to cute messages from your significant other.

• Match your style:  Autopilot calibrates for tone, typos and preferred punctuation. It's just like you, but automated.

 

Think of the hours you can save because you will not need to respond to an email ever again!  Of course, it is important to watch out for what the CADIE technology can do.  Learn more at CADIE's You Tube channel.  (Tip of the hat to Stefan Mehlhorn.)

"I expect that the ladies be put on a diet of fish, undercooked red meat and lots of veggies."

Michael Kinahan resigned yesterday as the coach of the Scituate, Mass. 6-7 year-old soccer team that he named Green Death after he sent an email that did not tickle the funny bones of the parents.  The news was reported on March 31 in the Quincy Patriot-Ledger -- a full day before April Fool's Day.  (Maybe he should have waited.)

So, imagine you are the parent of a charming 6 or 7 year-old girl.  Got the picture.  Now read this excerpt of the email from your daughter's soccer coach as he tried to introduce himself:

I believe winning is fun and losing is for losers. Ergo, we will strive for the "W" in each game. While we may not win every game (excuse me, I just got a little nauseated) I expect us to fight for every loose ball and play every shift as if it were the finals of the World Cup. While I spent a good Saturday morning listening to the legal liability BS, which included a 30 minute dissertation on how we need to baby the kids and especially the refs, I was disgusted. The kids will run, they will fall, get bumps, bruises and even bleed a little. Big deal, it's good for them (but I do hope the other team is the one bleeding). If the refs can't handle a little criticism, then they should turn in their whistle. The sooner they figure out how to make a decision and live with the consequences the better. My heckling of the refs is actually helping them develop as people. The political correctness police are not welcome on my sidelines.

America's youth is becoming fat, lazy and non-competitive because competition is viewed as "bad". I argue that competition is good and is important to the evolution of our species and our survival in what has become an increasingly competitive global economy and dangerous world. Second place trophies are nothing to be proud of as they serve only as a reminder that you missed your goal; their only useful purpose is as an inspiration to do that next set of reps. Do you go to a job interview and not care about winning? Don't animals eat what they kill (and yes, someone actually kills the meat we eat too – it isn't grown in plastic wrap)? And speaking of meat, I expect that the ladies be put on a diet of fish, undercooked red meat and lots of veggies. No junk food.

Michael Kinahan resigned and said, "Unfortunately, it has come to my attention that some parents and the Board of Scituate Soccer failed to see the humor in my pre-season email."