Day: May 6, 2008

On returning to work after the bank holiday I found that my email inbox was full of phishing attempts. Unfortunately for the phishers, I have no accounts with the banks I was being phished by, so it was easy to delete them. But I have to ask, why are phishing scams so random?

Furthermore, why don’t email phishing filters put on a big notice “DODGY” on such emails? They seem to recognise the links as false, so why can’t they be a bit more proactive at marking the messages themselves? It would also be nice to be able to tell your email client which banks you bank and web services you use with so at least they could ignore the false ones.

Swansea University, where I work, has quietly established a WordPress blogging system that anyone who has a University login can use to create a blog. This means that I no longer need to worry about providing something myself and should also make introducing blogging to my students a breaze. I created my blog, which I’m calling @the.coalface, and I intend to use it for reflective issues around e-learning, my teaching, research and University life in general. I’ll still continue to use this blog for more generally interesting postings, but it may become less work focussed.