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January 10, 2005
Know your enemies
BetaNews.com just published my latest spam op-ed piece. In it, I discuss my surprise at discovering the newest sponsor of the SpecialHam spammer forum mentioned here last month.
Syngress has bought ad space at SpecialHam to promote Inside the Spam Cartel, a book that's being positioned as "a must read" for anyone trying to secure email against spammers.
As I say in the BetaNews piece, I'm all in favor of the concept of full disclosure. I think it makes absolute sense for anti-spammers to learn about their enemies. I hope to assess the value of the information in Spam Cartel soon. But it strikes me as ethically questionable for Syngress to market the book to spammers, even as it's claiming to serve security professionals.
(Speaking of full disclosure, I should point out that Syngress has a distribution agreement with O'Reilly, the excellent company that published Spam Kings.)
Posted by brian at January 10, 2005 06:33 AM
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