The words "horror," "Hell," and "torture" have popped up in Network World headlines more often than one might think. Since it’s Halloween week, we thought it would be a good time to reflect on just
how scary computers can be.
Work without pay would no doubt be the definition of Hell to many people. That’s likely the word (prefaced by "bloody") uttered
in March by 400,000 workers in the United Kingdom who didn’t get paid because of database problems with the Bacs payment clearing system. Bacs provides a central clearing house for automated payments and clears 30 million
a day.
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The glitch, which slowed the IP-based Bacstel communications channel, was discovered when batch processing that should have
been completed on Wednesday failed to clear, causing payments due on Friday to be delayed until the following Monday. Officials
say a technical problem caused the communication channel to run slowly, so submissions weren’t completed.
In the past year, computer glitches have also been responsible for Medicare taking extra money from its beneficiaries’ Social Security checks, a Skype outage, and extra charges to donors of American Idol’s “Idol Gives Back” charity drive, among others.
Spammers in Hell
Speaking of Hell, that’s where at least one spammer is going.
"Ed," a 22-year-old retired spammer, built a considerable fortune sending e-mails that promoted pills, porn and casinos. At
the peak of his power, Ed – also known as Spammer X -- says he pulled in $10,000 to $15,000 a week, and made $480,000 his
last year of spamming.
"Yes, I know I'm going to hell," said Ed, who spoke in London during a July event hosted by IronPort Systems, a security vendor
now owned by Cisco. "I'm actually a really nice guy. Trust me."
He says he got out of the business because, in part, he realized his pharmaceutical-related spam was helping addicts score.
Since then he's written a book, Inside the Spam Cartel: Trade Secrets from the Dark Side, which he said has had some take-up in law enforcement circles eager to learn more about the spam business, which he projects
will only get worse.
