Spam That Delivers a Pink Slip 160
alphadogg wrote in with a Network World story that begins: "Last week, a handful of employees at Dekalb Medical Center in Decatur, Ga., received e-mails saying they were being laid off. The subject line read 'Urgent — employment issue,' and the sender listed on the message was at dekalb.org, which is the domain the medical center uses. The e-mail contained a link to a Web site that claimed to offer career-counseling information. And so a few employees, concerned about their employment status and no doubt miffed about being laid off via e-mail, clicked on the link to learn more and unwittingly downloaded a keylogger program that was lurking at the site. Score another one for spammers."
Diabolical (Score:3, Insightful)
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Paranoia classes (Score:2)
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Larry Niven's ARM (Score:3, Informative)
SF author Larry Niven actually used something very like that idea in his "Known Space" future history. The idea was that society had decided that anyone who was the least bit violent/aggressive was "ill" and gave them meds to make them a happy little camper. Not mindless zombies, just very passive. (That's a difference of degree, of course.) But there was still a need for a p
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Re:Diabolical (Score:4, Interesting)
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This is a US specific phenomenon which does not exist elsewhere. For some reason in the US you are expected to wreak havoc and behave like a sociopathic delinquent. Not that I am surprised considering that some of the most prominent US high tech sector CEOs confess that sociopathy is a definitive job requirement: one example [slashdot.org], many others.
That is not the case in the EU. There you will be expected to slave off to the end of your notice period (or at least part of it). The very few to try something sociopathi
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It does so exist elsewhere.
This happened to me in 1990 in Perth, Australia. The overlords decided it was easier to sack me from my sysadmin job than fix a plethora of endemic problems within the organisation. I had my keys taken off me, and was driven home so that they could reclaim their modems and terminals.
Re:Diabolical (Score:4, Insightful)
And the primary reason is that the notice period is much longer. Most jobs have three months notice period, and I don't think any company could afford to just send you home. Besides I think that in itself is a good way to reduce tension - three months is a fairly long time to apply for new jobs and employers like people who can start on short notice if they're in a hurry (since people normally have three months notice). Since it seems US employers like to blindside you and suddenly go "kthxbye - here's your check" I imagine US employees feel rather screwed over.
In two weeks, the chance that you're done with an interview process and ready to start at another company is near zero. That US people have two weeks of free time while I have to work my notice period isn't really much of a help, since so much of the application process is waiting. If you need to relocate, then you can't do that before you have the job, which also stretches it out in time. The upside... well, I don't quite know what the upside but I guess you can have a job on hand and give your boss two weeks notice and change jobs in a flash, but if you're waiting for a good job the notice period goes quickly. To me it certainly doesn't outweigh the disadvantages.
There is of course the issue with awkwardness of working with someone on notice, but it is not really as big a concern as people think. Most lay-offs I've witnessed the people are on good terms with the manager and their co-workers, the decision came from higher up based on profitability/strategic changes. In those cases people tend to just do their job, of course not with great enthusiasm but still. Of course, it's something completely different if you were personally fired for negligence/incompetence/abusive behavior but I haven't been involved in any such process. In those cases they're either put on (paid) suspension or get themselves a sick notice (mostly to avoid the stain on their record). Which might sound niee, but good luck on getting your next job...
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if you're fired you're out the door *now*.
if you quit you may stay two weeks, though not unheard of for the company to buy out the two weeks (here's your money, go away).
if you are laid off you get two months to find another job. you are expected to show up to work nominally once a week (to show you're alive I guess), but you have no other job responsibilities. Considering the rather nice print work they have, I'm thinking full-up 4 color resume's sound pretty good
-nB
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The last time I was made redundant (here in the UK), I had to work my 4 weeks notice (even though others were sent straight onto gardening leave). I was even then offered a permanent position DURING my notice period (I was actually 8 months into 1 yr (rolling) contract) and after I turned it down (another person resigned and they were obviously 1 short on headcount - make up your minds!) they asked me to stay 2 weeks to finish the project off (which I did as I had nothing better to do and it was money in po
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That is not the case in the EU. There you will be expected to slave off to the end of your notice period (or at least part of it).
.Not necessarily true. In the City of London in investment banking people are generally escorted off the premises immediately if they are made redundant. I've seen it numerous times. Well, not seen it. Just asked "where is x today?", and found out they were gone. Oh, so *that's* why they didn't turn up for lunch!
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Absolutely. When predicting another's behaviour, for example, A predicting B's actions, that prediction will be a combination of A's observations of B's past reactions and A's subconscuous projections of his own reaction. I can often learn as much or more about another person based on how they think I will behave as I can by direct observation.
So, it is VERY telling that a typical large American corporation seems to expect fired employees to go postal.
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Hah! (Score:2)
Evil too, of course, and I wouldn't be particularly sad if those responsible were raped to death by manatees. But still pretty fucking hilarious.
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In the UK, the law still protects a person's right to earn an honest living (because it's generally better for all concerned than if they were earning a dishonest one). One of its consequences is that in cases of severe debt, anything considered a tool of your trade cannot be seized by bailiffs. Another is that you can only be fired without notice (at least one payment cycle i.e. month, fortnight or week depending how often you get paid) in cases of gross miscon
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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/jun2003/tag-j09
It was a law firm that specialised in small litigation, especially personal injuries.
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IMO this pink-slip-by-email scam would have been more likely to work in the UK because in the UK you are not walked off the premises by security before you see your pink slip. At the same time procedurally, the UK has the least safeguards and least number of formalities for firing a worker in all EU. So in the UK the likelihood of people taking this fake email pink slip at face
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I don't think so.
Source: Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manatee [wikipedia.org]
Manatees inhabit the shallow, marshy coastal areas and rivers of the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico (T. manatus, West Indian manatee), the Amazon basin (T. inunguis, Amazonian manatee), and West Africa (T. senegalensis, African manatee).
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There are Manatees in the USA on the Gulf (southern) coast, that Gulf being the Gulf of Mexico. According to http://www.ventureco-worldwide.com/manatee_project 1.htm [ventureco-worldwide.com] there are approximately 2,600 manatees in the USA.
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The key word here is only. I have seen manatees in Florida.
Workin' (Score:2)
Labour law is a funny thing. You need a job to live -- even the best welfare program is pre
Pink Slip Part II (Score:1)
Self-fulfilling prophecy (Score:3, Funny)
(Not really.)
Hit _ntel too (Score:1, Interesting)
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Sorry. How many other tech company names end with "ntel"?
pwned via email- AGAIN! (Score:2)
Darwin's List seems assured of a good genetic pool to recruit candidates from.
And which side of the pool is reserved for (Score:2)
Keyloggers do transmit to certain IP addresses.
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Yes, to public IRC channels.
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I love you... you love me... please bugger off... (Score:2)
Karmic Suicide (Score:1)
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Re:I love you... you love me... please bugger off. (Score:2)
I have to ask: why is it relevant that the company was French, and in what way do you think that the fact, that it was French, make the executive staff more likely to trigger the virus?
Note: English is my third language, and I may just not have understood that particular sentence correctly. Also, I am not French or from anywhere closely associated with France, so my questi
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This also explains why the french gene pool is the most diversified in the world.
Re:I love you... you love me... please bugger off. (Score:2)
As a recipiant of email, I dont care that I got a virus in my mail, I just want it gone. The listed sender probobly doesnt care since its likely fake anyw
Re:I love you... you love me... please bugger off. (Score:2)
In Soviet Russia... (Score:1, Funny)
Easiest Way To Confirm a Layoff Rumor (Score:3, Insightful)
Step 2. Pay attention to the kinds of queries they need help with.
Step 3. If they begin compiling seniority studies / benefits calculations for projections IN THE FUTURE (red flag!) or estimate retirement dates if your company has a defined pension benefit, see step 4.
Step 4. Put up resume on dice.com and start "disappearing" during lunch to return headhunter phone calls.
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Simply ignore it (Score:4, Funny)
Just pretend you never got it. and ignore it, go about your day. Apparently the boss is already too much of a pussy as to actually fire you in the fire place, so what is the chance he will say anything. Hell come back the next day, then cause a small scene making them look like idiots.
THey are afraid of confrontation, make that fear a realization (in a calm way, but put it all on them)
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I knew someone who was fired where his boss left the message on his answering machine.
He showed up at work the next day like nothing had happened.
Turned out that he knew the labour code required the employer to pay him a minimal length shift (4 hours) just for showing up, even though he was sent home right away, as the employer could not prove that the employee had ever received the message that he was not supposed to come in.
The moral of the story is that if you are going to let someone go, don't re
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Conversely, when I quit my job, after a long period of money disputes, I really didn't want a face-to-face confrontation, but I did need a clear record of exactly when I had left and why, for later hearing at the Labour Tribunal when I was extracting my unpaid salary and banefits. I left a letter on my desk after faxing it to the bos
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1. My kid is born. She has signifigant health problems. I warn my boss that I'm going to need to take an extended leave because she can't be put into day care, but since I have a big chunk of paid leave time saved up, it shouldn't be a problem. He says, basically, "cool."
2. A week before my leave is to start, my boss hands me a list of dates for which I am "approved for leave." Notabl
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Uhmmm.... wow! That's all I can say...
Where I live that sort of remark would have landed the employer in front of a labour standards h
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Yeah but what happens when they take your red swingline stapler?
--
Dave
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Then, you burn down the building, collect the cash, and drink Mai Tai's on the beach muttering about salt on the rim instead of sugar.
Cheers
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Says who?
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>Says who?
Jeff Foxworthy and Earl Pitts http://www.earlpitts.us/ [earlpitts.us], to name a couple of noted scholars.
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And if your boss does come by to fire you in person, just make sure you're eating a big bowl of crunchy cereal. You can smile and nod, and then go back to work, and eventually upper management will notice and give you a promotion + commendation.
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Here, we have a thing called "At Will Employment".
As long as the employee can't prove the termination was wrongful (it's on the employee to prove this), it's right.
Discrimination based on race, age, religion, national origin, or disability with exceptions for BFOQs is prohibited.
Otherwise, it's "Fire at will".
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What this means is that as an employer I would be in a position where it is better to not hire anyone and rely on as much part-time temp services as possible. Regardless of any business requirements, the financial and legal obligations take over. Would this be a good thing?
Or, how about the unio
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I think it is stupid to have an excpetion of not being to fire based on race, religion, sex, etc., in the first place. If the sole reason for firing someone is because, say, they are a female, and not a valid economic reason, then y
But (Score:2)
But does the keylogger work on Linux?
Did the keylogger work with OSX? With Linux? (Score:1, Troll)
Nothing to see here, just moronic borgslaves, move along....
WHY don't all these moron CTO's and VP's of IS get their asses canned, paying MS for their shit?
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Because they're infinitely more likely to get sacked for refusing to provide & support a platform on which the company can run the software it feels it needs to than they are to get sacked for providing it and it so happens that it's not terribly secure.
Business drives IT, not the other way around.
Besides which, with a suitably locked-down network and a suitably paranoid mail relay, it's not really a problem.
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You just won a ricer's car? (Score:1)
And "getting your walking papers" meant getting fired...
Someone enlighten me? Yank doesn't always make sense to me.
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And "getting your walking papers" meant getting fired...
Both are correct, and getting a pink slip at work does mean getting fired/laid off. I'm sure in other contexts getting a pink slip could mean many other things.
Someone enlighten me? Yank doesn't always make sense to me.
Keep that in mind the next time you're feeling "chuffed to bits".
Score another one for stupidity (Score:2)
Digital Signatures (Score:2)
It should not happen. (Score:1)
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In this case it was the filter that didn't work
"We blocked a ton of spam at our e-mail gateway because the [sender] addresses are not valid, but these were," says Sharon Finney, information security administrator at Dekalb Medical Center that has 3,500 employees.
In my opinion, valid adresses coming from the outside are not valid.
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Serves them right (Score:1)
Blind clicking (Score:2)
A double whammy for the phishers if it linked to the keylogger infected file in question.
In Soviet Russia.. (Score:1)
In Soviet Russia, spam junks YOU!!
Aikon-
Credible? (Score:2)
SMTP Gateway (Score:2)
Spam != Phishing (Score:2)
unimpressed (Score:1)
Link (Score:1)
I would like to see this site they went to.
Do you do business with China and Korea? (Score:2)
Serves them right... (Score:2)
...For browsing the internet with IE. An IT department that lets employee do that is inviting trouble, period.
I used to be all compassionate and sympathetic with victims, but now I am just tired of the overall cluelessness, carelessness and inertia in 90% of IT departments out there.
If fishermen were behaving like an IT department, they'll slather themselves with fish offals, then jump in shark-infested water.
Dekalb county eh? (Score:2)
I'm hoping that it's just coincidence it happened a week before election week.
nothing new here (Score:2)
I hate to sound cynical, but this story is not news. There is nothing new here. There have been thousands of different attacks like this, and there will be thousands more.
We (the slashdot community, the IT world, the rest of the world) have to make a choice here:
1. Easy, 1-click executability of untrustworthy active content in emails and the like is a serious bug which must be aggressively stamped out.
2. Having people get p
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How do you go about "unwittingly downloaded a keylogger program"? Even if you run Win OS and use IE at default settings it takes unpatched exploit and/or click of OK. After that keylogger needs to get past firewall to ring home to be of any use. So can someone explain how this can happen on a properly maintained computer?
The people who downloaded it were upset, and certainly not as aware as they should be. The firewall issue is sep
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Subject: Newsletter: Pay Freeze Continues. Inside, managements weekend on-board the companies new Luxury yacht.
Body: Click here to view the photos and eye witness accounts of the tragic sinking of the company yacht in force 10 gales off the Cornish coast. 5 still missing, presumed dead. RNLI claims lack of planning, insufficient investment in crucial safety equipment and communication difficulties with the Azerbajani crew to blame.
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1) Start their arrays with one;
1) Start their arrays with zero.