Two terms we spent a little time talking about this year made the New York Times 2007 Buzzword List. The Times takes the last Sunday of every year to review the year. Now, there are a lot of end of the year lists, but the Buzzword list is unique, fun and informative.

Bacn

Bacn, as you recall, is “Impersonal e-mail messages that are nearly as annoying as spam but that you have chosen to receive: alerts, newsletters, automated reminders and the like.”

Congrats to the Podcamp Pittsburgh folks for making “Bacn” one of 2007’s top buzzwords.

Email Bankruptcy

Email Bankruptcy is something most Boxbe users won’t ever have to declare, but we can’t guard against friends, family and colleagues expecting a response to every message they send you.

What you’re declaring when you choose to delete or ignore a very large number of e-mail messages after falling behind in reading and responding to them. This often includes sending a boilerplate message explaining that old messages will never receive a personal, specific response.

Lawrence Lessig and Fred Wilson both famously declared email bankruptcy in the last couple of years. We wish them a better, more productive email life in 2008.

Other tech related terms from this year – crowdsourcing, life streaming, tumblelog, lolcat and one for Mark (our VP of Corp Dev and former CNN producer), I-reporter.

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From Wikipedia

While the term “botnet” can be used to refer to any group of bots, such as IRC bots, the word is generally used to refer to a collection of compromised, or Zombie computers running programs, usually referred to as worms, Trojan horses, or backdoors, under a common command and control infrastructure.

How widespread are these botnets? From a recent story from MSNBC, “Internet founding father Vint Cerf dramatically suggested that 150 million computers worldwide may have been hijacked by criminals.

Essentially, botnets are the root of all sorts of computer nastiness, but first and foremost, they seem to be the source of a very large portion of spam on the internet today.

To protect yourself (and others) from botnets, take a look at my post last week, 5 ways to protect your computer from botnets, spyware and other malware.

Here are some resources for learning more about botnets:

• Tracking Botnets
• Is the botnet battle already lost?
• Is your computer a criminal?

Photo from Wikipedia

Technorati tags: botnet, spam

Photo by Flickr user thermodynamix

Wikipedia defines phishing as

“a criminal activity using social engineering techniques. Phishers attempt to fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy person or business in an electronic communication. Phishing is typically carried out using email or an instant message, although phone contact has been used as well. Attempts to deal with the growing number of reported phishing incidents include legislation, user training, and technical measures.”

In a nutshell, phishing is something criminals do to trick people into giving them sensitive information. The stolen information is then used by the criminal for further illicit activities.

Boxbe and phishing

So, what does Boxbe do about phishing? First, the only email that you receive when using Boxbe is from senders that you have approved, have passed a human test or have paid a fee. Second, we use two emerging industry standards, SPF and DomainKeys to increase the likelihood that the sender isn’t spoofing or faking their email address.

Is it a 100% solution? No. Unfortunately, we can’t guard against all forms of social engineering or deception. What we can do is guard against emails from entering your inbox that make false claims as to their point of origin. The rest is up to you.

Learn more about phishing

We suggest that everyone educate themselves against phishing. Here are some great places to learn more about phishing:

• Microsoft – Recognizing phishing scams and fraudulent emails
• Tips from Fraud.org
• Paypal Security Center
• CNET – How to avoid phishing scams