Lost in Reception

The loss in confidence in email as a communication channel is beginning to spread to other channels as well.

To date, most concern – my own included – about mail loss through spam-filter false-positives has been about the harm done to people and organisations by this loss, and the decrease in confidence that these losses cause in email as a communication channel. It seems that the amount of email/SMS scamming going on world-wide is starting to cause people to question all communication claiming to be from an authority figure. While I welcome any decrease in the gullibility of populations at large – it is this very gullibility that has given spammers free reign to begin with – organisations that have grown up in an environment where citizens uncritically trust communication appearing to be from an authority may find their ability to function critically impaired in populations where widespread scamming causes a rapid decrease in acceptance of claims of authority and where those organisations don’t have an immediately obvious way of proving to citizens that they are who they say they are.

An interesting article by Dan Blacharski on problems in Korea notes exactly this. Upon being contacted by a police officer advising cancellation of a payment to a fraudster, the now-suspicious victim replied:

“Dirty swindler! If you’re a policeman, I’m your grandfather!”

The ultimate solution:

[government authorities] must establish a safe protocol for communicating with citizens when it is necessary to ensure legitimacy

which is much easier said than done. Finally, this nugget:

Some Korean police departments are sending a written summons before making a phone call.

which doesn’t really address the problem; convincing people to trust people who assert their identity twice will simply cause scammers to assert their identity twice too.