DEAR DR. SECURITY: I am sending you this email in an unfortunate state of complete sobriety (given that it is after quitting time here). Should I over indulge however, Gmail has my inebriated back, so to speak. While adjusting my settings I came across this feature which can be enabled: Mail Goggles by Jon P
Google strives to make the world’s information useful. Mail you send late night on the weekends may be useful but you may regret it the next morning. Solve some simple math problems and you’re good to go. Otherwise, get a good night’s sleep and try again in the morning. After enabling this feature, you can adjust the schedule in the “General” settings page.”
Apparently this is built on the theory that drunk (tired?) people can’t do math – something any tip-dependent bartender knows all too well. Some basic questions came to mind when I saw this innovative computer security functionality and I decided to contact you, my favorite security blogger, to get some input.
- Does the non-scalability of this platform prevent it from accurately blocking access to the intoxicated math elite, while at the same time, wrongfully exclude the math illiterate?
- Could this type of faculty-based access control could be used to prevent a much wider array of offending internet behavior?
- Will I soon have to demonstrate SAT math section mastery to perform basic Google searches?
- Is there any way this type of faculty-based security could be implemented to to prevent politicians who can’t do math from accessing federal funds?
This seems to me to be the greatest breakthrough in computer security so far!
Let me know what you think — GOGGLES FAN.
Security For All 