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A comment on United States Postal Service tries to compete with Google using fear.

Re:United States Postal Service tries to compete with Google... by thaumaturgy on Wednesday January 25, 2012 @01:37PM (#3511019)
The USPS ad isn't completely baseless. We just recently did a virus cleanup for someone who opened up what they thought was a ticket confirmation for their boss in their email. Oops. (Their mail service provider apparently doesn't block zip files containing executables.)

There is a lot of confusion out there from people who aren't sure what is and isn't safe to open. The knowledge that we take for granted -- .jpg is safe, .vbs is not -- is completely alien to most computer users.

And then there are the scams. And yeah, people still fall for those, too: "But it said it came from my friend! I just thought they had gone on a vacation in France!"

We often get calls from people along the lines of, "I just received this message [..], is it safe to click on it?"

So in the real world, the marketing behind this ad is pretty sound.

On the other hand, we get deliveries all the time and USPS is by far our least favorite. Roughly half of items shipped by USPS are misdelivered at least once before they finally make it to us, if they arrive at all.

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Re:United States Postal Service tries to compete with Google... by DTanner on Wednesday January 25, 2012 @01:49PM (#3511092)
> The knowledge that we take for granted -- .jpg is safe, .vbs is not

Not always: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletin/ms04-02...

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Re:United States Postal Service tries to compete with Google... by pavelkaroukin on Wednesday January 25, 2012 @03:16PM (#3511526)
I receive bunch of scam letters in to my mailbox. One looked like official gov printed notification and started with words "You might be subject for 5 years in prison" and then smaller letters "if you prevent delivering this mail". And then actual ads - extend warranty of your car..

Same goes about "won tickets to cruise" with phone number where they offer you to buy something...

So in this regard USPS is not better then email. It is just happened that sending bio hazardous stuff is expensive through snail mail..

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