>Just logged onto UT and saw the article with same title. A fair question. I few weeks ago I quoted "the rise and fall of email..." as worms, spam, and scams proliferate. I must get 30 spams a day now, before they're filtered, anyway. I've never had a virus, but I know many people that have. And, I've rcvd quite a lot of email scams claiming to be from eBay, Paypal, etc., that want you to log in and verify something. Of course they're after your password, and don't need to install a keylogger for that scam - a lot of people have fallen for it, judging by the eBay forums. These scam logins are very professional, not done by idiots. It's no wonder some less-savvy people have been taken (once they get a password, they login, get the CC/bank info, and go to town...a form of ID theft)
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>So, with all this, is email dead, or does it need a fairly drastic solution, much like the firewalls, lockdowns, and "handshakes" implemented for networks/ISPs a few years back. Or is email okay as is?

My opinion is that e-mail needs more "simplification" for MOST users, making it more closely resemble real mail. In real mail you cannot IN ANY WAY "start" something - the best (worst?) you can do is to LOOK at it. I realize that things like pictures *can* have scurrilous encoding to cause things to execute something, but our gurus should surely be able to find a way stop that.
If e-mail were like regular mail then I would have to do something ELSE with that mail, outside of the e-mail service itself, to wreak any havoc that might be hidden in it.
Sure, most of the problems today come from someone doing something "dumb" like opening a "I Love You" and then some attachment. But the day will come when the planets align for some virus to look enough like something that I have been expecting from someone in particular for ME to become dumb too. If e-mail couldn't start/run ANYTHING at any time, then surely most of the problem would be solved.

cheers