ClickZ informs us of highlights from MessageLabs’ Intelligence 2005 Annual Security Report. Bottom line: Spam was up, phishing attacks were up, viruses were up. The only thing down, probably, is overall work efficiency as we all deal with this crap.

According to the report, 1 in every 304 email messages is a phishing scam. I don’t know about your email, but that ratio seems awfully low to me. Seems like every day, I get at least a half-dozen emails imploring me to verify an eBay or Wells Fargo account I don’t have. Feh.

CBS News reports that the last available pixel on the Million-Dollar Home Page sold for $38,100.

Update: As it occasionally does offline, success begets blackmail.

CMO magazine is folding, which is a shame. There are plenty of business magazines and Web sites, but few that smartly address marketing and make it to the top of the To Read list. This did.

Editor in Chief Rob O’Regan’s letter to readers says that they have “decided to hit the pause button, take a step back, and consider alternative business plans. It is my sincere hope that we will be able to return with an exciting strategy to invigorate the business and once again begin serving what has quickly become a faithful community of senior marketing executives and other marketing practitioners.” I hope so, too.

“A sense of humor … is needed armor. Joy in one’s heart and some laughter on one’s lips is a sign that the person down deep has a pretty good grasp of life.”
—Hugh Sidey

“Truthiness.”

This is according to the 16th annual vote of the American Dialect Society. Popularized by Stephen Colbert, truthiness, says the ADS, “refers to the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true.”