Robert Cringely, in his latest column, proposes an idea for countering phishing, the type of fraud that sends those fake PayPal, eBay, credit card, and bank requests to “update” your account data so the bad guys can steal it.

His proposal? Poison the incoming data. If everyone responds, but responds with fake data, the few respondents who gullibly enter real data will be lost in a sea of crap.

Now, one must regard Cringely with a grain of salt, because he often comes up with clever concepts that don’t quite work, or ideas that are more high-concept than high-quality. But still.

I mean, the poetic justice of it!