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Fake news headlines are the latest spam Storm
Be careful when you open your email at work today. Over the weekend, your inbox may have become inundated with messages carrying links to news stories with lurid headlines about Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Britney Spears and other celebs. Don't even think about clicking on the link. If you do, you will instantly join millions of others duped over the past 18 months into turning over your PC to the operators of the Storm botnet. Your PC will then be used to spread fraud spam; you'll help these guys sell fake drugs and carry out pump-and-dump stock market scams. For good measure, the Storm gang will gleefully harvest all of your usernames, passwords, credit card numbers, Social Security number -- any sensitive data you type into web page forms. Your personal data will be sold to the highest bidder in a thriving, eBay-like underground market. And to add salt to your wounds, the only way to get Storm off your PC is by reinstalling a fresh copy of your Windows operating system.
Be careful when you open your email at work today. Over the weekend, your inbox may have become inundated with messages carrying links... more -
Aumenta lo spam proveniente da Gmail
Uno studio di Roaring Penguin ha scoperto che nel corso delle ultime tre settimane la quantità di spam proveniente da Gmail ha subito un aumento vertiginoso. Al contrario, quello proveniente da Hotmail e Yahoo è stabile o addirittura in diminuzione.
Gli esperti sono dell’idea che questo aumento di spam dipenda dal Captcha di Gmail, recentemente crackato. Gli spammer usano un semplice scanner OCR che riesce a leggere abbastanza facilmente le lettere e i numeri, riuscendo così a creare un numero enorme di account utilizzabili per lo spam. Uno studio di Roaring Penguin ha scoperto che nel corso delle ultime tre settimane la quantità di spam proveniente da Gmail ha subito ... more -
Spammer gets 30 months in prison
A 27-year old man from Brooklyn was sentenced to 30 months in prison for spamming AOL.
Adam Vitale defeated the company's spam-filtering system and sent junk e-mails to more than 1.2 subscribers. In addition to the prison sentence, the man was also ordered to pay $180,000 to AOL.
"Vitale was caught making a deal with a government informant to send junk e-mails that advertised a computer security program in return for 50 percent of the product's profits, prosecutors said. [He] had 22 prior convictions and had also helped run an online prostitution ring on the Web site www.craigslist.com, but he has not been criminally charged."
Illustration: "Spam One-Liners" by Linzie Hunter. http://www.flickr.com/photos/linzie/sets/72157602417089... A 27-year old man from Brooklyn was sentenced to 30 months in prison for spamming AOL. ... more -
Spam fighters lay down gauntlet
New guidelines for how internet service providers should combat spam have been published.
The advice, from the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) recommends ISPs use separate servers for received and forwarded e-mails.
It also recommends ISPs block the port - known as port 25 - through which spam travels.
Richard Cox from UK anti-spam group Spamhaus believes the guidelines could be implemented within the year.
Forwarding spam
"These are very significant recommendations and they are coming from a well-respected body so there is not much excuse for not following them," he said.
It is estimated that over 90% of all e-mail is spam.
Even if the guidelines are taking up by a majority of ISPs, experts admit it is unlikely that people will see a drastic reduction in spam any time soon.
"Some ISPs will always remain wide open even if we succeed in closing port 25," said Matt Sergeant, a senior anti-spam technologist with security firm MessageLabs.
"But that doesn't mean that it isn't worth doing. If we don't do it spam volumes will increase," he said.
The first of MAAWG's recommendations calls for a separation between original e-mails and those that are forwarded on.
"When mail is forwarded it is often the case that spam and viruses are also forwarded," said Mr Sergeant.
Making a distinction will make stop those sending e-mail from being associated with spam.
"It will give recipients the ability to recognise spam and reject it," Mr Cox added. New guidelines for how internet service providers should combat spam have been published. ... more -
To share, or not to share…
Photo by Mulad: http://flickr.com/photos/mulad/264285948/
So there you are, sitting in front of your computer eagerly awaiting responses to the story you just contributed on Current.com, and your eyes keep wandering over to that little “email” button. You know that if you click on that button you will able to send your latest contribution off to others in the Current community.
The question isn’t whether or not you are able to share; the question is whether or not you should.
Before you choose to fire off an email to all of your connections, take a minute to consider a few things first. Sharing via email is a great way to call someone’s attention to a story. You know what is an important news story, so receiving one or two emails a day from you might be quite informative for them.
But what happens when you send five emails a day? Or ten? Or even more than that? There is such thing as too much of a good thing, and sending too many shared stories can be similar to parking a giant Spam-Mobile in someone’s inbox. Plus, if you overdo sharing emails, you might find that the same people who found your messages insightful now find them burdensome and intrusive.
What’s worse, your excellent and important post on Current could end up getting drowned amongst the other “thinks you’ll like this” emails they’ve been receiving.
“I rarely share, but I get XX emails from xxxxxxxxx on a daily basis. What gives? How do I stop the madness?”
The easiest thing you can do is to send a private message to the user, letting them know you’re feeling a little overwhelmed, and you would like them to stop sharing so many posts with you. If you’re on the receiving end of this request, please respect that not everyone wants to get so many shares and do not continue to share items with that user.
If that doesn’t work, or if you’re not comfortable contacting the other user directly, you can block shares from that user. Every “thinks you’ll like this” email you receive has a link to block the sender from sharing items with you in the future. Click it, and they should appear as blocked in the account edit preferences section: http://current.com/myaccount.htm
If you feel less social, you can also set your email alerts preferences so that you only receive shared stories from your connections, or no one at all.
If you use mindful sharing etiquette, most community members won’t feel the need to resort to blocking or editing their preferences. Does anyone else have any helpful tips for keeping the signal to noise ratio down when sharing stories on Current.com?
Mario
Online Community Team Photo by Mulad: http://flickr.com/photos/mulad/264285948/ ... more -
Former 'spam King' Must Pay MySpace $6 Million
A Colorado man has been ordered to pay US$6 million in damages and legal fees for spamming thousands of MySpace.com users.
Scott Richter of Westminster, Colorado, must pay MySpace $4.8 million in damages and $1.2 million in legal fees, a court-appointed arbitrator ruled on Thursday.
Richter, who was once accused of pumping out more than 100 million spam messages per day, had been sued by MySpace in January 2007 in connection with an August 2006 campaign in which MySpace members were hit with unsolicited messages promoting a Web site called Consumerpromotionscenter.com. The messages were sent from phished MySpace accounts, according to the findings of Philip Boesch, the court-appointed arbitrator in the case.
This is not the first time a Scott Richter company has had to cough up millions of dollars to fight spam charges. In 2005, his previous company, Optinrealbig.com, paid $7 million to settle similar charges brought by Microsoft. A Colorado man has been ordered to pay US$6 million in damages and legal fees for spamming thousands of MySpace.com users. ... more -
Spammers Capitalize On Barack Obama's Celebrity Status
Here's one of the perils of becoming a star in the modern world: Online cons start to jump on the bandwagon. Spam
Online security company MessageLabs reported Tuesday that it has uncovered "two new spam clusters last week with subject lines relating to Barack Obama."
One of the phony e-mails uses the classic celebrity-scandal headline to snag readers' attention: "Scandal rocks Obama as lurid sex video leaked."
MessageLabs says that that's just one variant of a number of headlines. The others contain insults.
The e-mails then lead the fool-hardy to places online that look like porn video sites that serve up malware if you try to download anything from them.
Of course, the sites ask its viewers to download a piece of code to enable them to watch the videos. Lovely.
The second hoax looks more like ye olde spam campaign, but looks as if it spoofs or uses barackobama-supporter related domains.
MessageLab flagged a group of scam e-mails that appears to do things like sell watches. The senders are using barackobamaismyhomeboy.com and barackobamaisyournewbicycle.com as their domains.
The first of the two clusters of campaigns accounted 18 percent of all of the spam campaigns this week, says MessageLabs.
The company has yet to find any campaigns like this related to John McCain.
"We haven’t seen any as yet related to John McCain -- whether it's a good thing or not having your name associated with a spam campaign, I don't know," says Paul Woods, MessageLabs' senior analyst. Here's one of the perils of becoming a star in the modern world: Online cons start to jump on the bandwagon. Spam ... more -
MSNBC Online Poll: 88% Say Impeach Bush
Some more discussion about the online poll.
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infoMania 06.05.08
Chewing up the week's media so we can regurgitate it, half-digested, into your mouth.
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Architettura spam
Le immagini della serie "Spam Architecture" di Alex Dragulescu sono generate da un programma creato per accettare posta indesiderata. I diversi elementi che compongono il testo di queste mail (struttura, parole chiave e metrica) vengono tradotti in modelli tridimensionali. Il risultato dell'esperimento è una serie di abitazioni improbabili ma bellissime.
Le immagini della serie "Spam Architecture" di Alex Dragulescu sono generate da un programma creato per accettare posta indesiderata. ... more -
Alex Dragulescu's spam architecture
"The images from the Spam Architecture series are generated by a computer program that accepts as input, junk email. Various patterns, keywords and rhythms found in the text are translated into three-dimensional modeling gestures." "The images from the Spam Architecture series are generated by a computer program that accepts as input, junk email. Various patterns,... more
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As food prices soar, so do sales of Spam
"Sales of Spam - that much maligned meat - are rising as consumers are turning more to lunch meats and other lower-cost foods to extend their already stretched food budgets."
Also for fun, the original Monty Python SPAM skit for those unacquainted:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODshB09FQ8w
"Sales of Spam - that much maligned meat - are rising as consumers are turning more to lunch meats and other lower-cost foods to exten... more -
Porn spammers jailed for five years
One of the world's first successful prosecutions against internet 'spammers' has seen two men sentenced to five years in jail in Arizona. One of the world's first successful prosecutions against internet 'spammers' has seen two men sentenced to five years in jail in Arizo... more
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Myspace gets U.S. spammers and judge fines them $230 million
A couple of internet spammers who sent messages to people supposedly from their friends made thousands every time someone clicked on their ads.
Apparently they made near $500,000 but the judge decided to implement $300 for each infringement brining their total fine to over $300 million.
Now they've just got to catch the other million spammers out there!
''A team of notorious American internet spammers has been fined a record $230m for bombarding MySpace users with adverts for pornography and gambling websites.
"Spam king" Sanford Wallace, along with his business partner Walter Rines, were yesterday ordered to pay unprecedented damages to the social networking website – amounting to the strongest punishment ever handed out to a spammer in the US.
A court in Los Angeles heard how Wallace and Rines sent more than 700,000 messages to MySpace users, fooling them into visiting gambling sites or adult-rated pages. Disguised as comments from the user's friends, the notes in fact contained advertisements that made the pair a small fee every time somebody was fooled into clicking on them.
Although evidence suggested that the pair made around $500,000 from their activities, district judge Audrey Collins used the terms of America's CAN-SPAM Act – which can levy up to $300 for each infringement of the law.''
Source: Guardian UK A couple of internet spammers who sent messages to people supposedly from their friends made thousands every time someone clicked on t... more -
MySpace wins $234M spam judgment
The popular online hangout MySpace has won a $234 million judgment in Los Angeles over junk messages sent to its members.
MySpace says it believes this is the largest award ever under the 2003 federal anti-spamming law known as CAN-SPAM.
MySpace tells The Associated Press that the award was against two of the Internet's most prominent spam defendants, Sanford Wallace and Walter Rines.
Wallace has earned the nickname "spam king" for his past role as head of a company that sent as many as 30 million junk e-mails a day in the 1990s.
It's a big victory for MySpace, although service providers often have a tough time collecting such awards. The federal judge ruled in favor of the Web site, owned by News Corp., on Monday after Wallace and Rines failed to show up in court. The popular online hangout MySpace has won a $234 million judgment in Los Angeles over junk messages sent to its members. ... more -
Spammer sentenced to prison term
A Colorado man accused of sending hundreds of thousands of spam e-mails has been sentenced to 21 months in prison after pleading guilty to tax evasion and falsifying e-mail headers.
Thirty-five-year-old Edward "Eddie" Davidson of Louisville was also ordered to pay nearly $715,000 to the Internal Revenue Service. He was sentenced yesterday and ordered to report to prison authorities in May.
Federal prosecutors say Davidson's operation used false e-mail headers to disguise the sender. Prosecutors say some of the spam was meant to dupe stock investors and manipulate markets.
Authorities say Davidson made at least $3.5 million sending e-mails for nearly 20 companies. A Colorado man accused of sending hundreds of thousands of spam e-mails has been sentenced to 21 months in prison after pleading guilt... more -
Spam is poetry
A cool website that turns junkmail / Spam in to poetry. One man's Spam is another mans art?
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Serial spammer faces 26 years
Serial spammer, Robert Soloway, won't be sending emails for a few years after it has been announced he could be facing a sentence of 26 years with accompanying $625,000 fine, after he pleaded guilty to electronic mail fraud, "snail" mail fraud, and not filing a tax return in 2005 (a year he allegedly made over $300,000).
At one point, Soloway was deemed the world's eighth largest spammer and has subsequently been charged with fraud, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and money laundering.
He is being held in custody until trial, when all his 'ill-gotten' gains will be seized.
Will his arrest worry other 'serial spammers' or just open avenues for other spammers to move in on Soloway's 'spamming ground'?
Serial spammer, Robert Soloway, won't be sending emails for a few years after it has been announced he could be facing a sentence of 2... more -
Unintentional comedy: bad spam
Boing Boing has posted possibly the worst case of bad translation from the "Redd Cross" of Slovenia:
'Good time of day. You are disturbed by the charitable company Redd Cross of Slovenia. We have the business offer for you. We can offer to you of earnings, thus your salary will make from 1000$ to 2000$ per one month, at an incomplete working day. Your earnings can be and higher. The more and forces you will give time, the there will be your salary more.
If it is interesting to you, you write on the address of e-mail of our agent: manager_on_connections@yahoo.com he will contact you within 24 hours and will throw off to you all details, and will answer you on all your questions.
Thank you for attention Redd Cross of Slovenia!'
What's the worst spam you've ever got? Boing Boing has posted possibly the worst case of bad translation from the "Redd Cross" of Slovenia: ... more -
Frame that Spam
Data isn't just for geeks anymore.
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