Twitter is fed up, and their not going to take it any more. The thing with which they are apparently fed up is spammers polluting people's Twitter streams with everything from "make money fast" scheme sites to porn. And so Twitter has added a "this is spam" button (well, actually a "report for spam" link) to everybody's profile, so that now you can report them to Twitter HQ with a single click.
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Articles on SpamTwitter is fed up, and their not going to take it any more. The thing with which they are apparently fed up is spammers polluting people's Twitter streams with everything from "make money fast" scheme sites to porn. And so Twitter has added a "this is spam" button (well, actually a "report for spam" link) to everybody's profile, so that now you can report them to Twitter HQ with a single click. Ever wonder why there is so much spam for Viagra? Ever wonder "Who would ever buy this stuff?" Well, while the specific details of the "who" aren't available, there are enough of them buying it to make spamming about Viagra and other similar meds very financially rewarding. It's one of the newest spam tactics - spam vacation messages. Here's how it works: spammers sign up for mailing lists, never intending to read them. Instead they put themselves on permanent vacation status, create one of those infernal "I'm on vacation" messages full of their spam message, and let the vacation program do their spamming for them. If they're lucky, the mailing list is one where the vacation message goes back to the entire mailing list. So far we've seen spam vacation messages hawking mydosell.com, wholesaler-electronic.com, qigefa.com, and easevshop.com. The newest Twitter porn scam - where the Twitter users' messages are primarily links to their x-rated website - entails the porn-pushing (or pron, if you prefer) Twitter user sending out a message thanking you for sending a "Follow Friday" their way. Only, of course, you did no such thing. A rash of seemingly pointless spam (no links, no payload, no effort to get private information) is making the rounds, each one inquiring about the cost to get some form of music download, and each coming from a fake Gmail address, such as d12treskey@gmail.com, petersons.production@gmail.com, winstonfinancial@gmail.com and petrov.gazprom@gmail.com. Well, look what the spam cat just dragged in - address book importing spam from Bebo.com. Why is it that these various social networking and other sites seem to simply consider the incidental spam attendant to address book importing (if they think about it at all) to be the cost of doing business - and, mind you, a cost sent COD to the people receiving the spam - when in fact it's really an occupational hazard? The Waledec botnet is using spam that claims that "Obama Quits", explaining that "Barack Obama abandoned sinking ship" and that Obama doesn't want any more to be president, in order to lure unsuspecting users to add their PCs to its group of zombied computers that it uses to do its dirty work. Other subject lines include "Who Will Be Our President Now?", "End time for the USA", and "Haven't you heard latest news about our president-elect?" Craig Hughes, who originally worked with the Spam Assassin team, and then went on to found GumStix, has discovered something interesting: much more spam is received during the nighttime hours than during the day. It's a dramatic enough difference that Hughes says that he is convinced that 'time of day received' is a useful test to help determine whether something is spam. In what seems like a good idea, the Peoples Email Network (Us Alone.com), claims that it "facilitates the process of sending email messages to Washington. In one place on our site you can send a message that is automatically submitted to the members of congress for where you live." But the price you may pay is not worth it. Authorities in the U.S. and New Zealand have coordinated to take down big time male enhancement and supplement spammers Lance Atkinson and Jody Smith, and their Target Pharmacy, Canadian Healthcare, Inet Ventures, Tango Pay, Click Fusion, and TwoBucks Trading spam operations. Lance Atkinson and Jody Smith were the muscle behind what Spamhaus has called "the biggest spam gang in the world," and they recruited countless affiliates to send their spam through a spam affiliate program called Affking. The next time somebody tells you that they don't understand what the big deal is about spam, you can tell them this story. Thousands and thousands of Virgin Media customers went without email service for two full days after a spam run took down the email servers of their email service provider, Tucows. Elsevier Publishing, the noted - and acclaimed - publisher of science and health books, has resorted to comment spamming on blogs, pushing their Elsevier Direct and Syngress divisions at ElsevierDirect.com. "You have received a postcard from a family member!", says the subject of one of the latest spam scams. Whenever somebody starts ranting about "the damn lawyers", of which I'm one, mind you, I'm fond of saying "you know, 95% of the lawyers out there... make the other 5% of us look really bad." It's tongue-in-cheek, of course, because people expect the message following the "..." to be that 95% of the lawyers are good, and it's the small 5% that are the bad apples. And, of course, in reality usually the numbers do flow in that direction. But unfortunately, sometimes, it's all to true. But even I, jaded though I am, was stunned when this little gem - this blog comment spam - advertising the firm of Gersowitz, Libo & Korek - landed on the Internet Patrol today. Wonder why you get so much spam? Wonder how spammers can possibly make money sending spam? Wonder who on earth would ever actually buy stuff from spam? Well, wonder no more. Because here's the answer. Spamza.com is a website that recently went live, where you can enter someone's - anyone's - email address, and they will start getting instantly spammed by dozens of newsletters for which they did not sign up. If you've had a sudden increase in spam or suddenly found yourself signed up for a lot of mailing lists and newsletters that you didn't request, Spamza may be why. You see, the Spamza site runs a script that takes their email address and then Spamza signs them up for those newsletters, without their permission. Prolific spammer Eddie Davidson was arrested last year, and, in April was sentenced to twenty-one months at the Federal prison in Florence, Colorado - about 3 hours north of Denver. This past Sunday, Davidson escaped from Florence Prison, and is at large. There has been a new rash of "Receipt for your payment to" eBay Paypal phishing spam which is intended to elicit a shock response causing the target to rush to log into their Paypal account to figure out why they are being charged hundreds to thousands of dollars for an eBay purchase which they know that they didn't actually make. Imagine our shock to discover that VoIP provider Vonage has turned to comment spamming. Oh, they will probably deny it, but what else can you call it when their Online Marketing Manager, Costas Kariolis, shows up at an article about Skype on the Internet Patrol, and posts a comment about the Vonage offerings, with an SEO-formatted link back to the Vonage site? and also posts the exact same comment to articles about Skype on other sites? Reverend James Shea of Killdeer, ND, received an email from the White House, containing an invitation to meet Pope Benedict XVI during the Pope's recent visit to the United States. So he did what most of us would do - sent it to the spam folder. Only, it wasn't spam, it was a legitimate invitation. Oops. A new hack has Wordpress hackers disabling all of your Wordpress plugins (including, you see, Akismet or any other anti-spam comment spam stopper plugin), which then allows them to inject comment spam into your blog at will. So if you suddenly find yourself getting an enormous amount of comment spam all at once, or if you suddenly find your blog pages coming up blank (because with your plugins disabled, that often can be the case) you may be the victim of this latest plugin-disabling comment spam hack. Recently I got a notice that someone of whom I'd never heard was following me on Twitter. Now, this isn't all that unusual - it happens to me at least once or twice a day. But when I checked this person's profile, it said they were following 32,244 people! Yes, I'd run into a new breed of spammer - pushing a new breed of Twitter spam. Chinese cellular providers China Mobile and China Unicom together have over 500 million active cell phone accounts, and recently more than 200 million of these users received a stream of unwanted and unwelcome advertisements as text messages - cell phone spam. Both cell phone providers and the spammers received a stern talking to from the Deputy Head of China's State Council Office for Rectifying Malpractice (yes, really). People across the country are reporting telephone calls coming from the numbers (623) 238-6228 and (408) 587-2116. These calls claim that your car warranty is expiring, but they are really scam artists trying to steal your personal information and identity. So if the number appearing on your cellphone screen is either (623) 238-6228 or (408) 587-2116, don't answer it! Other numbers generating these spam identity theft calls include (202) 552-1332, (702) 520-1105, (609) 948-0971 and (562) 289-8136. Spammers are now cloaking their website domains in their spam by abusing the TinyURL service. In this example, the spam is being sent by Advanced-Intelligence.com, and the TinyURL resolves to their site at http://www.advanced-intelligence.com. Mega spammer Alan Ralsky has been indicted under Federal anti-spamming law, along with ten other spammers involved in Ralsky's operation, including Ralsky's own son-in-law, Scott Bradley ("Oh dad, how could you?) Other spammers charged include Judy Devenow, also of Michigan; James Bragg, of Arizona; California spammers John Brown, William Neil, Anki Neil, James Fite, Francis Tribble; and How Wai John Hui, of Vancouver, Canada and Hong Kong, and Peter Severa of Russia. To help avoid email spam, it's important to not post your email addresses openly on the Internet - for example, in comments on blogs, in user forums, and on social networking sites. You may think that this is obvious, but plenty of people still do it, and then wonder why they get so much Internet spam - for example spam from web-site contact form links. Good spam protection begins at home - to help avoid junk email spam reduce your own email address footprint and make your email addresses spam resistant. You can do this by posting your email address in a way that allows humans to know how to contact you, but which cannot be recognized as an email address by spamming programs. Here's how. Massive Gmail storage plus the awesome folder view provided by a Gmail account equals the perfect spam folder! If your anti-spam program can forward all detected spam to a separate email address, then you can create your own Gmail spam folder account too! Gmail mail is the perfect way to scan all of your spam for mail that you actually want, because the Gmail email folder view shows you the first sentence of the email along with the subject, making it super easy to determine if the mail is really spam or not without opening it! First, set up a Gmail account (sign up for Gmail at gmail . com here), then forward your spam to it. Now check Gmail mail to easily scan the contents of your spam folder to determine if there is any email you actually want. Here are step-by-step instructions, and a view of our Gmail spam folder account! Sure, there may be some cool email chain letters, but the reality is that they are still email chain letters, and that's just not ok. The most recent of the chain emails making the rounds is a Recipe Email chain email letter. Seems innocent, seems fun, even seems useful. But it's still chain mail, and it's still not ok. In fact, it's spam. Chain mail is illegal in the postal mail system, and it's just as unwelcome in the Internet email system. So you got email saying that you won a Toyota? You and thousands of others, in the latest round of the Toyota lottery scam! Here's the basic text of this spam scam - don't be taken in! By now you should now that you should never open a file which comes through in email, particularly if you are not expecting it, even if you know the sender. This certainly applies to the new rash of MP3 spam that is going around, which is actually audio stock spam for the pump and dump spammer scammers, who are pushing the publicly traded Text4Cars.com by Exit Only. The mega popular Facebook site has joined the ranks of social networking sites that trick you into providing your password so that they can steal your AOL , Yahoo, MSN, or other address book, and spam all of your contacts. Only this time it's with a twist - they are actually spamming your AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) contacts in your Buddy List! The spam starts out like this: "According to his Facebook status, Friend's Name (their username) is now "Friend's Nickname". Friend invites you to join Facebook and keep up with what he and your other friends are doing." What we want to know is WHY are AOL, Yahoo, and MSN continuing to let this go on? A new version of the old 419 advance fee fraud scam has surfaced, this time claiming that you stand to receive a "long overdue inheritance / contract payment". Does the title of this article on Quechup and spam sound familiar? It should, and it's no accident. Substitute Flixster for Quechup, and you'll find that we had to write the exact same article about Flixster earlier this year. So if you get spam from Quechup saying that someone "has invited you as a friend on Quechup.. the social networking platform sweeping the globe", well, don't blame that someone, blame Quechup. A new wave of spam hitting everybody's inboxes takes the form of a welcome to one or another website and service, complete with temporary login information and a link to 'change your temporary password'. The subjects all say some variant of "Login Information", "Member Details", "Registration Details" or, even, occasionally, "Internet Techincal Support" (sic). What they also all have in common is that if you click on that link, your computer will have just become a botnet pimp's newest bitch. Our friends over at SpamShield have come up with a really nifty use for Google maps - they have created a spam map - they call it "Spam World" - which maps where all the spam is coming from - around the world - in real time (well, updated every fifteen minutes). If you are looking for a good free anti spam spamfighter - a free spam blocker or free spam filter - to help you deal with spam email, here are a couple of free spam filters and free spam blockers - including free anti spam software - that you may not have heard about! Now you can deal with your spam mail with your choice of a free Internet spam filter or free anti spam software! There is even free anti spam software for World of Warcraft users (SpamMeNot and one version of SpamSentry). A rash of virus-laden spam has been going around posing as Hallmark e-cards or other e-cards. "You've received a greeting ecard from a friend" says the subject. Variations include "You've received a greeting card from a partner", "You've received a greeting postcard from a class-mate", and "You've received a greeting ecard from a class mate". The "ecard" appears to come from such legitimate sounding addresses as hallmark.com, MyPostcards.com, postcards.org, e-cards.com, NetFunCards.com, FunnyPostcards.com, Greeting-Cards.com, and VintagePostcards.com. Whatever the variation, it's not only spam, it's almost certainly carrying a virus or a trojan which will turn your computer into a spam- and virus-sending robot. The trio that brought us Blue Security and their Blue Frog, the DOSing service that planned to DOS spammers, and that went belly up after a spammer instead DOSed them (well, duh), has apparently decided that spamming is more lucrative (again, well, duh), and founded a new company called Collative to do just that. Talk about the latest detailed news on botnets! The ultimate of an inside look at botnets - it is the real, first-hand account of what happened this week when a zombie botnet woke up, based on some unseen signal triggered or programmed by the botnet owner, and took over hundreds of customer computers at a large US broadband ISP. MySpace has announced that it has filed a lawsuit against the once (and future?) King of Spam, Sanford Wallace. MySpace says that Wallace "implemented a phishing scheme to falsely gain access to MySpace user profiles. Recently I started getting invitations to join Flixster from complete strangers. Obviously, this was spam, but why were these complete strangers sending it to me? And why were they always from AOL and Hotmail? Now people are asking - is Flixstr accessing your AOL and Hotmail contacts list and spamming them in your name? There is a rather bizarre bit of spam going around this week. It appears to be aimed at anti-spammers, but others are getting it too. It's a very short email, which says, in toto, anti-spammers are lamers subj, regards, spammer. "Greetings from Iraq," the subject line says. Who wouldn't at least give that a glance the first time they see that in their inbox? And that's exactly what scammer "Merrill Melvin Hansley", a supposed security manager of STE,CCPLUS STORAGE SARL storage company in Iraq, is counting on. While complaints continue to roll in about cell phone spam from SMS text message spammers Mblox and their partners Dada Mobile, new complaints are starting to surface about new SMS spammers FunMobile, Freeze Mobile (a/k/a FreezeMob), Free Mobile and My Lifestyle. FunMobile may come through with the short code 99621, and Freezemob as short code 36726. mBlox, the company that bills itself as "The World's Largest Mobile Transaction Network", has just issued a press release exclaiming "mBlox Publishes Record Off-Portal SMS Transactions in 2006." Of course, as Internet Patrol readers know, countless people have received phone spam from mBlox and their partners DadaMobile and Nevis. In fact, there are more than 180 comments right here on the Internet Patrol complaining about mBlox, DadaMobile, and Nevis Mobile. It was the oddest collecton of spam-related searches I'd ever seen: print_silk_test print spam_silk_test spam loading, print_silk_test print, spam_silk_test spam, print spam_silk_test spam delete_silk_test, spam_silk_test spam delete_silk_test delete loading, spam_silk_test spam, delete_silk_test delete loading yahoo, print_silk_test print spam_silk_test spam loading yahoo beta, spam_silk_test spam delete_silk_test delete, print spam_silk_test spam delete_silk_test yahoo loading, and print spam_silk_test spam delete_silk_test yahoo. What, I wondered, did it all mean? What is a silk test? Is this some bizarre new spammer lingo? Perhaps a spamming program? When you are thinking "Oh, how much I hate spam" (does anybody ever actually think "I want spam"?), and you want to exact some of your own spam revenge, your thoughts may turn to becoming a spam killer. But others vent through more gentile avenues, such as spam haiku, spam poetry or, this, penning the ultimate junk email. Spam laden with trojan viruses are running high this month - primarily the Small.DAM Trojan - so be extra careful. Common subject lines include those about "Storm Batters Europe", updates on Condoleeza Rice, and claims that Putin is dead and Hussein is alive. The subject lines vary, but the Trojan payload remains the same: executable files surreptitiously installed on your computer, with file names such as "Full Story.exe", "Full Text.exe", "Full Video.exe", "Video.exe", "Full Clip.exe" or "Read More.exe", or such. "Coca-Cola End Of Year Bonanza," the email subject screams. It then goes on to tell you that you have won a prize - this is the official prize notification - for the year end bonanza held by Coca-Cola in conjunction with the Netherlands American Tobacco company. In case you're in any doubt, this is a scam. There is a lot of talk and questions going around about the newest stock spam for Texhoma Energy - the ones with the subject line of "You Neeed to Read this Grand Letter" or "Momentous Message". The bottom line - ignoreit. In a move which may have surprised nobody more than it surprised canned meat company Hormel, Hormel lost their legal effort to regain control over their trademark "SPAM". Ronald Guilmette and his company, Infinite Monkeys.com, have filed a $27.4 million lawsuit against spam king Scott Richter and his OptInRealBig.com. Richter claims he is no longer a spammer, Ronald Guilmette says it ain't so. Also named in the lawsuit are four of Richter's customers, including Florida-based National Associate Credit Services, Inc.. The "this is spam" button is not an unsubscribe button! The "this is spam" button is a "whack this sender because they sent me this email without permission" button. There has been a recent increase in the number of spammers who are using Google URLs in their spam in an effort to trick people. They way they do this is to camoflage their URL so that it looks like a Google URL. After all, nearly everyone knows, recognizes, and trusts Google. How sinister could clicking on something which appears to be a Google search result be? "We have a runner!" "Small cap stock!" "Could DPER.PK be the next Exxon?" If you are sick of getting stock spam - that spam hawking some worthless stock in an effort to drive up the price so that those behind the spammer can cash in and get out, then here are a couple of ways to have fun with that spam. I have no idea what this spam says, but it sure is cute! Lockergnome is being spoofed in a massive spam campaign which appears to be coming through Apple's own mail servers! The spam includes fake confirmations, and actual Lockergnome newsletters. Email claiming to be a CNN newsflash with the headline "Osama Bin Laden Discovered Dead" is making the rounds. It contains a file called "photo+article.zip". Don't open it! If you have ever received mortgage spam, you've probably been spammed by Ryan Pitylak. Now following lawsuits against him by Microsoft and the Texas AG, Pitylak says he's going straight and doing anti-spam consulting. A new Black Frog anti-spam model, based more than loosely on the defunct Blue Frog service, is being set up over at Okopipi. Will this one succeed? And will it be more ethical? We think that the answer to both is "no". Secure your computer, and take back the net! At least one in every three PCs has been compromised and is being used by spammers and phishers as part of their zombie computer "botnets". And the owners don't even know! Secure your computer for free. We tell you how! Blue Security and their controversial Blue Frog program suffered a fatal blow when Blue Security CEO Eran Reshef concluded that the cost to the Internet of their ongoing battle with spammer PharmaMaster, and possibly others, was too high. It was inevitable. Blue Frog, the "anti-spam" company which tries to get spammers to stop spamming by spamming the webforms of spammers who spam Blue Frog's customers, had their "do not spam" email list stolen by spammers, and now that list of Blue Frog customers is getting spammed. Word on the street has it that Alan Ralsky, the so-called Spam King, has been taken into custody by the Department of Justice (DOJ), where they are attempting to put the squeeze on him to have him give up all his spammer cronies and their spamming networks. Spammers Optin Global, Vision Media Limited, Qing Kuang “Rick� Yang, and Peonie Pui Ting Chen have been held accountable for affiliate spam sent on their behalf. Is it a scam? Is it spam? Is it phishing? Is it legal? Someone calling themselves Garren Fitzenreiter, using the email address admin@keithware.com, is sending people Paypal invoices out of the blue, with the subject "help me pay for my inspection sticker ticket and ill love you forever. thanks" "Bot Herder" Jeanson James Ancheta, the BotNet operator taken down by the Feds, told colleagues of operating the botnet of more than 400,000 infected PCs, "It's immoral, but the money makes it right." The state of Utah has issued their first citation under their recently-enacted Child Protection Email Address Registry and related laws. Too bad they slept through class the day they taught Federal and international jurisdiction. Mblox is back in the phone spam limelight, this time as the front man for company Dadamobile, targeting Cingular, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile users. DadaMobile is also known by their short code, 63232. Larry Moore, dying in Dubai of prostate and oesophageal cancer, begs from his deathbed in a Dubai hospital for you to help him distribute his wealth to charity. Don't do it. Downloading the Crazy Frog ringtone lead to text message spam being sent to the user's cell phone from Crazy Frog ringtone creator Jamba. Now Jamba's service provider, mBlox, has been fined for Jamba's wrongdoing. Free Speech Coalition sues Utah over Child Protection Email Address Registry Hallmark email cards really show that you don't care enough to send the very best. Plus, ecards are bad for the recipient. And ecards are often spoofed and sent as a vector for viruses. Microsoft's legal team has successfully tracked a zombie network to its seeders and spam sources, and is now suing them to the wall. A splog is a garbage website put up for the sole purpose of either displaying ads or linking to another target site to give that target site more inbound links. In that way splogs serve to artificially inflate the page rank of the target site. The Spanish lottery scam, also known as the "Spanish Sweepstate Lottery", "Spanish International Lottery", and even "Spanish International Program" has hit the net. Whether it's from Blanco Lopez, or someone else, it's still a scam. The DMA has announced that they are requiring all of their members to adopt an email authentication mechanism. According to them, "there are several interoperable, inexpensive and easy to implement solutions available on the market today." Talk about people doing stupid things! How stupid do you have to be to make a death threat against an officer who is investigating you? Spammer stupid! This stock chart offers stock analysis of the stock which comes recommended in spam. Are those hot stock tips really worth anything? A form spam blocker has been developed by a service offering secure, hijack-proof web forms. It's guaranteed, it's cheap, and it's secure! What more could you ask for? The British Lottery International scam is one of the latest Internet scams. As the Katrina scams wind down, the British International Lottery scam is again picking up steam. If you get this email scam from British Lottery International, don't be taken in - just delete it! Internet Marketing may have a chance to clean up its image, with the retirement of Queen of Spam Laura Betterly. Betterly, who gave work-at-home moms as well as Internet marketers a bad name, says now that spam is bad. Hurricane Katrina email hoaxes are already starting to fly, to add insult to the horrible injury already suffered by the thousands of people in Katrina's path. This first Hurricane Katrina email hoax claims that the Red Cross will donate money for each email sent. An update for Outlook 2003's junk email filter promises to make the junk email filter even more effective. And it's free! Ring-back advertising is sure to annoy your friends and colleagues when they call you and instead of hearing your cell phone ring, they get Perceptive Impression's ring-back spam, brought to you by Promotel, Inc.. Bluecasting says that what they do is not spamming, because you asked for it. The Internet security industry is taking notice, and they say that it's dangerous. Spam blockers have come a long way. The right spam blocker, coupled with a few tricks of the trade, can help you to tame your inbox. Bluecasting has been accused of Bluetooth spamming, and tries to explain why what they do is different. Overwhelmed by the onslaught of garbage which is clogging your inbox? Embarrassed by the smut and insulted by the scams? Feeling violated by the fact that spammers manage to shove their junk in your private inbox no matter what you do? Frustrated as h*ll and don't ... APOLOGIES TO LOCKERGNOME READERS! AUNTY's REDIRECT FROM LOCKERGNOME FOR "HOW TO STOP SPAM - FOR WINDOWS USERS" DID NOT WORK, AND SO YOU CAN READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE [Continue reading How to Stop Spam - For Windows Users] King of Spam (make that former King of Spam) Scott Richter has closed a chapter in his book of spam kingness, and has settled a lawsuit with Microsoft for a cool $7million. Which of course leads one to wonder just how much ... SpamButcher has just published a series on how to kill network spam zombies. As readers know, the Federal Trade Commission recently issued an open plea to ISPs to get rid of the spam zombies on their networks. And even though a ... Even the very best spam filters need some training, and even the very best spam filters are only as good as their training. This is true for the spam filtering capabilities built into your email program as well as any add-on spam ... Spam filters are programs designed to filter out spam from your inbox. Once you're on the spammers' lists, these may be your only realistic defence against spam. Most add-on anti-spam programs use several of these methods to keep spam out of your inbox. User ... In this article, Aunty Spam is going to help you with the basics of what you need to know in order to choose a spam filter which is right for you. The first place to start in choosing an add-on anti-spam program is a ... Call it what you like, the act of transmitting a message, image, sound, or any other data, to someone's Bluetooth device via that Bluetooth, without their permission, is spamming - Bluespamming to be precise - pure and simple. (It's also Bluejacking.) However, ... In a stunning victory (please note irony in use of the word "stunning"), a Federal court has slapped down the appeal of high volume email deployer White Buffalo Ventures, an online dating service also doing business as LongHornSingles.com. The reason for the ... The Knesset, Israel's parliament, has just passed a tough new law aimed at spam, unsolicited text messages, and junk faxes. The new law requires a recipient's opt-in, meaning that a commercial message must be solicited - the recipient must have agreed to ... In a survey to test whether top e-tailers are allowing consumers to opt out of receiving promotional or marketing messages, the FTC has determined that 89 percent of the online merchants it tested are honoring requests to halt future mailings. The CAN-SPAM Act, which ... Nigeria really seems to be doing all the right things to bring under some semblence of control the flood of financial scams which originate within its borders, including the infamous "419 spam scam". Earlier this month the Nigerian courts sentenced a ... It's the ultimate sanction - the death penalty. To a spammer. Oh, it wasn't handed out by a court of law, in fact in the country in which it occurred, Russia, there is no law against spamming at all. However, Russian spammer ... Aunty Spam's Big Book of Spam Filters Spam. It floods your inbox with viruses, phishing attacks, and trojans. It lets hackers and attackers onto your computer. And try as you might, you can't seem to get rid of it. Until now. Spam Proof Your Inbox That's right. Aunty Spam ... In what is being hailed as one of the largest spam&scam busts of the decade, and the biggest 419 bust in history, the FBI and Spanish police have collaborated to arrest three hundred and ten (that's right, 310) people in Spain, all of ... If you go to a movie in New York, San Francisco or Los Angeles, that vibration you feel in your pocket may not be someone trying to pick your pocket (or, hey, something else) but may be a bluetooth promotional kiosk in the ... Will people never learn? Apparently not, as California's Blue Security brings us Blue Frog, YADDASP (Yet Another DDOSing Anti-Spam Program). The underpinning of start-up Blue Security's Blue Frog is the "Do Not Intrude" registry. Users register up to three email addresses ... We've all seen variations on the theme. "I am Mariam Abacha, widow of the late Nigerian head of state, Gen. Sani Abacha. After the death of my husband who died mysteriously..." They always end with a plea for you to help them ... From Aunty's friends over at the Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy: The Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy (ISIPP) is warning that all commercial email senders are now required to either comply with the child protection email address registries and registry ... Reporting on a study which found that as many as thirty-nine percent of all email users admit to clicking on the links contained in spam, the news site The Inquirer has christened the spam link clickers "email retards". Interestingly, the report, put out by ... A new service is being offered by security company Sophos, which purports to alert businesses if a computer on their network has been compromised by being zombied. While what it actually does is tell you whether a computer on your network ... Like Christopher Pierson, the Tsunami Spammer before him, some sicko has decided to take advantage of the recent bombing in London, and to use them as a hook for his (or her) spam, which carries a Trojan horse to the victim's computer. The spam ... As the battle heats up over whether to allow China to acquire major United States business holdings, China has turned its attention to another global business issue: spam. China has long been known as a major source of spam - indeed it ... Prosecution among the first under the federal CAN-SPAM Act ATLANTA, June 30 /PRNewswire/ -- EarthLink's investigation of Peter Moshou, aka the "Timeshare Spammer," has resulted in Moshou pleading guilty today to violating the CAN-SPAM Act on a federal charge brought by the ... A spam postcard posing as a friendly postcard which is really a Trojan postcard. (Shades of Sir Winston!) Security firm Sophos is warning of a "spam postcard", which appears to come from someone you know (as does so much spam ... For all of you naysayers who insist that the Federal anti-spam law should be called the "YOU-CAN-SPAM" act instead of the CAN-SPAM act, and who say that it will never be a useful tool, Florida spammer Peter Moshou just might beg to differ. In ... The newest version of the W32 Kedebe-F worm is playing on the natural curiousity and rubber-necking of the email-reading public, or as it's known in the trade, "social engineering". Masquerading as a variety of news headline stories, Kedebe-F has been seen breaking the news ... Oh, the sweet recursiveness of it all. A petition to "Save NPR and PBS" is making the rounds by email. And like the Craig Shergold's Postcards and Mrs. Field's Cookie Recipe emails, "Save NPR and PBS" emails have been around ... One of the things with which the Federal Trade Commission was charged under CAN-SPAM was determining whether and how to implement the requirement of including "ADV" in the subject line of unsolicited email. Now this from the FTC: In a report to Congress required by ... Now here is a real irony: as Aunty reported here previously, Spam King Scott Richter has filed for bankruptcy. Now his company, OptInRealBig.com must notify all potential creditors (that's people to whom he owes money or whom believe that he owes them money) ... This should be an interesting gathering. Now, if they can only get it together to actually accomplish something, unlike so many of the industry get-togethers, where there's a lot of talk, but little outcome: Industry Recognizes the Urgency of E-Mail Authentication and Issues ... In the world of really dumb ideas, this one is, well...really dumb. Actually the underlying concept is not dumb, but the execution surely is. Spam Mimic is a new site which allows you to encrypt your email into an unreadable code so that ... A new email worm being carried in email purporting to contain pictures of a captured Osama Bin Laden has failed to elicit the likely intended response - releasing the worm and allowing it to spread. According to spokespersons at both F-Secure and McAfee, the ... Mitglieder.DC Is a Malicious Code Designed to Kill Processes Belonging to IT Security Programs, Leaving Computers Unprotected Against Other Possible Attacks - Detections in ActiveScan Are Increasing Progressively, Because It Is Being Mass-Mailed GLENDALE, Calif., June 1 /PRNewswire/ -- ... An Open Letter from the Federal Trade Commission to ISPs and Network Professionals: Dear Network professionals: We are writing on behalf of an international group of government agencies to request that your organization join a worldwide effort to prevent spammers from compromising consumers’ computers and ... An operation that spammed millions of consumers with graphic sexual descriptions to drive traffic to their Web sites to “date lonely housewives� has been halted by the court at the request of the Federal Trade Commission. U.S. District Court Judge Amy St. Eve ... (PRWEB) May 20, 2005 -- While there are many spam blocker applications available in the market today, what differentiates BSpam (http://www.bspam.com) is its ease of use and the technology behind it. It requires zero configuration and is effective right from the time you ... Tens of thousands of users woke up today to find German hate propaganda spam in their inbox. Piggybacking on the recent increase in activity of the Sober worm, the German hate spam is thought to take advantage of the trail left by ... [Courtesy of Guest Author Craig Hughes] Security guru Bruce Schneier writes on SPIT today in his security blog. A mighty neat trick to write on a liquid you say? Well, different semantics for "on" and "SPIT" than you might expect, unless you're ... If you have a blog, read a blog, or heck, have even heard of a blog, then you are probably familiar with blog spam. Blog spam is where the spammer posts spam, usually containing links to their websites, to someone's blog using ... Gevalia Coffee has been known for years in the anti-spam community as the poster child for bad spamming practices. Gevalia's efforts to deflect spam accusations to their affiliates and hired spam guns have made far more of a name for Gevalia among ... Last week Aunty reported that California Attorney General Bill Lockyer's office, through Deputy Attorney General Ian Sweedler, had teamed up with the FTC to nail spammers Rick Yang and Peonie Pui Ting Chen, operating out of Los Angeles as Optin Global, Inc. and ... California Attorney General Bill Lockyer has filed what is believed to be the first joint lawsuit uniting a state attorney general and the Federal Trade Commission against a common enemy - in this case notorious California spammers Rick Yang and Peonie Pui Ting ... Whether it's the world's largest auction house, Paypal, or the world's most believed and mourned pontiff, Pope John Paul II, spammers and scammers are not above invoking their name in an effort to relieve you of your money. Even before Pope John Paul II's ... As Aunty wrote recently, top spammer Jeremy Jaynes was sentenced to 9 years in prison last week. The sentence which Jeremy Jaynes received, under Virginia law, is thought to be the toughest sentence yet handed down to a spammer (those must ... Some of you may recall the trial of notorious spammer Jeremy Jaynes in November of last year. Jeremy Jaynes was considered to be one of the most prolific spammers around, pumping out an incredible 10million pieces of spam a day from his ... A fake Microsoft email urges users to install the latest Windows update, and even links and takes them to a site which sure seems to be a real Microsoft website. But it isn't. And the email actually leads to the installation ... The state of Florida, through Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist, and with Microsoft's assistance, has sued two prolific spammers, Scott Filary and Donald Townsend, whom are accused of sending at least 65,000 pieces of spam, some 48,000 of which were sent after the ... A little-known but powerful clause in CAN-SPAM ensures that spammers cannot hide behind their affiliates to avoid CAN-SPAM liabilty. Prior to the passage of CAN-SPAM, people selling products which were being advertised by spam were often able to escape liability by ... Many of Aunty's readers will remember that last year Aunty featured an exclusive interview with Spam King Scott Richter, during which he stated that "I actually do not do what I do for the need of money," and may also remember that he ... You did know that your computer isn't the only place you can have spam shoved in your face, right? TiVo knows this. Show Aunty a device which is connected to a network, and Aunty will show you a device capable of being ... According to an analyst at Radicati, and related reports by InformationWeek and the BBC, "user ignorance" and "bad behaviour" is the leading cause of spam. According to Marcel Nienhuis, an analyst with Radicati, "Major advancements in technology approaches that routinely achieve ... John Dutton has taken aim at spam in a novel and humourous way. His Good Things from Spam website features a collection of real subject lines from spam which Dutton, a professional writer, has received, and to which he responds, in often ... From Across the Pond, written by Keith Adams over at Spamfo: In an ironic turn of events the mailing list of the Broadway musical Spamalot was exposed to anyone who viewed their site's source code. Although it may have been caught before too many ... We all know that a large amount of spam comes through personal computers which are connected to the Internet, and which have been hijacked - turned into "zombies" - by viruses, Trojans and the like. But did you know that, according to SpamHaus, nearly ... It's finally happened. Send-Safe, the choice of spammers the world 'round, has finally been kicked off the MCI network. Of course Send-Safe had a safe harbour in MCI for way too long - Send-Safe was able to to provide safe sending ... Remember when it used to be that "the dog ate my homework"? That didn't work very well, did it? Well, now it's "the spam filter ate my court appearance notice", and guess what! As it turns out, that works pretty well! Attorney Jeffrey ... New York teenager Anthony Greco must have thought that he'd really pulled a fast one. Having just sent more than 1.5 million pieces of spam to MySpace.com users, he told MySpacee.com CEO Tom Anderson that he'd unleash worse unless Anderson gave him a marketing contract. The next thing he knew, he was winging his way to a meeting with Anderson..or so he thought. Just how stupid do you have to be (or how badly do you have to want to win an election, although the two apparently aren't mutually exclusive) to send spam to thousands of your constituents? To their cell phones. Between midnight and four in the ... The ECD, the full name of which is "The Electronic Civil Disobedience against the Fur and Vivisection Industry", has declared open war on the Internet servers of companies which trade in fur. It is doing this by bombarding the servers of the ... Verizon has been in the news quite a bit lately, and indeed here in Aunty's own column, for its dunderheaded refusal of email from large chunks of the civilized world, by blocking incoming email from entire countries. In fact, Verizon is being ... Email management firm Email Systems is reporting that porn spam is on the rise again, rising from a relatively flaccid 7% to a turgid 21% of all spam in just the past month. Unfortunately without knowing how they are defining "porn", it's impossible to ... A group calling themselves "Artists Against 419" are asking Windows users to take part in their Mugu Marauder "art" project and take down the scam sites hosted by so-called "419 scammers". The "Mugu" in "Mugu Marauder" apparently is the term which the ... First there was spam offering you an online degree. Then the spammers were getting the third degree. Now you can learn how to spam and get credit for your college degree. Yes, the University of Calgary, that wacky institution of higher learning that brought us "Virus ... Scott "I'm going straight" Richter wants you to know that he has a sense of humour, and so he sent Aunty this story from the Onion to share with you all: Immigrant Laborers Hired to Delete Spam SAN DIEGO—Executives at Gortman Consulting are hiring immigrant ... The Federal Communications Commission, as part of its CAN-SPAM responsibilities, has published a list of domains in an effort to cut down on spam to cellular telephones. However, there seems to be some confusion as to what exactly the list is, and its intended ... Who the h*ll would by something advertised in spam? That's what Aunty wants to know. Do you know anybody who would buy something advertised in spam? Would you?? According to a recent survey, reported in CNN, 14% of people acknowledged that they actually read their spam. Now, how ... From Across the Pond, courtesy of Chris Hunter over at Spamfo: A new trojan compromises machines with the intention of using them for spamming directly to recipients, but this time sends spam upstream to the ISP. What are now known as zombies have been around ... It's one of those stories which one would think that only Kafka could dream up, if it weren't for the fact that the story is true. Charles Booher was a friendly, unassuming Silicon Valley engineer - like thousands of others in the Valley. ... This particular FTC action was of note because it was the first which was publicly noted to include charges under the McCain Amendment to CAN-SPAM, on which I worked, and which I like to refer to as the "vendor liability" section, although others call it the "advertiser accountability" section. Anti-virus firm Sophos has reported that a new virus, Crowt-A, is actually ripping off headlines from CNN, and using them as both the subject line of the spam containing the virus, as well as the file name for the virus payload itself. Not only ... From Across the Pond, courtesy of Chris Hunter at Spamfo: Spammers have been using blogs to help boost their standings in search engines by posting massive numbers of comments that include links to their pornography sites, scams and get-rich-quick sites. If your site is linked by ... This isn't exactly double jeopardy, but somehow it ought to be. Bad enough to receive junk mail from a spammer - but then to receive a junk lawsuit as well? Ptooey! And it is exactly that with which Jay Stuler is dealing. Having ... Georgia's Internet citizenry got a treat yesterday as Governor Sonny Perdue introduced legislation aimed at making spamming the good citizens of Georgia (or, indeed, by the good citizens of Georgia) a criminal offense. The proposed legislation, known as the "Georgia Slam Spam E-mail Act" ... As we alluded to last month, new forms of Internet communications beget new forms of spam, and Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is no exception to the rule. Where it had already been predicted that VoIP spam, affectionaly referred to as "SPIT" (SPam over ... Some of you may recall that Aunty told you about Christopher Pierson, the British man who skulked about the tsunami disaster support boards, and wrote to those who were looking for loved ones feared lost in the disaster that, indeed, their loved ones ... The Attorney General of Texas, and Microsoft, this week announced that the Texas Attorney General has filed a lawsuit against a Texas university student, Ryan Samuel Pitylak, and his California partner, Mark Stephen Trotter. Microsoft was one of a group of recipients ... The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) this week has announced the first big bust of spammers under the so-called "plain brown wrapper" provisions of CAN-SPAM. The plain brown wrapper rules require that, in addition to the CAN-SPAM requirements for commercial email to which all commercial ... Poppa's got a brand new bag, and spammers got a brand new ploy. This one, interestingly enough, is being attributed to spammers' concerns over running afoul of CAN-SPAM, and so trying to end run it instead. Specifically, it is claimed, they are trying ... Always remember that the word "fan" has its roots in the word "fanatic". And this is exemplified by the behaviour of Allan Carlson, a Los Angeles resident who is an avid fan of Philadelphia's baseball team, the Philadelphia Phillies. Apparently Carlson had issues ... The good folks over at AuditMyPC.com have a very interesting idea. Spammers are of course known for harvesting email addresses from websites, and then using those email addresses to build email lists, which they then sell to other spammers. Odds are that spammers are crawling ... Microsoft has won a $7.4million judgement against a Tuscon, Arizona spammer. Glenn Hannifin, the 'proprietor' of U Save Depot, was accused by Microsoft of sending millions of pieces of spam hawking everything from software to leather jackets. The software offered included copies of ... The real Spam King is Sanford Wallace, who has been around in one form or another for well over a decade. It was Wallace's CyberPromotions against which many a spam lawyer first cut their spam litigation teeth. Quick, what is the most hated form of spam? "Oh, that's easy," you say, "that has to be malicious, infectious spam. Or maybe that annoying Rolex spam we've seen so much of lately." Bzzt! Wrong! According to an informal but interesting poll on the wildly popular ... Some people are sick. Really sick. But Christopher Pierson, of London, England really takes the cake. Pierson, a 40-year-old father of two (oh my, his poor children), was arrested and arraigned yesterday for sending spam to those known to be looking for lost loved ones, in ... Timothy Leary would be proud. As a nation we are turning away from lurid sex displays in which women are debased and objectified, and turning towards drugs. At least in our spam. According AOL, and based on a recent analysis of their ... If you received spam today (and if you are reading this, and therefore by definition online, the odds are about 99.99% that you did), the odds are also very good that it came from the Good Old United States of America. Yes, that's right, ... Dutch telecom regulator OPTA has announced a crack down against several violators of EU anti-spam standards, including against both individuals and small businesses accused of spamming. EU (European Union) anti-spam standards are generally much tougher and tighter than are those in the United States, ... ISP giant America Online (AOL) has announced that their users have seen a dramatic decrease in spam over the course of the past year. According to AOL, spam messages reported by members for this past month, November 2004, numbered about 2.2 million per day, ... SpamItBack is a software which you can download, and which claims to allow you to create a message which you'd like to get across to those who spam you, and to "target the spammers websites, online ordering forms, or any personal spam e-mail ... Earlier this week Aunty told you that the former AOL employee who stole the email addresses of 92 million AOL users, and then sold them to a spammer for $100,000, was due in Federal court and was going to plead "guilty" to charges ... With our last two articles being on the AOL thief, and on spim and spit spam, we thought that it was time to trot out this gem from our archives, for those readers who have not yet seen it. First it was spam - the junk email we all know and love to hate. Then it was spim, which is spam sent by instant messenger (hence the "i m"). Move over boys, and meet "spit". Spit is spam sent to a Voice Over IP (VoIP) ... Jerry Smathers, a former AOL employee who first made the news by stealing more than 92 million AOL user email addresses, and selling them to spammers, is now facing up to two years in prison for his misdeed. Due in court in New York ... We've all heard of AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Earthlink. And Aunty has noted many times on these pages the lawsuits which they have each, and together, instituted against spammers over the course of this past year. Good on ya, says Aunty. But ... Instead of the Grinch who Stole Christmas, it's the Worm who Sneaks Into Your Computer Disguised as an Electronic Christmas Card. And oh joy, targetted specifically towards Windows systems, just to ensure you a white-out Christmas. Yes, this year it's the ... Brian McWilliams is a savvy reporter on the spam beat. No slouch, he, and author of the popular book "Spam Kings", McWilliams Knows Spam. So, upon receiving the gazillionth piece of spam advertising fake Rolex watches, McWilliams decided to do what any righteous ... It really wasn't what they meant by "rage against the machine", but radio reporter Rachel Buchman (no relation to Paul and Jamie) was fed up with spam and couldn't take it any more, and when the spam which broke the camel's back came ... by WD Basely -- Background -- This address has been in use for a long while; in Internet years I would call it middle aged. It has traveled around a good bit as well, having been used in various mailing lists, newsgroups and ... Lycos Europe is offering a controversial new screen saver to Windows users (and Mac, as well). Marketing it under the "Make Love, Not Spam" banner, the screensaver is designed to send requests to view a known spam source's website. The idea is that when a ... Spam Kings takes you on a trip through the world of spam, where you'll meet all kinds of spammers (and even a few antispammers) and learn what makes them tick (I mean in addition to the crack and coffee). How would you like to help to track, trap, and catch spammers? What if Aunty told you that all you have to do is put some invisible email addresses up on your website? You'd do it then, wouldn't you? "Sure, Aunty!" she ... Sick of spam? Phed up with phishing? Nagged out by the Nigerians? Have I got a treat for you! If you haven't been over to the Ze Frank site before, or even if you have, and if you're ready for a ... Microsoft has announced that it will no longer be offering for free its service which allows users to connect to their Hotmail and MSN accounts using Outlook and Outlook Express. Citing exploitation by spammers, Microsoft will begin charging those who want to use the ... Aunty has heard from a little birdie that the lawsuit filed by Spam King Scott Richter against anti-spam outfit SpamCop has been settled. As Aunty's gentle readers may know, Richter's request for an injunction was denied back in June, with the Court ruling that ... In an exclusive story, Aunty has learned that the New York State Attorney General has reached a settlement with Spam King Scott Richter. Under the terms of the settlement Richter must pay $40,000 in damages, as well as $10,000 in investigative fees. ... Aunty is still working to confirm this, but a little birdie whispered in her ear that SpamCop's and parent company Ironport's SLAPP suit against Scott Richter and his OptInRealBig, in response to Richter's suit against SpamCop, has been dismissed by the Court. Here's the ... In a triumph of stupidity over common sense, William "Billy" Carson has managed to distinguish himself by being the target of one of the first lawsuits by a state District Attorney's office under CAN-SPAM. Massachusetts is suing Carson for sending "thousands of messages with ... On Friday afternoon the California Federal Court denied a request by King of Spam Scott Richter and his OptInRealBig for an injunction against anti-spam organization SpamCop. The question of whether or not to unsubscribe from unwanted email is a tricky one. In this exclusive interview, The Internet Patrol gets real with notorious spam king Scott Richter In perhaps the most content-free press release which Aunty has ever seen, Scott Richter yesterday crowed about the TRO which was issued against SpamCop in the Richter v. SpamCop case, saying: "A Temporary Restraining Order ("TRO") was issued today by the United States District ... The United States District Court for the Northern District of California today granted Scott Richter and his company, OptInRealBig, a restraining order against SpamCop and their parent company, Ironport Systems. Richter sued SpamCop less than two weeks ago, claiming that the anti-spam ... According to public sources, Scott Richter, who is being sued by New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, and Microsoft, has stated that he is close to reaching a settlement with Spitzer. On the other hand, he says that talks with Microsoft "haven't progressed as far". Is there anyone here who hasn't been at least a little curious at one time or another - what would happen if someone actually responded to one of the Nigerian 419 scam emails - you know, the ones where the spammer contacts you ... I am getting a LOT of spam that doesn't give you the option to unsubscribe. Is there anything I can do about it, with the new laws that are effective now? The term "address harvesting" refers to the unsavoury practice of finding and copying email addresses from the pages of websites. You know all of those lovely "contact us" webpages which everyone has? Well, spammers just love to pick those tasty little ripe email addresses from the orchard of your website. So here are a few tips which will allow users to contact you through your website, while not allowing your email address to fall into the wrong hands. I've been testing Google's Gmail for 5 days now, since April 18th. Woohoo. In addition to openly soliciting email to the account, and even posting the address on the web (shedevil@gmail.com), I've forwarded all of my email coming to my other accounts to ... It happens at least twice a week. Some reporter, pundit, or well-meaning but tunnel-visioned anti-spammer will point triumphantly to the fact that the load of spam in their inbox has not decreased - in fact, if anything, increased - since January 1, ... The State of Virginia (the attorney general, in particular) is on a roll, with the 3rd arrest of members of a spam gang responsible for sending countless pieces of spam ... not from..not to...but *through* servers located in Virginia. Carrie Cantrell, spokesperson for VA ... Independent journalist and Guardian columnist Danny O'Brien hit it square on the head in his dead-on and funny piece in today's Guardian. O'Brien unerringly describes an exchange and the general atmosphere at ISIPP's January "Spam and the Law" conference, during which noted ... Kudos to the Daily Show's Rob Cordrey for his deft segment in which he interviews notorious U.S. spammer Scott Richter. Although we of course don't condone the offering online of proprietary content, we have it on good authority that .mov and .wmv files of ... |
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Allen MacCannell: I love the dry wit - ability to call in during normal business hours. :-) read krishnappa: hi,me krishnappa malali my cellphone n73 was stolen plez findout and contect me on this no 9738224672 read DAWNE RIVERS: THIS IS BULL.....I HAVE HAD NOTHING BUT TROUBLES WITH THIS PIECE OF S*** PHONE! IM SOOO OVER IT T MOBILE NEEDS TO REIMBURSE IT CUSTOMER read richard: I got sms on my mobile that i have won 250,000 dollars on that cococola add i get very excited but when i reply i read andrew: some idiot went through my bag at school and stole my $300 dollar cell phone how do i track it down so i can beat read dill: 300 crate & barell for sale read
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