Internet service provider Earthlink has announced that it has reached a settlement with two high-profile and extremely prolific spammers dubbed the “Alabama Spammers” for their penchant for using dial-ups in and around Birmingham, Alabama. Damon DeCrescenzo and David Burstyn, alledged to be part of a multi-state spam ring, were sued…

Jeffrey Lee Parsons, the teenager who unleased the MS Blaster worm variant “MS Blaster B” on the world, has plea bargained his way down to a relatively light eighteen months in jail, and ten months of community service. Parsons was facing up to 3-10 years in prison (reports vary) for…

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.

You heard it here first (Aunty sure appreciates her little birdies!) U.S.-based ISP giant Earthlink and Korean-based SK Telecom have just this morning announced that they have joined forces to form a national wireless provider here in the United States. What does this mean to consumers? Well, SK Telecom has…

This week the Internet Patrol is helping our friends over at the Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy with their 2nd annual national “Spam and the Law” conference, and so we may not be quite so wordy as she usually is. Fear not, though, we will be back in…

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 that, but the virus constantly changes…

A couple of weeks ago, Aunty reported to you that Microsoft had announced a patch for their ActiveX security flaw. However, today the anti-virus experts at GeCad Net are reporting that the patch distributed by Microsoft does not fully fix the flaw (and try saying that three times fast!) According…

A newly discovered Internet work, dubbed “Bropia.A”, is targetting Windows and MSN Messenger messaging clients. The worm does a host of nasty things, including sending a copy of itself to all of the messaging contacts found on the victim’s computer, installing a Trojan horse program which creates a back door…

From Across the Pond, courtesy of Chris Hunter over at Spamfo: Christopher Pierson, the sick man who sent a hoax mail to tsunami victim’s friends and relatives, has been sentenced today to 6 months in prison. Spamfo published the article previously entitled ‘Man pleads guilty to sick Tsunami hoax emails’,…

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 a top-ranked site or blog, then…

A cryptographer at the Singapore-based Institute of Infocomm Research has determined that there are serious security flaws in Microsoft Word and Excel in terms of their encryption for password protection of documents. Hongjun Wu, who has written a paper on the subject, says that “A lot of information could be…

From Across the Pond, at Spamfo: www.OptOutByDomain.com launches today in an attempt to rid domain name owners of spam.  The aim of joining the registry is that a domain name owner will be able to opt out all domain email addresses at once; no more clicking multiple opt out links…

It was the misfire heard around the world. The Register earlier this week reported that a German court had ruled that blocking email by content was illegal, stating that “The Higher Regional Court now has ruled that blocking email by content is unlawful as it is considered confidential in German…

William R. Trowbridge, of New York, and Michael Chicoine, of Texas, will be going from file sharing to cell sharing following their guilty pleas to Federal charges of using a peer-to-peer network. Oops, Aunty means of violating copyrights on peer-to-peer networks. Because of course just using a peer-to-peer network is…

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 received what he considered spam from Atriks,…