The issue of “false positives” – good, wanted email being cast aside because it looks too much like spam, comes from a “tainted” IP address, or was simply erroneously reported as spam (and more than one ISP is guilty of making this way too easy for their users) is the bane of the commercial emailer’s existence. Even the purest of mailers now finds that the email they send experiences delivery failures of 5 – 10 – even 20% or more, the lion’s share due to overzealous or even moronic spam-filtering or reporting.

Dear Internet Patrol. I keep getting email which appears to be from PayPal, or from eBay, but which really is from some scammer who seems to be trying to get me to give them my password or account number or credit card number, and not from PayPal or eBay at…

From the “what a novel approach to spamming” department, H & H Enterprises of Foxworth, Mississippi is offering “Mind Gold” to “help businesses attract new prospects and gain the loyalty of existing customers”. The gist of the Mind Gold program is that you subscribe to the Mind Gold e-zine, for…

As you might imagine, Aunty got lots of calls from reporters today about the OptInRealBig v. SpamCop TRO. However, one call from a reporter in Washington D.C. took Aunty by surprise. They did not want to talk about Mr. Richter and SpamCop. They wanted to get Aunty’s thoughts on this:…

Police in Germany have arrested the person they think to be the perpetrator of the Sasser worm. The 18-year-old German high school student is thought to be the creator of the worm which has so far spread through an estimated 18 million computer systems world wide. Sasser’s primary targets are…

Windows users suffering from spam-overloaded inboxes can breathe a little easier thanks to next generation anti-spam products which are easier to use, more effective, and more tightly tuned to stop spam while preserving good email. PC World this week released the results of its extensive survey and testing of nine…

From the “things which make you go hmmmm….” department, it turns out that Scott “I am a legitimate businessman who is also the King of Spam” Richter, who is suing Ironport Systems over their listing of his IP addresses in their SpamCop anti-spam database, also applied to participate in Ironport’s…

The industry is abuzz with today’s announcement by Microsoft that they are “implementing Ironport’s Bonded Sender program” – whatever that means. For those of you not familiar, Bonded Sender is one of the whitelists out there – bulk email senders can post a bond to guarantee that the email they…

Dear Internet Patrol, Time and again I have heard and read that after one installs WinXP SP1, there is a 20% to 40% chance it will damage your computer in one way or another. I did install SP1 in my computer and it crashed. I had to use a floppy…

In a move which surprised many, but others not at all, Scott “I am a legitimate businessman” Richter, and his Evil Twin Scott “I am the King of Spam” Richter, of OptInRealBig, sued SpamCop and Ironport over a recent SpamCop listing of OptInRealBig. Ironport, manufacturers of the Ironport email sending…

Spam filtering has always been a hot topic around the IT water cooler. The question most frequently asked is “how”. But increasingly, a question which needs to be asked is “whether”, followed closely by “how not” in addition to “how”. (If you’re stilll back at “why?” then a) I want…

Everywhere you look, everyone is talking about Gmail (including me). But what’s amazing to me is that for the most part those who are heralding it have had only the most glancing access to it, if that. Those who are actually test driving it are … :gasp”… barely whelmed, let…

Today I received email with the subject line: “urgent query” The opening lines were: “Dear Madam, I am writing to you out of great desparation.” So, here’s the test: Do you think that this email was spam, or not? Perhaps I should have asked this instead: Is there a one…

Anyone else seen this? Spam in the past 24 hours, almost certainly all coming from the same source, with, I have to admit it, creative ‘sender’ names. Names like: Amateurism B. Sophocles Unmindful J. Mejia And my favourite: Visualizing I. Nappies (eeeewww!) Now if only they made the middle initial…

Quick! Where on the Internet were you on April 13, 1994? Many of you are probably saying “Dude, I hadn’t even heard of the Internet in 1994! Had Al Gore invented it yet?” Others of you, however, will remember that date, exactly 10 years ago today, as being the day…