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 70% of all spam comes from…

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 services to spammers through the MCI network despite months…

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 J. Stesiak, of South Bend, Indiana, was due to appear at the court for a status conference on December 8th. A status conference is where the attorneys for both sides appear before the judge or another court officer, and tell them the status of the case – is it likely to settle, are they ready to go to trial, etc.. Only, Jeffrey never showed up at the court on December 8th.

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.

SpamAssassin has handily won as the best anti-spam product in Datamation’s Product of the Year Awards, receiving nearly twice as many votes as the next closest contender.

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 morning. On election day. Faking…

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 targetted companies with email in an effort to…

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 sued by their users who have been unable…

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 really get a complete picture as…

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 419 scammers themselves use for an intended victim…

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 Writing 101” in 2003,…

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 day laborers to delete their…

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 purpose. According to the Las Vegas…

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 many people…

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 for a long time in…