In the past we’ve shown you how to create a foreign language filter in Gmail, and we’ve shown you how to have Gmail automatically delete certain spam without your having to sift through it. But we have finally figured out the holy grail of beating the Gmail spam filter into submission: How to have Gmail automatically delete foreign language character spam – for example spam in Chinese, or spam in Japanese. It seems that there should be a way to tell Gmail “I will never receive legitimate email in Chinese or Japanese (or Korean or Russian, etc.), in Kanji or Hanzi or Hanja or other logograms, so always delete it” but there is no built-in way. But there is a way to have foreign character spam automatically deleted by Gmail, and we have discovered it, and here it is.

Well, Facebook has finally done it, they’ve found a way to allow unscrupulous marketers to spam your Facebook account. Facebook will allow advertisers to target users based on personal information such as phone numbers, user IDs, and email addresses. In a confirmation to PCMag.com, Facebook relayed their new marketing program which will begin next week, targeting ads to their “existing customers.”

How often have you wished that instead of having to slog through all the spam in your Gmail junk folder, you could tell Gmail to automatically delete your spam – or at least the portion of it that you know is spam? Well, you can! Here’s how!

If you have been Facebooking on behalf of your pampered pooch via his own Facebook profile, or have been playing it safe with a separate Facebook profile for coworkers only, then you may want to get as much use out of it as possible before it is deleted. It appears that Facebook is going to disable the over 83 million fake Facebook profiles that are currently inflating their numbers.

Anti-spam service Postini is closing, being shuttered by Google (which acquired Positini in 2007), and Google is transferring all Positini customers to Google Apps. So, what do you, as a Postini customer, have to do about this? According to Google, not much.

While Dropbox file-sharing service is intended to be a mostly consumer-based product, many companies use it as a means to share files between employees. The problem with using cloud-based services, such as Dropbox, for business purposes is that businesses don’t have proper controls over the data stored in the cloud. This was driven home this week when Dropbox announced that an employee’s password was stolen and the hackers made off with some sensitive information, including user email addresses which led to the spamming of Dropbox’s European user-base.

Scammers are targeting Internet users with a new Craigslist scam – well, really more of a Craiglist spoof – wherein they send email to you, mostly from ‘robot@craigslist.org’, telling you that “you have succesfully posted your Craigslist ad” (although the samples we have seen actually misspell several words, so it ends up looking like “You have successfuly posted your Craiglist.org ad”).

Grum, the world’s third-largest botnet, has been shutdown, according to one of the security researchers who helped take the botnet offline, Atif Mushtaq. Mushtaq, who works for the “malware intelligence lab” FireEye, announced the good news on the security company’s blog yesterday after two intense days battling Grum. You may see less spam related to cheap “Cilais,” “Vigara,” or “Levtira” (misspellings of Cialis, Viagra, and Levitra, respectively) and fewer unwanted messages advertising Rolex watches as a result of the Grum botnet shutdown. With a command and control server in the Netherlands, and additional servers in countries such as Panama and Russia, taking down Grum required international coordination and effort.

Some time ago Facebook and Spotify unleashed an app that spews Spotify spam all over your Facebook wall or Facebook timeline. Any time any of your Facebook friends listens to music on Spotify, if they are using the Spotify app, it posts to your wall telling you what they are listening to. “So-and-so listened to such-and-such on Spotify.” Who the flip cares? If we wanted to know what our friends on Facebook were listening to, we’d go to their house and listen with them! Here is how to remove the Spotify notifications from your Facebook page.

If you were on the Internet in 2005 or 2006, you almost certainly also received spam for an herbal weight loss supplement called ‘Hoodia’, among others, and, if you received spam for Hoodia, then it’s also almost certain that Brian McDaid was behind it. In 2007, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) nabbed McDaid, a chiropractor from Thorndale, Pennsylvania, and charged him with false and deceptive business claims, and several violations of the Federal anti-spam law, CAN-SPAM.

A rash of fake Verizon Wireless account notifications hit the Internet this week, showing outrageous charges that are, supposely, hitting your bill. They have the subject line of either “Thank You for your Verizon Wireless Payment” or “Your Bill Is Now Available”. Of course, the links take you to all sorts of spam and scam sites, so don’t be taken in. Here are some examples of the fake notices, with links to places such as https://www.theinternetpatrol.com/brick-wall/, https://www.theinternetpatrol.com/brick-wall/ and http://www.mayphe.com.br/DyXEBK63/index.html.

In a move that is not unheard of, but completely reprehensible, defeated Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is selling off his campaign’s donor and activist email list as the campaign attempts to crawl out of their $4 million hole of debt. And perhaps “slithering” is a better word as Newt is slapping his donors right in the face by not just selling their email addresses to other political campaigns, but to any unscrupulous company with equally slippery ethics.

Microsoft Hotmail, the world’s largest email provider, is better at blocking spam than Google Gmail and Yahoo Mail, according to a study released by the independent research firm Cascade Insights. The study only tested these companies – the so-called big three email providers – and was sponsored by Microsoft, which funded the research to combat their bad reputation for allowing loads of spam into users’ inboxes.

Several email providers that normally compete with one another, like Google Gmail and Microsoft Hotmail, have teamed up in an effort to better protect email users from spam and fraudulent messages. The new system is called DMARC, short for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance. With a united front, the war against spam may have a powerful new weapon.

You may not have heard of the Internet Water Army before, but you’ve probably seen their handiwork. The Internet Water Army is the monicker given to a group of underground people in China who are paid to post comments on blogs and other Internet forums, often either recommending – or dissing – a product or service, or posting links. Because they are an ‘army’ of people who are paid to ‘flood’ the Internet with their spam comments, they have earned the name The Internet Water Army.