Anti-spam
Anti-spam
The continuing increase in spam has resulted in rapid growth in the use of spam filter programs: software that examines incoming email, separating spam from genuine email messages. Unwanted e-mail can be filtered at the desktop, the network email server/email gateway, or the Internet Service Provider's email gateway. While network managers and ISPs can choose hardened email security appliances, services or software designed to interdict both spam and viruses, desktop users are frequently limited to a software-based solution.
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Anti-spam Related Products
The GB-Ware is a software firewall powered by GNAT Box® System Software certified to ICSA 4.0 Corporate criteria. The GNAT Box System Software was designed from the ground up as an integrated firewall system with interoperability of features, easy installation and remote management. We supply the OS and firewall software – you supply the hardware.
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The GB-250 and GB-250e Firewall UTM Appliances are GTA’s entry level systems that provide big security for smaller business offices. Designed and priced to meet the needs of smaller organisations, the GB-250 and GB-250e include the same security and UTM features of our larger enterprise firewall UTM appliances, but scaled to fit the needs of offices with fewer than 50 employees.
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The GB-2000 Firewall UTM Appliance Family provides powerful enterprise level security and comprehensive features that are easy to implement and administer. The GB-2000, GB-2000e and GB-2000X are all designed for SME organizations that desire a single, dedicated appliance to handle their complex network environments and multiple Internet security zones.
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Spam and computer virus attacks can cripple your network resulting in lost productivity, corrupted data, leaks of confidential data, and missed business opportunities due to lost or delayed email communications. GTA's Mail Sentinel is a full-featured anti-spam and anti-virus solution allowing you to take back control of your email. Expand the capabilities of GTA's basic Mail Sentinel email features with commercial-grade subscriptions.
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Uniquely designed for mid-sized businesses, the GB-800 and GB-800e Firewall UTM Appliances provide corporate level Internet security and unified threat management (UTM) features. Comprehensive firewall and unified threat management features combine into a single, dedicated appliance for completed Internet security.
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The GB-3000 Gigabit Firewall UTM Appliance is Global Technology Associates’ flagship appliance. It offers the highest throughput and most comprehensive feature set in GTA’s product line. The GB-3000 provides powerful network security and strong performance by delivering world-class protection and gateway threat management capabilities in a single dedicated appliance.
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Protect your Internet gateway, mail and network servers, desktops and laptops with Trend Micro™ NeatSuite™ Standard, a fully integrated, centrally managed security suite designed to stop Web-based attacks, viruses, spyware, spam, and blended threats. NeatSuite Standard is designed for mid-sized businesses with limited IT resources in need of an integrated, all-in one security solution that is easy to manage and deploy.
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Win the battle against email threats with Trend Micro’s InterScan Messaging Security Suite. It protects your network by integrating award-winning antivirus with zero-day protection, powerful anti-spam, and anti-phishing along with content filtering for compliance and data security. This flexible software solution is delivered on a single, highly scalable platform with centralized management for easy, comprehensive email security at the gateway.
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Stop spam and email-borne threats before they reach the desktop with Trend Micro ScanMail for Lotus Domino. The top product in its class over the past five years, ScanMail for Lotus Domino provides a highly reliable, scalable, available and manageable security solution that delivers proven protection with minimal impact on your email infrastructure and administrators.
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Stop viruses, spyware, spam, phishing, and inappropriate content at the mail server—the central point of inspection for internal communications plus inbound mail beyond the gateway. ScanMail for Microsoft Exchange delivers industry-leading mail server security with new technologies to combat zero-day threats, image spam, and spyware. ScanMail is optimized for all versions of Exchange, including Exchange Server 2007, minimizing server impact and IT cost. Tighter integration with the Microsoft platform and management tools help streamline administration.
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Trend Micro Email Reputation Services stop up to 80 percent of spam at its source—before it can hit the gateway and flood the messaging infrastructure. As the only email reputation service to offer an administration console, these services offer access to real-time global spam reports with the option to actively manage spam and blended email threats if desired.
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Win the battle against email threats with Trend Micro InterScan Messaging Security Appliance. It protects your network by integrating award-winning antivirus with zero-day protection, powerful anti-spam, and anti-phishing along with content filtering for compliance and data security. This high-throughput appliance with hardware redundancy is delivered on a single, highly scalable platform with centralized management, providing easy deployment and continuous, comprehensive email security at the gateway.
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Kaspersky Anti-Spam provides thorough and accurate protection from spam for users of corporate mail systems and public email services.
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Anti-spam Related Industry News
Anti-spam laws baffle UK.biz Businesses are in the dark over anti-spam laws, with 83 per cent ignorant of legislation aimed at stopping junk emails, a new survey has revealed. The research, conducted by software firm Clearswift, found that although just 16 per cent of businesses were aware of laws against spam, a massive 92 per cent felt current rules were not tough enough to stop unwanted emails.
The UK government introduced anti-spam measures last year, after complaints from small firms t......
[more] Spam virus 'hijacks' computers Spammers are sending out viruses that take over people's computers and turn them into junk mail machines, say experts. It is a worrying new development in the ongoing war against spam and could see a huge rise in the amount of unsolicited messages in inboxes worldwide.
In a worst case scenario, it could overwhelm the entire internet system warn experts.
UK spam filtering firm MessageLabs has found what it believes is the first example of a virus that has be......
[more] Spam fuels boom in secure content market Junk mail is an increasing problem but the search for an effective cure remains fraught with difficulties. That's the message we take from a slew of recent surveys on the subject.
Market watcher IDC predicts that anti-spam products will be a key driver for the secure content management (SCM) software market which it expects to grow by 19 per cent a year to reach $6.4 billion in 2007.
"Virus infection is still the main concern regarding corporate......
[more] Microsoft aims to make spammers pay Despite efforts to stem the billions of spam e-mails flooding inboxes, unwanted messages are still turning e-mail into a quagmire of misery. Spammers send out tens of millions of e-mails to unsuspecting computer users every day, employing a myriad of methods to ensure their pills, loans and "requests for our lord" pleas fox e-mail filters.
Some are even turning to prose and poetry to fool the technological safeguards people put in place.
But a group o......
[more] EU anti-spam laws are OK It's just over a month since new anti-spam legislation was introduced into the UK with almost universal condemnation that the new laws would have a limited effect in the fight against junk email. The £5,000 fine for offenders has been branded by some experts as an "inadequate deterrent". And even those who've welcomed the new legislation - which is part of an EU-wide directive - doubt it will have any real impact on combating spam.
For although there is one EU anti-s......
[more] Sophos beats rivals in VeriTest analysis Sophos Anti-Virus provides most frequent virus updates, fastest scanning speed and shortest installation time Sophos, a world leader in anti-virus and anti-spam protection for businesses, today announced that in a competitive analysis of enterprise anti-virus applications conducted by VeriTest, a division of Lionbridge Technologies, Sophos Anti-Virus led competitor solutions in several key areas including most frequent virus updates in both manual and aut......
[more] Spam may be wiped out by 2006 Internet users beware -- within a couple of years you may have fewer opportunities to reduce your debt or increase your penis size Unwanted "spam" offers currently account for more than half of all e-mail traffic, but at least two high-tech executives say the torrent of pornography and unbelievably low mortgage rates could slow to a trickle by 2006.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates predicted the demise of unsolicited commercial e-mail at the World Economic Forum in D......
[more] 'Clean up this Internet effluent now' Messagelabs CTO Mark Sunner claims that ISPs allowing unfiltered traffic to flow to customers is like a water authority pumping out raw sewage We are losing the malware war. Conventional antivirus and anti-spam countermeasures seem ineffective against an increasingly sophisticated enemy. The argument is that server- and client-side solutions draw the battle lines far too deeply inside their own territory, robbing computing, bandwidth and other resources. Wha......
[more] Spam, scam, spoof and spyware: beware epidemic in Internet empire Spam, the circulation of unwanted electronic messages, is dangerous and expensive for businesses and individuals and is growing uncontrollably on an epidemic scale So says an official report prepared for an OECD-EU meeting on Monday and Tuesday. Confidence in the entire environment of Internet communications and electronic commerce is at risk.
A simple answer is not at hand, says the report which has just been declassified by......
[more] Governments must act together to curb spam Only coordinated action by governments can curb the alarming rise in unsolicited bulk e-mails, or spam, a high-level seminar in Brussels was told. The two-day meeting, organised by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the European Commission (news - web sites), was being held after the Mydoom e-mail worm infected more than one million computers around the world.
Mydoom underlined the vulnerability of computer systems......
[more] EC draws line in spam sand The EC is calling for greater international co-operation in combating spam Speaking at this week's OECD workshop on spam in Brussels, Commissioner Erkki Liikanen said the OECD should "rapidly agree" a five-point framework to promote effective legislation against spam. This programme calls for co-operation between enforcement agencies, self-regulation by industry, technical measures, legislative action and greater consumer awareness.
The OECD workshop on spam coinci......
[more] Shoppers spend less online because of spam Experts says spam is hurting online businesses and could stunt the Internet economy's growth The exponential growth of unsolicited junk email -- spam -- is shaking consumer confidence in the Internet and may hamper growth of the e-economy, officials have told a global anti-spam meeting.
A survey published by consumers group the Trans-Atlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD) showed 52 percent of respondents were shopping less on the Internet or not at all b......
[more] US anti-spam law fails to bite US legislation designed to stem the tide of junk e-mails has had little impact on spam, say experts US e-mail filtering firm Postini said the Can-Spam Act had only made a slight dent in the amount of unwanted mail.
It found spam accounted for 79% of all e-mails it processed in January, down from 80% in December 2003.
Critics of the US law had predicted it would do little to stop spam and may even encourage some businesses to start sending unsolicited messag......
[more] China Cracks Down on Spammers Authorities want to block more than porn and pitches, while feeling pressure to stop spam sent from China. The Chinese government is ratcheting up its efforts to fight unsolicited e-mail in a campaign with a distinctly political flavor, but officials face an uphill battle controlling spam.
The Ministry of Public Security (MPS) has announced a joint campaign with the country's Ministry of Education (MOE) and Ministry of Information Industry (MII) to end spam in......
[more] Your computer could be a 'spam zombie' Next time you're looking for a culprit for all that junk mail flooding your inbox, have a glance in the mirror. Spammers are increasingly exploiting home computers with high-speed Internet connections into which they've cleverly burrowed.
E-mail security companies estimate that between one-third and two-thirds of unwanted messages are relayed unwittingly by PC owners who set up software incorrectly or fail to secure their machines.
David Lawrence, 4......
[more] EU's anti-spam laws in chaos It was supposed to tackle spam but is turning into a laughing stock. A study by the Institute of Information Law (IViR) at the University of Amsterdam has revealed that the EU’s much-vaunted anti-spam legislation, Directive 58, is fast turning into a legislative disaster.
The Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications, to give it its full name, was supposed to have been adopted by EU member states by October 2003, but according to the IViR, only 7 of 15 h......
[more] Sophos Announces Opening of North American Virus Lab Sophos, a world leader in anti-virus and anti-spam protection for businesses, today announced the opening of its North American virus lab. Sophos currently operates full-time virus labs in the United Kingdom and Australia and a spam lab in Vancouver, Canada. With the addition of its Lynnfield, MA-based virus lab, Sophos will be able to further extend protection for its customers worldwide.
As the threat of viruses continues to escalate alo......
[more] Lawmakers Launch New Anti-Spyware Bill Two champions of last year's Can Spam Act have introduced legislation in Congress to outlaw invasive software such as spyware and adware from being secretly installed on computers.
Currently, these type of programs often piggyback on downloaded files without the user's consent, transmitting information about Internet traffic patterns and generating pop-up advertisements.
Known as Spyblock (Software Principles Yielding Better Levels of Consumer Know......
[more] UUNet tops spammer-hosting super league UUNet hosts more spammers than any other ISP. It has 151 listings on the Spammers Block List (SBL), including 34 known spam gangs with ROKSO records, according to the anti-spam organisation Spamhaus' records for February 2004. The second worst offender, Chinanet-QD, has 82 entries on the SBL. It hosts Alan Ralsky, listed as the single worst spammer on the ROKSO list.
Banning unsolicited commercial email is a simple matter, Spamhaus says. it has example......
[more] Earthlink to test sender authentication ISP (Internet service provider) Earthlink Inc. will soon begin testing new e-mail security technology, including Microsoft Corp.'s recently released Caller ID technology, a company executive said.
Earthlink will be experimenting "very soon," with "sender authentication" technology including Caller ID and a similar plan called Sender Policy Framework (SPF). The Atlanta-based ISP will be evaluating other e-mail security proposals as well, but is not bac......
[more] Spam is 10 Today marks the tenth anniversary of what is generally considered the first spam message. On this day in 1994, US law firm Canter and Siegel posted a message on several Usenet newsgroups advertising its services to people interested in participating in the US Green Card lottery.
These days we'd barely bat an eyelid at such a message but at the time it was considered as appalling breach of "netiquette" - the unspoken rules of polite behaviour online. It was the cyber equivalent of......
[more] Major ISPs to Stand Firm on Anti-Spam Fight Looking to show a unified front against spam, the nation's top e-mail and Internet service providers -- America Online, EarthLink, Microsoft, and Yahoo! -- are expected to outline their efforts in stopping unwanted e-mail at its source.
Representatives from the coalition are scheduled to appear at a press conference Wednesday morning in Washington D.C. to talk about their collaborative efforts. The coalition is based on an anti-spam industry allia......
[more] We're just innocent techies, say accused spammers Lawyers for a Florida firm accused of inundating AOL users with spam have hit back with a motion seeking to dismiss the lawsuit.
According to dismissal papers filed yesterday, AOL's lawsuit against Connor Miller Software in Orlando federal court is "essentially the same" as a case "dismissed" by a Virginia judge last December.
The defendants' lawyer, Seth Berenzweig of law firm Albo & Oblon, says that Judge Claude Hilton of Virginia "con......
[more] Bagle turns to anti-spam trick The latest Bagle variants are hiding their passwords in graphic files in a new ploy to avoid detection by antivirus software Three new Bagle variants (N, O and P) discovered over the weekend differ from previous incarnations because they use an anti-spam trick to try and avoid detection by antivirus software, but experts believe that the attempt won't succeed.
The Bagle worm installs a back door on infected systems and could allow the machine to be used as an em......
[more] ISP Gets Tough With 'Zombie' Customers Broadband provider Comcast is taking a tough new approach to targeting "spam zombies" -- those virus-infected, unwitting spam-sending computers among its broadband base.
The ISP is telling customers to get virus-scanning and firewall software loaded or risk losing their high-speed connection until the problem of virus infections on their computer is fixed.
In recent weeks, the cable broadband giant has been alerting surprised customers to the probl......
[more] Spam reduces faith in email Users increasingly put off by proliferation of offensive junk mail The growing problem of spam is taking a heavy toll on US internet users' perception of the safety of email.
According to a survey by cyber-monitoring group Pew Internet and American Life Project, 63 per cent of users are becoming less trusting of emails, while over a third claim to have cut back their use of email as a communication tool.
The majority of those surveyed indicated that the volume of......
[more] Technology solution to slicing spam lags Lawsuits filed by some of the Web's biggest players against junk e-mailers have portrayed an industry united in the war against spam--but there are few signs of collaboration in developing technology standards that could be more effective in slowing the deluge. America Online, EarthLink, Microsoft and Yahoo scored a major publicity coup earlier this month, when they launched their first joint legal assault against spammers. The suits claim that hundreds......
[more] New .mail top-level domain offers hope for spoiling spam The Internet's governing body is considering a proposal for a .mail top-level domain that could be a powerful new weapon in the fight against spam.
The Anti-Spam Community Registry has asked ICANN (Internet Corporation for the Assignment of Names and Numbers) to include .mail in the next batch of new TLDs, which are expected to be introduced later this year.
The domain will be restricted to the operators of mail servers, and will allo......
[more] AOL blocks spammer sites AOL's latest shots in the anti-spam campaign might cause problems with their customers.
According to the Washington Post, AOL has blocked access to sites peddled by spam email, the only problem is that some of its customers want to visit them.
A legal eagle contacted by the Post said that while the move might help AOL stem spam, some still want what spammers sell. Other legal experts are a little worried that AOL’s paternalistic attitude might break many free speech......
[more] SurfControl Helps Companies Strategically Manage Spam and E-Mail Threats Through New Online Tool ROI Calculator for Anti-Spam Tools Helps IT Managers Quantify and Communicate the Costs and Benefits of E-mail Filtering Solutions SurfControl, the world's number one Web and e-mail filtering company, today announced the availability of a free online resource to help corporate IT managers quantify the cost of spam and assess the business value of e-mail filtering solutions.
According to a recent stu......
[more] Trust me I'm clean, claims virus The latest in a long line of NetSky variants, Netsky-P, tries to lull users into a false sense of security by containing spoofed disclaimers from anti-virus firms.
NetSky-P, first spotted over the weekend, was programmed to begin mass mailing yesterday. After encountering only a few copies of the virus during its "seeding" period, email filtering firm MessageLabs blocked 200,000 copies of the worm yesterday afternoon.
Like previous versions, NetSky-P is......
[more] Postini antispam patent could cause headaches A patent granted to managed e-mail security company Postini Inc. in the U.S. could pose problems for the company's competitors and others in the managed e-mail services market, experts warn. If enforced, the patent, which covers an e-mail "pre-processing service" could grant Postini legal ownership of a wide range of antispam and e-mail security methods. However, some industry experts doubt that the patent, filed in September 2000, will stand up to......
[more] TM domain leads anti-spam charge The registry running the top-level .tm domains is leading the charge against spam by adding the SPF protocol into all its domains' DNS records.
While a large number of ISPs, big online names, anti-spam companies and a few domain registrars have added SPF and so helped verify that an email message comes from the address it says it does, TM Domain Registry’s general manager Paul Kane tells us this is the first time an actual registry has included the protocol.......
[more] SpamHaus lobbies for .mail TLD The SpamHaus Project wants the Internet Corp for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to approve its application to launch a ".mail" top-level internet domain (TLD) and provide a trusted-sender system for email. Technically the plans should be fairly straightforward, but political issues are another matter.
One of ten applications for new TLDs, .mail would act as a "reputation service", providing a way for email recipients to ensure that incoming mail is sent by......
[more] Big Business of Fighting Spam to Get Bigger The mostly fruitless fight against unsolicited commercial e-mail has created many headaches along with a billion-dollar industry to fight it.
The Radicati Group, Palo Alto, CA, this week estimated that the market for spam-fighting software and other measures will reach $979 million this year, thanks to a 50 percent rise in demand over the past 12 months. The researcher forecasts that the market will reach $1.7 billion by 2008.
The high stakes in......
[more] Spam being rapidly outpaced by 'spim' While the torrent of unsolicited spam emails continues to rise, it is being far outpaced by the surge in unwanted messages sent to the users of instant messaging programs, analysts have warned.
The volume of so-called "spim" is set triple in 2004, according to a new report from the Radicati Group, a technology market research firm in Palo Alto, California.
The company projects that 1.2 billion spims will be sent, 70 per cent of which are porn-related.......
[more] Florida firms accused in spam lawsuits Internet service providers are stepping up their efforts to curb the flow of junk e-mails by going to court. Nine Florida companies alleged to be spam operations have been sued in the past month The ''Alabama spammers'' used dozens of phone lines in the Birmingham area, but they never set foot in the state.
The spammers used those Alabama lines to send about 250 million e-mails that advertised adult dating services and herbal Viagra pills. The group of 1......
[more] Blockage for spam filtering vendors Predicted shake-out in sector to leave fewer than 10 firms in business More than 30 enterprise spam filtering vendors will no longer be in operation or will have changed their focus by 2005, leaving fewer than 10 still in business, according to analyst Gartner.
Its Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Spam Filtering report has claimed the industry will see "dramatic consolidation" during the first quarter of 2005, as various vendors either fail, are acquired or thri......
[more] Spam’s cost is hitting schools and taxpayers Once fodder for late-night laugh lines, the volume of unsolicited e-mail is growing so quickly in the US that other people’s spam, as it’s most well-known, is costing you money. This is most clearly true in the case of government, school districts in particular.
Taxpayers in the Pottsgrove School District, for example, have spam at least partly to thank for the recent vote to spend more than $188,000 on upgrading the district’s computer system.......
[more] Internet users prepared to pay ISPs for better spam protection Internet users are prepared to pay extra to their ISPs in return for protection against spam and 'malicious Web content', according to a new survey.
MORI found that the majority of Web users look to their ISPs to block spam, viruses and obscene websites for which 45 per cent are prepared to pay as much as £2 extra per month. Twenty-nine per cent believe the problem is so bad that they would pay an additional £5.
The survey, carr......
[more] Eliminating Spam Requires Team Effort Online sales pitches for home mortgages, human growth hormones, dating services and, in some cases, hardcore pornography are deluging e-mail inboxes. This flood of so-called spam now reportedly accounts for more than half of all e-mail.
Spam is more than just frustrating; it can contain computer viruses, worms or other malicious code that is designed to damage computer networks, files and hard drives. Some spam is designed to download programs onto reci......
[more] The Red, White and Blue of Spam Despite increased legislation and hyper vigilance by IT companies, one industry report says spam has not been canned and the "phishing" industry is now booming.
But to put the blame on Russian hackers or Nigerian royalty would be a false notion.
The report issued by Commtouch Thursday is an analysis of e-mail activity for the month of March. The findings: three months after the CAN-SPAM law was enacted, it's seen no slow-down in spam volume. In fact, the......
[more] SPAM : the unintended consequence of ecommerce One of the problems of doing business online -- spam -- has been spawned by of one of its greatest benefits: email. Unwanted commercial email (junk mail in some lexicons, spam in most) has grown 115% in the last year, from 15 billion email messages to a projected 35 billion this year, according to a study from the Radicati Group.
But Radicati may have been behind the curve. Brightmail, which provides gateway spam protection to 7 of the 10 largest......
[more] "Lighthouse Afghan" fools Outlook spam filter Spammers using hidden words to slip through Bayesian filter… Spammers are inserting hidden words into their email messages to fool Microsoft Outlook's built-in anti-spam technology.
As spam-filtering technologies become more common, spammers have altered the construction of their messages to avoid detection. Although spam is very simple for a human to spot, the artificial intelligence systems used by junk filters rely on spotting obvious keywords......
[more] Wrapping up the messaging and spam tour That's it - the four-city Network World Messaging and Spam Tour is over. If you were one of the attendees, thanks for coming. If you weren't, well, you missed some great events.
One thing we do at these events is award a stupendous, fantastic prize for the best question put to the panel, and on this tour we got some great questions!
Looking back, it is interesting to identify the queries that were asked most often. Three questions were more common......
[more] Could NZ become a spam haven? New Zealand has rocketed to the third largest producer of spam in the region, according to anti-spam company Brightmail.
Spam claiming to originate from New Zealand accounts for 14% of the region's spam production, up from only 2% in January. The biggest offenders are China and Korea with 34% and 30% respectively. Japan is fourth with only 8%.
Brightmail, which provides anti-spam filters to both Telecom and TelstraClear in New Zealand, tracks email traffic t......
[more] Half of all email is now spam According to a recent Yankee Group report titled E-Mail Security Solutions Providers Seek to Stop Spam and Viruses at the Perimeter, half of all e-mail sent today is spam.
The report also claims that the challenge of filtering unwanted messages at the edge of U.S. businesses has created a $140 million market.
It's no secret that spam is a huge problem that the industry and governments are still trying to solve.
"Legislation alone is not sufficient; we a......
[more] U.S. woman joins brother as "spam" defendant The family that spams together, stands together -- stands trial, that is, according to charges filed Wednesday.
Virginia authorities said a North Carolina woman would join her brother as a defendant in a "spam" e-mail case that could net each up to 20 years in prison.
Jessica Jaynes of Raleigh, North Carolina, was charged with violating Virginia's anti-spam law and will stand trial in September, state attorney general Jerry Kilgore said.......
[more] Va. arrests third person in spam dragnet A third person has been arrested in connection with an illegal e-mail operation, the state attorney general announced Wednesday.
Jessica Jaynes, who is also known as Jessica DeGroot, was indicted by a grand jury in Loudoun County on Wednesday. Jaynes is charged with four felony counts of using fraudulent means to send illegal unsolicited bulk e-mail, commonly known as spam.
Jaynes is the sister of Jeremy Jaynes, who was arrested in December on simi......
[more] Germany moots jail for spammers Germany's ruling Social Democratic Party (SPD) is mooting tough sanctions for spammers. These would include big fines for spammers and the companies which use their services, and prison sentences for the worst offenders.
Ulrich Kelber, an SPD MP who is promoting the draft law, says that small fines will not deter the top 50 spammers. "In the event of repeated violation we need really hard sanctions," he said. The law could be a signal to other countries, too,......
[more] US FTC says pornographic "spam" must be labelled Pornographic "spam" e-mail will have to contain a warning on the subject line so Internet users can easily filter it out, the Federal Trade Commission said Tuesday.
Starting May 19, sexually explicit e-mail will have to bear a label reading "SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT:" and the messages themselves will not be allowed to contain graphic material, the FTC said.
Outrage over unsolicited pornography and other forms of junk e-mail spurred Congress to p......
[more] Company warns of bugged spam messages Spam beacons relay back to the spammer whenever a message is opened, company says Hidden code in e-mail messages is increasingly being used to track the success of unsolicited commercial ("spam") e-mail campaigns, according to a warning by an antispam technology company on Tuesday
MX Logic Inc. of Denver, said that up to 50 percent of all spam released in the last year is bugged with so-called "spam beacons" that send a coded message back to the spammer w......
[more] Google's spam plan forwarded to lawyers A message to a spouse confessing to having dented the car would arrive with links to panel beaters. An email from a friend suggesting dinner would land studded with offers from restaurants.
This could be the future of free email services if the search engine behemoth Google has its way. Personal messages would be scanned and loaded with advertising relevant to their content before they have even been read by their intended recipients.
It's the price......
[more] Viruses In 47% Of Junk E-mails According to a survey conducted by Kingsoft, one of China's leading software companies, 47% of all the junk e-mail received by China's Internet surfers contain viruses. Of the 83,641 Internet users that answered the Kingsoft questionnaire, 54% said they are receiving one to five junk e-mails a day on average, and 37% are receiving five to 20 unsolicited mails.
In the second half of March, Kingsoft handed out its anti-spam questionnaire to 100,000 people in mor......
[more] Spam-buster SurfControl in $14.7 mln U.S. purchase British tech firm SurfControl Plc unveiled a deal to acquire U.S.-based Messagesoft for up to $14.69 million on Monday, in a bid to cement its hold on a growing market for software that filters junk emails.
SurfControl, whose software helps to keep computers free of unwanted Web content like pornography and junk emails, said the purchase would give it access to California-based Messagesoft's technology and its Chinese sales and distribution......
[more] 5 years ago: Europeans petition parliament for end to spam 20.04.1999: Graham Watson MEP today launched an attack on email spammers in the European Parliament when he presented the Legal Affairs Committee with a petition calling for an end to junk email.
The petition - signed by 24,000 European internet users - calls for an end to unsolicited email, which Watson described as an invasion of privacy and a huge waste of time and money. Watson said the petition is an example of online democra......
[more] Study Says Anti-Spam Efforts Yield Rapid Returns IDC says a company with 5,000 users can save $783,000 annually by implementing an anti-spam system. A study by research firm IDC should prompt smiles among anti-spam vendors. The report, titled "The True Cost Of Spam And Value Of Anti-Spam Solutions," notes that spam comprised 32% of all E-mail messages last year, double the percentage in 2001.
IDC's 32% figure is significantly lower than spam estimates put forward by anti-spam vendors such as B......
[more] Spamhaus breaches great firewall of China Monitoring project works with Chinese authorities to crack down on spammers Anti-spam organisation Spamhaus is taking its crusade to China following an invitation from the Chinese government.
After the US, more spam is sent from China than any other country, and Spamhaus hopes to persuade the Chinese authorities to implement effective anti-spam legislation and technologies.
A team of Chinese volunteers will monitor spammers and report back to the UK......
[more] Spam showing little sign of abating Companies won't stop spamming - employees won't stop complicating matters... Two factors are combining to ensure that combating spam will continue to be a near-impossible task - the fact that companies are happy to continue flouting anti-spam legislation and the fact that a lack of education among end users is set to keep aggravating the issue.
However, blame for the latter issue can hardly be laid at the feet of employees when 57 per cent of companies......
[more] Spain hit by spam pain Government ISP blocked by anti-spammers State run ISP Telefonica De Espana (TDE) has been blocked from a large number of US web sites.
TDE is the most prestigious spammer on the Abusive Hosts Blocking List (AHBL), which is used by American ISPs to identify the worst spammers in the world and block them.
According to the AHBL TDE users are flooding the world with thousands of junk advertising emails and dodgy financial scams.
It is rare for a whole ISP to be bloc......
[more] 'Ineffective' spam law ignored by EU countries Directive has no jurisdiction over spam from overseas... The EU's anti-spam directive, which was passed in July 2003, has been ignored by most EU member states because it will not stop the spam problem, according to research published by the Institute of Information Law (IvIR) at the InfoSecurity exhibition in London on Tuesday.
In its directive on privacy and electronic communications, the EU last year stipulated that all member countries shoul......
[more] Europe drags heels in war on spam Infosecurity Europe 2004, The shortcomings of Europe's war against spam are highlighted in a study of anti-spam legislation published today. The Institute for Information Law (IViR) of the University of Amsterdam and security firm Sybari Software looked into the law regulating unsolicited commercial email (i.e. spam) in the EU. Special emphasis was placed on the EU's July 2002 Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications.
Their report reveals weak spots......
[more] Employers could be sued for porn spam E-mail porn spam in the workplace could land European employers in court for fostering a hostile work environment, a Dutch researcher says.
The broad wording of new European anti-spam legislation opens up a new breed of legal snares for Europe's corporate sector, according to Lodewijk Asscher.
"European employers must be aware of the risk of new computer-related liabilities," said the researcher for the University of Amsterdam's Institute for Info......
[more] Malicious spam on the rise says Brightmail Anti-spam filtering company Brightmail is warning users about an increase in malicious spam following the introduction of anti-spam legislation in a number of jurisdictions.
Brightmail, which has filters on around 25% of the world’s email addresses, is used by both TelstraClear and Telecom’s Xtra and so covers around 85% of New Zealand’s email.
Brightmail vice president for Asia Pacific, Garry Sexton, says that with the introduction of anti-spam......
[more] Spam deluge nearly sinks e-hosting business A Bellevue company that has been trying to protect residential and business Internet users from unsolicited commercial e-mail likely was targeted by a major spam operation for that very reason, its founder said yesterday.
Lee Wright said ModoMail is still struggling to survive after being besieged by forged e-mails — at one point receiving 300 a second, clogging his system.
Messages hawking bogus diet patches and penis enlargement pills were b......
[more] Government talks tough on spam DTI considers 'serious enforcement' of e-privacy legislation The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) is looking to strengthen the UK's defences against spammers.
"Spam is not going to be stopped with simple regulation," said Jean-Jacques Sahel, deputy head of international communications policy at the DTI.
"We need to take a more pragmatic approach and seriously enforce the [European] directive [on e-privacy]. Maybe we need to give the Information Commissio......
[more] Bill Gates 'can't stop spam' More than 80 percent of security professionals do not believe that Bill Gates' crusade against spam will solve the problem, according to a survey A survey of IT security professionals conducted at the Infosecurity show in London this week revealed that more than 80 percent of people do not think that Bill Gates' pledge to eliminate spam within two years is realistic.
In June 2003, the Microsoft chairman called for cooperation between government and corporations to......
[more] UK Companies Warned to Filter Spam A Dutch researcher has warned British businesses that a clause in the European anti-spam law could hold businesses accountable for porn showing up in corporate email accounts.
Researcher Lodewijk Asscher, from the University of Amsterdam's Institute for Information Law, says the anti-spam legislation is comprised of broad wording and some porn might be slipping through. Employers could be held responsible if porn at work prompts a staff member to launch a......
[more] US goes after NZ spammer The US Federal Trade Commission has filed a legal action against Global Web Promotions, a spam enterprise that operates out of Australia and New Zealand, as part of its first criminal prosecution under the new US federal anti-spam law.
The action is half of a two-part action underway by the FTC.
In the first, the FTC filed a complaint against Detroit-based spam operation Phoenix Avatar. That complaint was developed in a joint investigation with the US Attorney’s O......
[more] Most Spam Web Sites Hosted in China While most spam comes from the US, the web sites they advertise are mostly hosted in China, according to numbers released yesterday by Commtouch Software Inc, a small anti-spam software vendor.
Commtouch said that in April 71% of the URLs found in spam directed to web servers in China, compared to 22% that were in the US. Brazil, a notorious haven for malicious hackers, came third, with 2.2% of sites.
However, only 6.2% of spam actually was sent from IP......
[more] Court halts spammer's anti-spam company gag Spam King's crusade takes a knock A district court judge has rescinded a temporary restraining order against anti-spam operation SpamCop, in an early blow to a case brought by self-professed "Spam King" Scott Richter.
A Northern California District Court judge issued a temporary restraining order last week to prevent SpamCop from interfering with messages sent by alleged junk e-mailer OptInRealBig.com, whose owner and president is Richter.
The......
[more] SurfControl Says 'Brand Spoofing' Spams Up Nearly 500 Percent Since January 'Brand spoof' spam scams increased nearly 500 percent since January, and by 51 times since May 2003, SurfControl, the world's number one Web and e-mail filtering company, reported today. The company also warned individuals and companies to beware of a new dirty trick employed by brand spoof spammers -- a fake address bar that appears in an e-mail recipients' Web browser -- that makes
these e-mail scams look even more......
[more] E-Mail Scammer Gets Four Years An Internet scammer who used e-mail and a fraudulent Web site to steal hundreds of credit card numbers was sentenced to almost four years in jail Tuesday, one of the stiffest-ever penalties handed down for online fraud.
Houston, Texas federal court Judge Vanessa Gilmore sentenced Houston resident Zachary Hill to 46 months in jail for his role in duping consumers into turning over 473 credit card numbers.
The Justice Department said the sentence is "one of,......
[more] Can Spam Not Working, But FBI Poised to Bust Gangs Spammers and anti-spammers don't think the US CAN-SPAM Act is working, but for different reasons, it emerged during a Congressional hearing yesterday, at which the FBI also said it is closing in on spam gangs with potential ties to organized crime.
Jana Monroe, assistant director of the FBI's Cyber Division, told a hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee yesterday that the FBI's Operation SLAM-Spam has identified 100 spammers, targeted 50......
[more] Secure E-Mail Specs Could Merge Microsoft meets with SPF author to craft a technology standard. After submitting its Caller ID e-mail authentication specification to a standards body, Microsoft is discussing merging its spec with another, called Sender Policy Framework, or SPF.
E-mail experts from Microsoft will spend a weekend meeting with SPF author Meng Weng Wong of Pobox.com, looking for ways to merge the closely-related Caller ID and SPF standards, according to Wong.
"Basically, we'......
[more] Spam clogs German government's e-mail system German parliamentarians and government employees experienced long delays with their e-mail delivery earlier this week, following a flood of spam that clogged the government's e-mail system, a spokesman at the Federal Ministry of the Interior said Friday.
"We aren't having any difficulty so far today but, yes, we have had problems this week," the spokesman said, declining to say whether the flood of unwanted e-mail was the result of a targeted att......
[more] Two thirds of emails now spam: official Spam hotspots are emerging as the global levels of junk mail worldwide continue to increase. More than two thirds (67.6 per cent) of the 840m emails scanned by filtering firm MessageLabs last month was identified as spam. MessageLabs figures also indicate significant regional variations and spam "hot spots", despite attempts to deter spammers through legislation.
Currently, email traffic sent to the United States, the UK, Germany, Australia and Hong K......
[more] Porn spammers ignore new labelling rule Senders of pornographic spam are failing to comply with a new US rules that require a warning in the subject line Spammers flooding the Internet with pornographic solicitations apparently are not abiding by a new federal rule that took effect last week.
Not only did illegal sexually-explicit spam fail to slow down after the regulations took effect on 19 May, but pornographic email measured by one anti-spam company jumped from about 2 million messages i......
[more] Spam surge 'turning Britain into e-pariah' Criticism of the UK's spam laws is growing nearly as quickly as the problem of junk mail itself The government's failure to give businesses protection from unsolicited commercial email risks turning the UK into an Internet outcast, according to one of its political opponents.
Michael Fabricant, the shadow minister for economic affairs, claimed this week that Britain's anti-spam laws need to be strengthened, given the continued rise in the amount of......
[more] Spam Trojans a Growing Problem for ISPs Most Spam Now Originating from Residential Broadband Networks Worms, Spam Trojans to Blame Spam traffic created and routed by spam "trojans" is clogging ISP mail servers, forcing unplanned network upgrades and stoking antagonism between large and small ISPs, according to an analysis by Sandvine Incorporated. Spam trojans are likely responsible for up to 80% of all spam.
What used to be merely a nuisance is becoming a major headache for service provider......
[more] Zombie PCs generate 80 per cent of spam Majority of junk mail coming from home PCs infected with spam Trojans Four-fifths of the spam clogging ISPs' mail servers and affecting businesses emanates from so-called zombie home PCs infected with spam Trojans, according to security firm Sandvine.
The company found that Trojans, typically installed surreptitiously by worms or spyware, exploit vulnerabilities to bypass normal email routing and drop spam messages directly into end user machines.......
[more] ITU to hold spam summit Telcos and ISPs invited to tackle growing menace of junk email The world's leading telcos and internet service providers will gather in Geneva next month to discuss the development of an anti-spam framework.
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) will serve as a forum for governments, regulators and consumer groups.
Because spam is a potential threat to digital services and a "significant and growing problem for users, networks and the internet as a whole......
[more] Spam landscape bleaker than ever Columnist Jonathan B. Spira says now that CAN-SPAM has made the problem worse, e-mail is losing its value because legitimate messages are outnumbered sour sales pitches. It is perhaps no coincidence that, while spam e-mail volume is increasing seemingly without bounds, more and more of my correspondents have commented that they "missed" an important piece of e-mail.
This led me to study the impact that the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography......
[more] Microsoft calls for outbound filtering against spam In its continuing fight against unsolicited commercial e-mail, Microsoft plans to filter outgoing messages on its consumer mail services and is busy developing new "proofing" technologies, the software maker's chief spam fighter said Thursday.
The fight is also one against the clock. Microsoft last year set a two-year goal to make spam a problem of the past. There are 19 months left, Ryan Hamlin, general manager of Microsoft's Security Tec......
[more] Zombie PCs spew out 80% of spam Four-fifths of spam now emanates from computers contaminated with Trojan horse infections, according to a study by network management firm Sandvine out this week. Trojans and worms with backdoor components such as Migmaf and SoBig have turned infected Windows PCs into drones in vast networks of compromised zombie PCs.
Sandvine reckons junk mails created and routed by "spam Trojans" are clogging ISP mail servers, forcing unplanned network upgrades and stoking......
[more] Microsoft's anti-spam plan 'hijacked by zombies' Microsoft's plan to reduce spam by forcing an email sender's machine to solve a puzzle may be defeated by the Internet's army of zombie PCs, say security experts One of Microsoft's plans to fight the spam epidemic is unlikely to adversely affect spammers or reduce the quantity of spam, according to security experts.
Microsoft's chairman Bill Gates has been calling for the IT industry to work together and eradicate the spam problem. About six m......
[more] United front against spam urged The European Commission has urged the computer industry to sort out its anti-spam strategy. Lack of co-operation between all those tackling spam was holding back efforts to stem unwanted commercial messages, said EC official Philippe Gerard.
At an anti-spam meeting in London, he said it was up to industry to do its part now that laws were in place to prosecute spammers
Junk mail accounts for nearly 70% of e-mails worldwide, say experts.
"We see differ......
[more] EU attacks anti-spam industry A senior European Union official has berated the anti-spam industry for failure to agree a common strategy. Philippe Gerard said that lack of co-operation was handicapping the fight to hold back the junk mail tsunami.
"We see different initiatives going in all different directions and the effectiveness is maybe not there," Gerard, an official with the EC's Information Society directorate, told an anti-spam meeting in London. The BBC reports that Gerard said tha......
[more] Firms won't pay extra for spam filters Few European companies willing to pay more to their ISPs for protection The problem of spam continues to get worse - but few European companies are willing to pay extra to their Internet Service Providers (ISPs) for protection.
Ian Fogg, senior broadband analyst with Jupiter Research, said that virus writers and spammers are increasingly working together, so services that deal with these problems can be bundled together naturally.
But speaking at th......
[more] Spam Explosion Set Off by Russians Russian gangs of spammers are so prolific that by December, junk e-mails could account for 90 percent of all messages sent via the Internet -- and Moscow does not want to do anything about it, a leading anti-spammer said Wednesday.
Steve Linford, director of London-based Spamhaus, a research and lobby group that works closely with U.S. and European law enforcement agencies, said that Russian computer gangs are directly responsible for some two-thirds of th......
[more] Microsoft Lays on More Spam Lawsuits Microsoft Corp has added eight more US lawsuits to its anti-spam enforcement campaign, meaning the firm now has filed over 80 separate cases related to alleged spamming activities over the last few years.
This week, the company used the US federal CAN-SPAM Act and its local Washington state spam statute to sue potentially dozens of individuals and companies, all of which are currently listed as "John Doe" defendants.
The complaints allege that the de......
[more] Spam gangs exploit UK legal loophole Britain seen as soft touch by groups from continent who can bombard the country's email inboxes with impunity, warn campaigners. Gangs of European spammers are moving to Britain to exploit a legal loophole which allows them to bombard email inboxes with impunity, anti-spam experts warned yesterday.
Campaigners have claimed the gangs are moving from countries such as Italy, where they face severe financial penalties or prison, to Britain, where the most they......
[more] Justifiying anti-spam costs Analyzing the toll unwanted e-mail takes on productivity, bandwidth, storage and support aids your attack. If spam has a bright side, it's that the universal annoyance this unwanted e-mail causes everyone from the loading dock manager to the chairman of the board makes it easier for IT to win spending approval for tools to help fight the beast.
Spam's strain on corporate coffers isn't just in lost productivity, which some companies report can be in the hundreds of......
[more] Canadian spam king won't send more e-mail A Canadian man accused of being one of the world's biggest spammers has agreed to stop sending the junk messages and plans to educate children about the dangers of the Internet, a newspaper reported Tuesday.
In March, Yahoo! Inc. sued Eric Head, his father and brother as part of a worldwide industry crackdown on hundreds of people sending unsolicited e-mail, or spam.
Yahoo alleged the three men ran a huge spamming operation and sent more than 94......
[more] Outlook's security compromised by spammers Spammers have found a way to bypass Outlook 2003's anti-spam security by embedding images into their emails Spammers who send pornographic pictures in the hope of enticing the recipient to signing up to an adult Web site have discovered a way to bypass Outlook 2003's security features, which are designed to stop potentially offensive content being automatically displayed in the preview window.
The latest version of Microsoft's Outlook was built with......
[more] Spammers start to use spyware Spammers have started to use hacking software that hides itself on your computer collecting information about you and what you do on the internet.
According to email security firm MessageLabs, ‘spyware’ is being installed to automatically send personal information about the PC’s owner back to the spammer.
Spammers then incorporate the personal information into spam emails to send back to the victim, who might be less suspicious of the emails because they ap......
[more] ISPs Gang Up on Spammers Even unwitting spammers could lose Internet access under tough proposal. An industry organization representing heavyweight e-mail providers Yahoo, Microsoft, America Online, and EarthLink have teamed on recommendations for ending spam, including cutting off the senders' Internet access.
A Statement of Intent, released Tuesday by the Anti-Spam Technical Alliance (ASTA), lists suggestions and "best practice" recommendations for ISPs, e-mail service providers, governmen......
[more] Spammers use your cat's name to sell you Viagra Spammers are using spyware to steal personal information -- such as a pet's name -- so they can send spam emails with personalised subject lines Spammers have started using spyware to steal personal information so they can customise the subject lines of unsolicited emails to increase their chances of being read.
Research by email security firm MessageLabs has revealed that spammers are targeting companies and individuals with unsolicited messag......
[more] Spam is making computers sick Spam overload is making computers sick and driving users mad. Research commissioned by Yahoo finds that the average British PC has nine 'sick days' per year, two more than the average for workers.
Six of these are wasted battling with spam and three more days are lost due to viruses.
Nearly half of British computer users find dealing with junk e-mails more stressful than traffic jams and the majority want service providers to act.
Lethargy
Over half o......
[more] Spam costs businesses millions every year: report Businesses without anti-spam solutions lose around US$4.1 million in productivity each year for firms with 5,000 e-mail users. This is according to IDC's white paper titled What you can do and should do about the rising cost of spam. The paper details how spam works, the relative cost of spam, the impact of spam and how to assess solutions and outlines tactics to help businesses fight spam.
According to IDC, e-mail users in organisations wit......
[more] US, UK and Australia sign anti-spam act The UK, US and Australia are combining forces to combat spam. They have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to promote joint enforcement and investigation of spammers across the three countries.
Stephen Timms, the UK communications minister, today called on other countries to join the trio in their anti-spam crusade. He said the MoU is "not going to solve spam overnight but it is going to help. It reinforces our determination to tackle spam with......
[more] China remains haven for spam Web sites The number of unique new unsolicited e-mail - spam - messages has risen 42% from 350,000 per day at the end of 2003 to 500,000 a day by the end of June, according to anti-spam vendor Commtouch Software.
And while 49 countries have been identified as hosting Web sites referenced in spam e-mails, China is still the host for 73.5% of such sites, Commtouch said in a statement Wednesday. Spammers include those site links to provide more information regardin......
[more] Junk mail host nations named and shamed Five countries are hosting the overwhelming majority - a staggering 99.68 per cent - of spammer websites, according to a study out yesterday.
Most spam that arrives in email boxes contains a URL to a website within an email, to allow users to buy spamvertised products online. While 49 countries around the world are hosting spammer websites, unethical hosting firms overwhelmingly operate from just a few global hotspots. Anti-spam vendors Commtouch recko......
[more] Spam could drive millions from Internet Millions of users may abandon the Internet and phone messaging systems unless governments and software companies join forces to block the spread of spam, say key figures in an anti-spam drive.
The global battle against spammers who use the Internet to disseminate pornography, distribute unsolicited sales pitches and engage in the new menace of "phishing" can be won in two years, officials running a three-day U.N. meeting told a news conference on Tuesda......
[more] ITU wants spam dead within two years Conference delegates call for international co-operation to defeat 'epidemic' Delegates at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) spam conference have called for standardised, tougher worldwide anti-spam legislation, which they believe could stamp out junk email within the next two years.
The ITU has brought together regulators from 60 countries and a number of international organisations, including the World Trade Organisation and the Cou......
[more] ISPs look inward to stop spam Many major ISPs recently have come to this realization about the fight against spam: They are both part of the solution and part of the problem.
Every U.S. ISP uses anti-spam techniques to catch unwanted messages coming into their networks before they reach users. Recently, thanks to the urging of industry groups and coordination among providers, ISPs also are taking measures to limit the spam emanating from their networks. While no one is declaring the war......
[more] New SurfControl Resources Help IT Managers Increase the Value of IT Investments Deployment and Best Practices Guides Help Reduce Vulnerabilities and Optimize Network Resources Despite predictions for increased IT spending in 2004, many network managers are still facing pressure to help lower the total cost of ownership of the corporate network infrastructure, reported SurfControl (London: SRF), the world leader in enterprise Web and e-mail filtering. In response, SurfControl today introduced Su......
[more] 'Spam King' escapes $20m fine - by $19.95m 'I will be a good boy from now on, honest…' Last week, self-proclaimed Spam King and ladies underwear seller Scott Richter, was staring down the barrel of a $20m fine courtesy of New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer. Now, Richter has agreed to play by the rules and Spitzer has agreed to drop his price by £19.95m.
Richter, proprietor of 'email marketing' company OptInRealBig.com - dubbed the world's second most prolific spammer by anti-spam organi......
[more] Australian law claims spam success Legislation designed to cut back on junk emails and texts appears to be having some success Down Under The Spam Act 2003 has led to the closure of several major Australian-based spammers, the Australian communications Authority (ACA) claimed today.
Acting ACA chairman Dr Bob Horton said that the thwarted spammers had reacted to an ACA warning in late March that the Act was due to come into force in April and that they would need to comply with it.
"The ACA’......
[more] Some People Like Spam According To Poll That everyone hates spam is considered a universal truth. A new poll suggests that the hatred isn't as universal as thought. According to a Yahoo Mail global survey of 3,100 Internet users, 20 percent of U.S. residents report buying products from spammers and upward of 30 percent have responded to spam.
The survey, conducted in May, give spammers cause for joy. The industry generally considers a response rate of 0.5 percent superb for spam messages. Alt......
[more] IBM Research Joins Fight Against Spam IBM Corp.'s research arm on Friday will debut a new spam filtering test platform called SpamGuru at the first Conference on E-Mail and Spam in Mountain View, Calif.
The new offering will make its way to the enterprise with the release of IBM's Lotus Workplace Messaging 2.0 product later this quarter.
SpamGuru, which is designed to work with other anti-spam products already on the market, is a server-based product that combines a number of spam-blocking t......
[more] Think Globally, Block Locally Spam is a global problem: Even though most of it originates in the United States, the bulk of it is sent from overseas on behalf of American spammers. Is law or technology the best way to solve the problem?
That's the question considered by privacy experts at a conference called "International Spam Law & Policies: The Global Case." Most speakers firmly came down against legislation, promoting a mix of private legal action and technology.
The conference, hel......
[more] Dutch telecom watchdog to take on auto-diallers, spyware Although its anti-spam activities have somewhat stolen the limelight, OPTA, the Dutch telecoms regulator, is starting to deal with other unlawful internet activities—like the surreptitious placement of cookies, auto-diallers and spyware on the hard drives of unsuspecting computer users—and is gearing up to handle complaints and pursue offenders.
Part of the Telecommunication Act stipulates that it is illegal to covertly access personal......
[more] Pupils bear spam e-mail overload The majority of e-mail messages being sent to school children in London are spam. The first week of a project to filter the e-mails travelling across the London Grid for Learning has revealed that 75% of the messages are junk.
The most popular subjects for the spam were the drugs Viagra and Valium. Much of the remaining mail was pornographic.
The network provides more than a million school children access to net-based learning aids.
Drugs and porn
The London......
[more] Spam is born in the U.S.A. The vast majority of spam originates in the United States and this summer, like last, much of it is pornographic in nature. Nearly 86 per cent of all spam messages sent since May 2004 came from the United States, according to e-mail security firm CipherTrust. This indicates spammers are finding ways around that country's anti-spam legislation.
U.S. spam-sending computers have been quite busy, as just 28 percent of IP addresses used to send spam are located in the co......
[more] Better checks to stop spam An open-source anti-spam group is pioneering technical changes to the email system Open-source anti-spam specialist ASSP this week became the latest software developer to implement the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) anti-spam scheme.
Beta versions of ASSP with SPF support are currently being tested, and SPF is set to be included in the next version of ASSP, expected soon. SPF extends the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) and Domain Name System (DNS) so systems do no......
[more] Somebody else's spam It's very depressing how almost every conversation about the Internet devolves into a discussion of how to combat spam. It's even more depressing how much worse spam keeps getting. And more depressing again still that despite the many technical conferences currently being conducted on the subject, how ineffective most current strategies seem to be. This week, LINX – the London Internet eXchange, through which about 90 percent of the UK's Internet traffic passes – announced......
[more] Can IT keep up with malware authors? Web users and technology professionals alike are both battling a flood of malicious software - and it increasingly looks like the 'bad guys' are winning Are malware authors now too far ahead of information security professionals for the latter to ever recover?
Indications are information security professionals -- and ordinary users of information and communication technology -- are increasingly on the back foot.
A new report from a United States-based rese......
[more] DIY phishing kits found on the internet Further rise in attacks likely with easy-to-use kits free to download Do-it-yourself phishing kits are being made available for download free of charge from the internet, security watchers have warned.
Security company Sophos said that the availability of such kits, which require no technical knowledge to use, means that anyone with web access can potentially launch their own phishing attack and attempt to defraud unsuspecting computer users.
The DIY kit......
[more] Stopping spam at the source New antispam technology standards are on the way that promise to hit spammers where it hurts the most--their wallets. At issue is the ability to authenticate the original source of e-mail messages, a major hole in the current system that allows spammers to easily forge return addresses and hide their tracks.
This month, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) reviewed several e-mail authentication proposals, agreeing to fast-track a submission from Microsoft know......
[more] US charged as largest spam producer Anti-spam laws appear to have little impact, research claims The United States is the biggest creator of spam emails, according to a new survey by anti-spam and virus protection firm Sophos.
Despite the introduction of anti-spam legislation nine months ago, America tops the table of the world's 12 worst offenders, producing more than 42 percent of all junk email reaching inboxes.
More than 40 per cent of spam is being distributed using 'zombie computers,' wh......
[more] Arrests made for spam, ID thefts Federal and state law enforcement agencies have arrested or charged dozens of people with crimes related to junk e-mail, identity theft and online scams in recent weeks, according to several people involved in the actions.
The cases, which have been brought by law enforcement offices around the country and without publicity, are expected to be announced by Attorney General John Ashcroft in a news conference in Washington on Thursday.
This year, federal authori......
[more] US cracks down on spam mountain John Ashcroft, the attorney General of the US, is expected to announce on Thursday dozens of lawsuits against alleged spammers following a low key campaign against the practise across the US. The arrests have been made over the last few weeks as part of a coord
