As spam filters get better at weeding out unwanted messages, spammers have started inserting their messages inside Microsoft Word documents and attaching them to e-mails.
On Thursday, content security specialists Marshal warned users to beware of Word documents attached to e-mail messages. Unlike executable files, Word documents are commonly exchanged via e-mail and are usually ignored by spam filters.
A Shenzhen company has been fined for sending bulk junk email in what is believed to be the first case of its kind in China where more than 50 billion spam messages are received a year, state media said on Tuesday.
China has a prospering cyber-world, hosting 111 million Internet users, 700,000 Web sites and fast-growing online business, but officials say 60 percent of the email Chinese people receive is spam, or electronic junk mail.
The Americans remain the kings of spam with the Chinese close behind, say security experts at Sophos, but Canada continues to be conspicuous by its absence from the ranks of top spamming countries.
Sophos' list of the top 12 spam-relaying countries, called "the Dirty Dozen," released Monday, shows that Canada has one again not appeared on the list, which is issued four times a year. That puts the Canadian contribution to spam at less than 1.6 per cent.
Internet con artists are turning to an old tool - the phone - to keep tricking Web users who have learned not to click on links in unsolicited e-mails. A batch of e-mails recently making the rounds were crafted to appear as if they came from PayPal, EBay Inc.'s online payment service. Like traditional phony "phishing" e-mails, these said there was some problem with the recipients' accounts.
Phishing e-mails generally instruct recipients to click a link in the e-mail to confirm their personal information; the link actually connects to a bogus site where the data are stolen.
Those internet spammers are at it again and they're finding new ways to send us more junk. Bill Gephardt gives us a vocabulary lesson.
Have you heard of Spim or Splog?
They stand for Spam Instant Messaging and Spam On Blogs.
You'll be hearing these words more in the future.
Now that spam blocking software is getting better companies and hackers have taken their spam junk mail to the next level.
They can now focus on instant messengers and you web logs.
Answer the missed call? You've been sucked in to a missed call marketing campaign.
Seven young cyber-sleuths are trying to do what authorities have so far failed to achieve - shut down an international mobile phone spam scam that is affecting thousands of Australians each day.
A company linked to the scam claims it has access to "every single mobile phone user in [Australia]" after allegedly buying a massive database from a Cyprus company involved in porn and gambling websites and Australian-based nightclubs and DVD rental companies.
A wave of strange emails with strings of numbers as their only message are most likely a spammer's or hacker's test of his mailing list, several security companies concluded Thursday, and may presage a junk mail campaign or a malware attack.
The messages, which Panda Software characterised as "ghost mail," are unusual in that the send and from fields are the recipient's own address, that the subject heading is a number - 455, 557, 56757, 586876, or 1545453 - and the message body is a mix of HTML and apparently random numbers.
One of the world's most prolific spammers has settled with Microsoft and the state of Texas for $1 million, including the seizure of most of his assets. Ryan Pitylak, 24, was accused of sending 25 million mails per day and was considered the fourth worst spammer in the world by Spamhaus.
Neither Microsoft nor the state of Texas had publicly announced the settlement, which came last month. Instead, the first public mention of an agreement came in Pitylak's personal web log, where he announced he was starting his own antispam consulting firm.
More spam is relayed through Asia than any other continent â a sharp difference from the situation two years ago when the United States accounted for over half of all spam sent to the world. According to a Sophos report on the top 12 spam relaying countries for the first quarter of 2006, Asia has taken over the top spot (42.8 percent) for spam relaying as a continent, in front of North America and Europe at 25.6 and 25 percent respectively.
SCHOOLS in Cobb County will have to pay more than $250,000 extra for their phone services after a leading bid was caught in a spam filter.
Elite Telecom Services bid for the contract to provide telephone services to the school system and undercut the next best bidder, BellSouth by $250,000.
But his bid never made it to the school on time and the school's administrators are blaming an over enthusiastic spam filter.
