Spam

Internet users are about to get a new tool in the fight against spam and fraudulent e-mail. On Monday, security vendor CipherTrust plans to release what it's billing as the first "reputation toolbar" for e-mail clients.

Web surfers can already download browser plug-ins like the Netcraft toolbar or SiteAdviser, which evaluate the trustworthiness of the Web sites they visit, but the CipherTrust TrustedSource Toolbar is the first such product designed for e-mail clients, according to the company.

America Online's controversial plan to charge mass e-mailers a fee to bypass their anti-spam system highlights the other, lesser-known, horn of the junk-e-mail problem: Filters that allegedly work too well.

At issue is the problem of "false positives," industry-speak for legitimate messages mistakenly filtered out by anti-spam software.

It was a typical first-thing activity. I'd turned my computer on, run the spam filter, and was checking through it for e-mails that shouldn't be there. As sometimes happens, there were a couple, and a couple of clicks later, McAfee SpamKiller sent them on their way to my e-mail.

This is a habit that I've formed over the years because I've learned that despite the technology, false positives do exist and sometimes the e-mail that's on the kill list is important.

A Perth company accused of sending millions of spam emails around the world is continuing to send bulk unsolicited electronic mail, the federal court has heard.

A federal court judge today began hearing landmark legal action by Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) against Clarity1 Pty Ltd and its sole director Wayne Robert Mansfield.

Since Yahoo first proposed its DomainKeys authentication standard for email (DKIM), AOL has played coy.

That strategy has apparently served the uber-ISP well, as it has been extended indefinitely.

In a standing-room-only webinar courting direct marketers, AOL speaker Nicholas Graham was asked when the firm will get around to adopting DKIM's cryptographic-based technology. Christine Blank of DMNews reports Graham responded, "We will have to wait and see. The facts are still out."

Australian anti-spam vendor New Millennium Solutions sees potential dangers in a scheme by Internet giants Yahoo and America Online (AOL) to offer a 'certified' email service that guarantees credible senders delivery for a fee.

It could lead to a constant deluge of unstoppable spam from major marketing and advertising companies that pay ISPs for this privilege, according to NMS Chairman, Peter Stewart.

Companies will soon have to buy the electronic equivalent of a postage stamp if they want to be certain that their e-mail will be delivered to many of their customers. America Online and Yahoo, two of the world's largest providers of e-mail accounts, are about to start using a system that gives preferential treatment to messages from companies that pay from 1/4 of a cent to a penny each to have them delivered. The senders must promise to contact only people who have agreed to receive their messages, or risk being blocked entirely.

The U.S. still tops the list of the top 12 spam relaying countries, according to a report by Sophos, a provider of integrated threat management products. However, the US has made significant reductions and for the first time accounts for less than a quarter of all spam.

Australia is 23rd on the list and New Zealand is so far down the list that Sophos can't give us an exact ranking.

Almost a quarter of the world's spam in the last three months of 2005 was sent from computers in the United States, according to U.K. antivirus company Sophos.

The U.S. is closely followed by China, with 22.3 percent. South Korea rounds out the top three with 9.7 percent, according to Sophos, which said the level of non-English language spam is rising. The company bases its numbers on a scan of all junk mail caught by its spam traps.

Russia has more in common with Nigeria these days than just oil.

Following up on the politically charged jailing of oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a wave of scam e-mails in the style of Nigeria's notorious spammers have been popping up in inboxes from Moscow to Kentucky.

But instead of impassioned pleas by dead African dictators' aides to move millions of dollars overseas, the appeals appear to come from the inner circle of the man who was once Russia's richest.