Spam

It's no wonder there's spam, and lots of it. According to a survey released Tuesday, 11 percent of computer users have bought something touted by spam, and 9 percent have been ripped off by spam scams.

The poll, jointly conducted by Mirapoint, a message security vendor, and the Radicati Group, a research firm that specializes in e-mail messaging issues, found a surprising fraction of computer users actually open spam, buy its products, and get suckered into its bogus schemes.

Security firm Clearswift has conducted an in-depth study of unsolicited e-mail which reveals a very unusual trend - spammers have turned their backs on porn. When Clearswift first started the Spam Index two years ago porn was the dominant inbox plague. Now thanks to increased sophistication of anti-spam technologies, the company claims that unsolicited mailers have settled for the safer options of healthcare and financial spam.

Just 10 per cent of all email is a genuine message, with the volume of spam email, phishing attacks, trojans and virus-infected email messages rising 600 per cent in the past year.

According to Lycos.co.uk, while junk mail has been on the rise for some time, phishing spam and pharming viruses are growing fast.

Phishing emails are messages sent by criminals supposedly from a user's bank asking them to enter personal and financial details. The user is given a link to a spoof site, from which criminals can harvest any details entered

The first live run of the Indian Ocean Tsunami warning system earlier this month turned out to be a bit of a disaster. Not a natural disaster, but it provided an unexpected result for some users of Apache's SpamAssassin. Subscribers to the automated e-mail warning system, which sent out an alert for an earthquake off Northern Sumatra that rated 6.7 on the Richter scale, found the Tsunami warning notification deferred as spam.

The problem arises if the open source filter is installed straight out of the box; the messages (usually written in upper case) are not considered spam.

A company which sent nearly 1.4 million unsolicited emails promoting a bogus premium rate prize scam has been asked to clean up its act by the Office of Fair Trading - but has escaped punishment.

In the OFT's view the emails, sent by Churchcastle, trading as 'Fast Cash' and 'UK Prize Bonanza', were misleading as the stated prizes of £5,000 and £10,000 did not materialise.

Instead the 190,000 recipients who called the premium rate prize line at a cost of around £7.50 were rewarded with less spectacular prizes such as holiday vouchers, or in some cases a family portrait.

The Beijing government has joined the effort to fight spam by adopting the London Action Plan on International Spam Enforcement Collaboration, it emerged yesterday.

Following months of discussions, the Chinese government has finally agreed to sign up to the plan which aims to encourage greater co-operation between countries in analysing spam campaigns, investigating their origin, and encouraging ISPs around the world to take appropriate measures to defend innocent users.

A steady diet of spam -- the electronic variety -- can be good for you.

Researchers split a group of more than 2,100 Canadians into two groups. One group got emails that promoted healthy lifestyles, the other got none.

"These were informative and motivational messages sent weekly for 12 weeks," explained study leader Ron Plotnikoff of the University of Alberta.

The emails promoted the benefits of a good diet and physical activity.

Computer Associates has unveiled its eTrust Anti-Spam software for consumers.

The tool offers common spam filtering features, including white lists for trusted senders and support for digital signatures to verify the sender's authenticity.

It also allows 'bonded messages', an industry standard where messages from bulk email senders are guaranteed to be delivered to a user's inbox. The bulk email company undertakes not to send any spam and backs up that promise with a bond.

No place does spamming and scamming quite like South Florida.

Together, Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties are home to more spammers than any country on Earth. And it's not just the annoying pitches for mortgages and sex pills. Increasingly, law enforcement officials are finding that junk e-mail is a favored weapon of predators, an easy way for criminals to target a world of potential victims from behind a wall of anonymity.

"Return to sender," exhorted the ostensibly late Elvis Presley, appending the notation "address unknown." And if the return address on the e-mail in your Yahoo! inbox is cryptic, that's just what shall happen. The Internet mega-portal is teaming up with Chief Executive John Chambers' Cisco Systems to do away with odious spam in a whole new way. The tech firms announced late Wednesday that they have forged together two means of harnessing cryptography.