Spam

Sanford 'Spamford' Wallace has agreed to stop his use of spyware programs while he fights a lawsuit from the US Federal Trade Commission. Wallace and his companies, SmartBot.net and Seismic Entertainment Productions, are restricted by the deal to serving up pop-up ads to surfers who visit their websites. The FTC alleges that Wallace's software infiltrates PC to serve a barrage of pop-up ads. The ads try to bully users into buying anti-spyware products, Spy Wiper or Spy Deleter. Worse still, the products fail to clean up the mess, the FTC says.

According to the Korea Information Security Agency the number of unwanted SMS and phone calls to mobiles surpasses that of email spam.

The KISA said Tuesday mobile spam reported to the state-owned institute numbered 244,151 during the first 10 months of this year, in comparison to 78,063 of unsolicited e-mail messages during the same span.

The Dutch telecommunications industry watchdog said Tuesday it has issued its first fines against spammers, including one person and two companies who sent unwanted e-mails and mobile telephone text messages. The Independent Post and Telecommunications Authority, known by its Dutch acronym Opta, also said it has signed an agreement with French privacy watchdog CNIL to exchange information on spammers. Opta has been empowered to enforce a Dutch ban on spam since May.

AOL, the world's largest Internet service provider, believes spammers are starting to give up _ at least when it comes to sending junk to its subscribers. The number of attempted e-mails to America Online Inc. members averaged 1.6 billion in November, down from 2.1 billion a year earlier, the company said Monday. AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham attributed the drop largely to spammers moving on after realizing that many of their messages won't get through AOL's anti-spam filters or that they might get sued for trying.

The United States is in a league of its own when it comes to sending junk mail to e-mail users.

Researchers at security software company Sophos found that 42 percent of all spam sent this year came from the United States, based on a scan by its researchers of a global network of honey pots--computers designed to attract spam e-mails and viruses.

Sophos said this is evidence that America's antispam legislation simply isn't working.

A federal judge has refused to accept a guilty plea from a former America Online employee accused of selling the Internet provider's customer list to a "spammer," saying he was unsure a crime had been committed.

U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein stopped a Tuesday hearing at which Jason Smathers was to plead guilty to conspiracy and interstate trafficking of stolen property, saying he had a "technical question" about the alleged crime.

A federal judge has awarded an Internet service provider more than $1 billion in what is believed to be the largest judgment ever against spammers.

Robert Kramer, whose company provides e-mail service for about 5,000 subscribers in eastern Iowa, filed suit against 300 spammers after his inbound mail servers received up to 10 million spam e-mails a day in 2000, according to court documents.

Online shoppers are still willing to buy products advertised in spam, indicating that the problem is unlikely to desist anytime soon, a new survey shows.

Among the most popular items being sold via unsolicited e-mail is illegal software--in many cases adding to the number of laws being broken by the sellers.

According to figures from Forrester Research, a staggering 22 percent of U.K. online consumers have bought software through spam.

Lycos Europe appears to have taken down its controversial MakeLoveNotSpam site - temporarily, at least. The site now displays a graphic and the words "STAY TUNED." References to the site have also been removed from the Lycos Europe home page, where it was prominently featured, monitoring firm Netcraft reports. Lycos this week released a screen saver that bombards spam websites with data to increase their cost of running such sites. But according to Netcraft the campaign has already knocked out some sites completely.

Email recipients are being offered religious salvation through the power of spam, according to security company MessageLabs.