Spam

We're still trying to beat down spam, and people have been getting increasingly worried about IM spam and SMS spam, and all of a sudden one company is warning us that the rush to VoIP systems may lead to VoIP spam. In other words, once VoIP is just an app on the network, it shouldn't be all that difficult for someone to write a script that would basically spam a voice message to millions of VoIP systems. Of course, the company discussing this problem is bringing it up because they've now patented a solution that they claim will stop VoIP spam.

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 messages that have subject lines containing names, familiar words or phrases that have been stolen from the victim's computer.

Consumers who allow their infected computers to send out millions of "spam" messages could be unplugged from the Internet under a proposal released Tuesday by six large e-mail providers.

Internet users also could be limited on the amount of e-mail they send out each day to ensure they haven't become unwitting spammers, under voluntary guidelines proposed to curb unwanted junk e-mail.

The proposal was developed by Time Warner Inc.'s America Online, Yahoo Inc., EarthLink Inc., Microsoft Corp., Comcast Corp. and BT Group Plc.

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 a relatively sophisticated spam filter, but as the product's first birthday approaches, spammers are finding new ways to ensure that their unsolicited message go undetected.

Computer users' inboxes continue to be littered with threats, nuisances and costly and unwanted e-mails--and there is no sign of this situation easing.

Volumes of spam e-mail are continuing to soar month-on-month and the levels of virus-infected e-mails remain constant and high.

Spam, spim, spoofs…will it ever end? Cloudmark believes that spam and all of its incarnations will indeed disappear through a combination of carefully harvested human feedback and ground-breaking tools. Having taken an unorthodox approach to building their company, in two short years Cloudmark has provided innovative ways to wage war against spam for over one million users.

Karl Jacob, Chief Executive Officer for Cloudmark shares his insight into the birth and growth of the company, and the dedicated path they chose to follow.

Microsoft has filed eight lawsuits in the US against nearly 200 accused spammers, saying that the defendants had used false information to conceal themselves, and had deceived consumers. Each of the lawsuits "names" at least 20 unidentified defendants, as well as one John Hites, identified by anti-spam campaigners at Spamhaus as one of the world's ten most prolific spammers.

With the incredible rise of zombie machines that spew spam messages constantly, it looks like different ISPs continue to take very different approaches to dealing with the problem. As expected, Comcast has now started selectively blocking port 25 on accounts from that appear to be compromised. However, others are taking more extreme approaches. Over in the UK, NTL has apparently decided to just start blocking a variety of ports on all their customers without warning.

A small nugget of good news lies buried among the mountains of unsolicited commercial e-mail: the spam volume held steady from April to May, according to two leading e-mail processing firms. Brightmail's Probe Network found that spam leveled at 64 percent, while Postini measured the monthly volume unchanged at 78 percent.

According to Brightmail's assessments, the last time the spam volume was unchanged was August 2003 when it maintained a 50 percent level.

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.