Spam

People are fed-up with what is being called "second degree spam", e-mails from companies about products they are not interested in, says a survey.
Even if people signed up to be sent news or offers, NCorp's survey says over half see them as irrelevant spam.

From December, EU rules to tackle spam will force companies to ask customers for permission before sending e-mails.

As a result, second degree spam will "worsen", says NCorp's Martin Blackburn, damaging consumer loyalty.

Sendmail, whose technology shuttles nearly 60 percent of e-mail on the Internet, has agreed to make Cloudmark's antispam filtering tools a centerpiece of its commercial mail management software.

At ITU Telecom World in Geneva, Sandvine announced new worm mitigation capability for its Peer-To-Peer Policy Management platform. In addition to dramatically reducing the network impact of peer-to-peer file sharing, Sandvine's platform can now monitor peer-to-peer and all other Internet traffic for worm signs, neutralizing malicious code in transit before it crashes network performance.

Three Web sites that provide spam-blocking lists have been forced offline as a result of crippling Internet attacks in what experts say is an escalation in the war between spammers and opponents of unsolicited e-mails.
Antispam experts said Thursday that they believe spammers are behind the attacks, although they have no way of proving it.

Now everyone knows the war on spam is really getting serious: Bill Gates himself has declared war on junk e-mail. On June 24, the Microsoft (MSFT ) magnate posted his own call to arms on the company's Web site, joining Earthlink (ELNK ) and America Online (AOL ), two Internet service providers that have stepped up their legal battles against unsolicited e-mail. Disgusted with the rising tide of puerile and often sexually oriented solicitations flooding their inboxes, lawmakers in the federal government and state legislatures have also enlisted in the anti-spam brigade.

Windows computer users are fuming over a new breed of pop-up ads with a dubious sales pitch: Buy our software, and protect yourself from pop-ups like this one!

An Ohio woman accused in federal court of using mass forged e-mails from "AOL security" to swindle America Online subscribers out of their credit card numbers was allegedly tracked down after spamming exactly the wrong person: an FBI agent specializing in computer fraud, according to court records.

Helen Carr pleaded not-guilty last week to a two count federal indictment charging her with conspiring with colleagues in the spam community to send mass e-mails to AOL subscribers purporting to be from "Steve Baldger" from AOL's security department.

E-mail "spammers" who flood Internet inboxes with millions of unwanted, deceptive commercial pitches should face jail time as well as financial penalties, according to US lawmakers and law enforcers.

But some said a proposed anti-spam bill, which has won the backing of top lawmakers, would do little to stop the flood of unwanted commercial pitches, as companies would still be free to send offers to anybody with an e-mail address.

Source: Help Net Security

Sony Electronics reported that it has become aware of an unauthorized and deceptive spam e-mail that has been sent to consumers with the subject title "Sonystyle user and email address."

This fraudulent e-mail requests personal information - e.g., user
name, password and e-mail address).

Source: TechWeb

Everybody (except spammers) hates spam—and finally government and business are both trying to do something about it.