Spam

E-mail spam, also known as "bulk e-mail" or "junk e-mail," is a subset of spam that involves nearly identical messages sent to numerous recipients by e-mail. A common synonym for spam is unsolicited bulk e-mail (UBE). E-mail spam slowly but exponentially grew for several decades to several billion messages a day. Spam has frustrated, confused, and annoyed e-mail users. Laws against spam have been sporadically implemented, with some being opt-out and others requiring opt in e-mail. The total volume of spam has leveled off slightly in recent years, and is no longer growing exponentially. The amount received by most e-mail users has decreased, mostly because of better filtering. About 80% of all spam is sent by fewer than 200 spammers. Botnets, networks of virus-infected computers, send about 80% of spam. The cost of spam is borne mostly by the recipient, so it is a form of postage due advertising. Read the full background at Spam Wikipedia

Featured Blogs

Turn the Table on Content Filtering

Why do we run content filters at the recipient's side? Paul Graham's Plan for Spam introduced them that way. After several years, we can say that plan doesn't work very well. Email has become much less reliable. One way to recover reliability, at least between trusted parties, is to run filters at the sender's side. Let's look at the diagram in more detail... more»

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Canadian Anti-Spam Bill C-27

CAUCE just posted a blog entry about C-27; we will be speaking to the Industry, Science, and Technology committee reviewing the bill this afternoon. The meeting will be webcast starting at 15:30 eastern... more»

Fight Phishing With Branding

Phishing, stealing personal information by impersonating a trusted organization, is a big problem that's not going away. Most antiphishing techniques to date have attempted to recognize fake e-mail and fake web sites, but this hasn't been particularly effective. A more promising approach is to brand the real mail and real web sites. more»

DKIM for Discussion Lists

There's a pernicious meme floating around that DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) doesn't work with discussion lists, particularly those hosted on common open source software packages like MailMan. It's particularly odd to see this claim after I set it up successfully on a stock Debian server in less than half an hour, just a few weeks ago. Here's how it can, should, and does work. more»

Canadian Spam Law Update

As you may know, there are two laws currently being discussed in Canadian legislative assemblies: Senate Bill S-220, a private member’s bill with private right of action and criminal remedies; Parliamentary Bill C-27, tabled by the government, with private right of action, coordination between various enforcement agencies... more»

How to Steal Reputation

The term "reputation hijacking" continues to spread through the anti-spam community and the press. It's intended to describe when a spammer or other bad actor uses someone else's system -- usually one of the large webmail providers -- to send their spam. The idea is that in doing so, they're hijacking the reputation of the webmail provider's IPs instead of risking the reputation of IPs under their own control. But I really have to laugh (though mostly out of sadness) whenever this technique is described as something new... more»

Cyber Security and the White House, Part 2 - Cyberwarfare

This is a follow-up to my previous post on Cybersecurity and the White House. It illustrates an actual cyberwarfare attack against Estonia in 2007 and how it can be a legitimate national security issue. Estonia is one of the most wired countries in eastern Europe. In spite of its status of being a former Soviet republic, it relies on the internet for a substantial portion of everyday life -- communications, financial transactions, news, shopping and restaurant reservations all use the Internet. Indeed, in 2000, the Estonian government declared Internet access a basic human right... more»

Cyber Security and the White House

A few months ago, an article appeared on arstechnica.com asking the question "Should cybersecurity be managed from the White House?" During the recent presidential elections in the United States and the federal elections in Canada, the two major players in both parties had differing views that crossed borders. In the US, the McCain campaign tended to favor free market solutions to the problem of cybersecurity, and the Conservatives in Canada took a similar position... more»

A Few More Thoughts on Email Authentication… errr… Trust

Mike Hammer's thoughtful article, A Few Thoughts on the Future of Email Authentication, should trigger thoughtfulness in the rest of us. Email abuse has been around a long time. Anti-abuse efforts have too. Yet global abuse traffic has grown into the 90+% range, with no hint of trending downward. The best we hear about current effectiveness is for last-hop filtering, if you have the money, staff and skills to apply to the problem... more»

A Few Thoughts on the Future of Email Authentication

With the Online Trust Alliance Town Hall Meeting and Email Authentication Roundtable next week as well as the RSA Conference, I decided to pause and think about where we are and where we might be headed with regard to email authentication. Over the years, many of us have collectively worked to provide a framework for authenticating email... more»

News Briefs

Spam Bouncing Back to Original Levels Despite Major Shutdowns

US Continues to Lead As Top Country Hosting Phishing Attacks

Gary Warner: We Are Well Past Time to Declare a Spam Crisis in China

FTC Shuts Down US Web Hosting Firm Involved in Massive Global Spam Operation

Michigan Man Sentenced to 8 1/2 Years for Phishing

New Research Finds Over 80% of Domain Names Used by Phishers Are Legitimate Domains

Spam Now Over 90% of All Email, Increasing Volumes Involve Social Networking Sites

US Military Shopping for Email Defense System to Scan 50 Million Inbound Messages a Day

One in Five Online Consumers Victims of Cybercrime Past Two Years, Estimated at $8B, Survey Says

Rustock, Xarvester Spambots Capable of Sending 25,000 Messages Per Hour, Says New Study

Research Group Reports on the Environmental Impact of Spam

Latest Data from Google on Spam Volume, Back to 94% of All Email

StopBadware.org and Consumer Reports Launch BadwareBusters.org

Verizon Tops US ISPs for Spam Abuse, Plans Prevention and Shift to Port 587

Malware Detection Declining, Anti-Phishing Filters Detect Less than 50% of Attacks, Says Report

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Industry Updates

Latest Brandjacking Index Examines How Fraudsters Abuse Financial Brands

MarkMonitor, the global leader in enterprise brand protection, today released the company's latest Brandjacking Index that studies how fraudsters are abusing major financial brand names and topical subjects like refinancing or unemployment to lure unsuspecting consumers to questionable websites. ›››

DNSstuff.com Offers Trusteer Rapport Product to Help Users Boost Their Defenses Against Online Fraud

DNSstuff.com has announced in partnership with Trusteer that it is offering Rapport, a tool that protects your transactions from being tampered with and private information from being stolen, through its website, dnsstuff.com.
Rapport is an easy-to-use browser plug-in that provides users with a secure connection to any online site they log into, protecting their most valuable online assets — login credentials. ›››

MarkMonitor AntiFraud Solutions Combine Proven Antiphishing and Expert Antimalware Capabalities

MarkMonitor has announced AntiFraud Solutions, offering patented technology to enable brand owners to prevent, detect and respond to phishing and malware attacks. MarkMonitor AntiFraud Solutions leverage the extensive MarkMonitor network of relationships and technology designed to thwart phishing attacks in order to combat the rapidly expanding problem of malware targeting brands.
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COCC Partners with MarkMonitor for Anti-Phishing Services

COCC, a leading provider of next generation technology services for financial institutions, has partnered with MarkMonitor, the global leader in enterprise brand protection, to help mutual clients protect their brands in the face of increasing Internet-based fraud. ›››

ICANN Mexico City Meeting Brings a Significant Shift in Direction for Brand Rights Holder Issues

Mexico City's ICANN meeting represented an important shift in direction for brand rights holder issues. All the work that the IP Community -- including ICANN's IP Constituency, our customers, concerned companies, organizations and individuals who commented on the draft applicant guidebook as well as MarkMonitor -- paid dividends. ›››

MarkMonitor Year-in-Review Report Finds Online Abuse of Major Brands Was a Growth Industry for Fraud

MarkMonitor releases the company's latest Brandjacking Index, which finds that online abuse of many of the world's leading brands rose in 2008; report also reveals that 80% of abusive sites identified in 2007 were still active today, indicating brandholders must take a stronger stance against aggressive fraudsters. ›››

Committed to Keeping the Internet a Safe Place

.ORG, The Public Interest Registry (PIR) is committed to providing a model for exemplary Registry practices. In furtherance of this goal, PIR has been working proactively to address domain name abuses including phishing, malware, child pornography, and spam distribution. ›››

Spam Arrest Chooses UltraDNS to Enhance Service Delivery

NeuStar has announced that Spam Arrest, a Seattle-based company that efficiently monitors and stops automated junk email, has chosen NeuStar's UltraDNS Managed DNS and Traffic Management Services to support the delivery of services to Spam Arrest's global customer base. ›››

Hostway Invests in Foundry Networks' Application Delivery Switches to Provide Enhanced Global Server

As part of Hostway's plans to offer its enterprise customers a wider range of services, the company selected Foundry ServerIron 4G application delivery switches, with integrated DNS proxy and GSLB capabilities; these switches were installed in a number of locations globally. ›››

Hostway's New WhoisProtector Lite Protects Your Online Identity

Hostway has expanded its line of products to protect customers' private information with the release of WhoisProtector Lite. ›››