Russia Becoming a Spam Superpower

Russia might be a country trying to regain superpower status, but it has already reached it in one less welcome area -- the amount of spam it sends to the world. According to Sophos's Q4 2007 spam report, the country now deserves the moniker of 'spam superpower' having seen its share of total volumes rise dramatically over the last year, to put it in firmly in second place behind arch-rival, the US. more»

European Spam Networks Continue to Surpass Those in U.S.

European spam networks have pumped out more unsolicited email than those in the U.S. for the third month in a row, according to security vendor Symantec. This movement is called a "significant shift" in spam trends as, historically, compromised U.S. computers have been used to send spam, and many spammers have been U.S.-based. Security experts suspect gangs are taking advantage of the increasing European broadband market. more»

Google Blocking 1 Billion Messages a Day; Calls 2007 Spam and Virus Attacks Worst in History

With Google's recent Postini addition, it now reports to be processing email for more than 35,000 businesses and 12 million end users, and blocking around 1 billion messages per day... "We saw a peak of activity in October 2007 where volume was a 263 percent increase from September 2006 and Postini blocked 47 billion spam messages, more than 320 Terabytes of spam (now that's a lot of spam). The average unprotected email user would have received 32,000 spam messages in their in-boxes so far this year. Talk about lost productivity. In fact, Nucleus research estimates unchecked spam can cost a company up to $742 per user." more»

Study Finds 90 to 95 Percent of All Email in 2007 Spam

The study, based on an analysis of more than one billion daily email messages sent to its more than 50,000 customers worldwide, found a staggering percentage of all email sent in 2007 was spam, increasing from an estimated 85 to 90 percent of email in 2006. From the report: "This growing proportion is even more significant when compared to 2004, when the federal CAN-SPAM Act, which set parameters for sending unsolicited email and defined penalties for spammers, went into effect. At that time spam was 70 percent of all email. In 2001, spam accounted for only five percent of email messages." more»

Report on Best and Worst Anti-Phishing Domain Registrars

The performance of registrars in decommissioning domain names connected to fraud scams is all over the map. A "brandjacking" report released last month by MarkMonitor is the first to include a list of the top 10 best and worst lists of registrar performance in revoking domain names connected to phishing scams. more»

Taking Down Spammers via Legalization, Regulation and Economics

Gadi Evron at ZDNet discussing spam fighting via legalization, regulation and economics. He provides with case studies on where this worked, analyzing the underline causes. "Next door to our offices was a spam operation with roughly 30 employees. One day they weren't there anymore... It seems that whenever a certain wide-audience requirement is very costly, or illegal, snake-oil fraudsters will pick it up and create an underground economy for it. It is possible our next step in fighting spam should be to research and list these underground economies taking advantage of people by the use of spam, and fight the underline cause, the clients who traffic and sell the illegal goods, playing the economic game..." more»

12 Noteworthy Spam Research Projects

Network World has listed a dozen research projects currently underway that focus on new technology and techniques to stop spam. According to the report, while in many cases these projects are reacting to exploits already in use (such as image spam and phishing), the work by these researchers is designed to counter spammers' current developments and may also lead to prevention of future ones. more»

U.S. Internet Control Threatens to Overtake Discussions at IGF Meeting

Debate over U.S. control of the Internet's core system threatens to overtake the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), an international meeting in Brazil, next week. The meeting was meant to cover topics including spam, free speech and cheaper access. more»

Spam Distribution Infrastructure: New Study Finds 94% of Scams Hosted on Individual Web Servers

Computer scientists, Geoff Voelker and Stefan Savage, from UC San Diego have found striking differences between the infrastructure used to distribute spam and the infrastructure used to host the online scams advertised in these unwanted email messages. This discovery is believed to help aid in the fight to reduce spam volume and shut down illegal online businesses and malware sites. While hundreds or thousands of compromised computers may be used to relay spam to users, most scams are hosted by individual Web servers. more»

MSN Messenger is Censoring .info Domains

Reports have been surfacing on various blogs about Microsoft's MSN messenger users who have recently found URLs containing the .info top-level domain extension blocked entirely. Moreover the censorship is not limited to the URL in question, but any string in your message that contains the string ".info". Although significant number of spam sites have notoriously made use of cheaply available .info domains, users are raising serious concerns regarding Microsoft's privacy and censorship policies... more»

Spam About to Get Worst, Says Former Spammer in New Book

A spammer who goes by the name "Ed" (and sometimes SpammerX ), has gotten out of the business and written a book, "Inside the Spam Cartel: Trade Secrets from the Dark Side". The book, which has had a particular level of interest in the law enforcement circles eager to learn more about the spam business, predicts the spam problem will only get worse. Ed says: "As broadband speeds increase, spammers will increasingly look to market goods by making VoIP calls or sending out videos..." more»

AOL Spammer Pleads Guilty, Facing Up To 11 Years in Prison

A Brooklyn man has pleaded guilty today for sending spam emails to over 1.2 million AOL subscribers in a scheme that foiled the Internet company's spam-filtering system. Reuters reports: "Adam Vitale, 26, pleaded guilty in federal court in Manhattan to breaking anti-spam laws. He was caught making a deal with a government informant that sent spam e-mails advertising a computer security program in return for 50 percent of the product's profits, prosecutors said." more»

IETF Has Approved DKIM, DomainKeys Identified Mail

There has been unofficial announcement today that Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has approved DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) as a proposed Internet standard, RFC 4871. ...A diverse number of organization have been reported to have played a role on moving the DKIM proposal forward including: Cisco, IBM, Earthlink, Microsoft, Spamhaus, Google, PayPal as well as FTC and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). more»

After U.S., China Biggest Source of Spam

Next to offshore outsourcing, spam is the other thing that has become synonymous with China.

Ranked second after the United States as the source from which spam originates, China faces an uphill battle in keeping spammers off its networks.  more»

EURid Tightens Control on .eu Domain Names

Under a new rule that will come into force next month, European registrars for the ".eu" domain will be able to immediately stop the transfer of ownership of a domain name if it's suspected of abuse.

The rule, set to take effect February 19, will make it easier for investigations into activities such as spam. more»