The End of the NDR

Opinion: SMTP e-mail errors these days are much more often malicious than informative. via Eweek - Original Story

Pink Sheets' signs rank risky stocks sold over the counter

"It has become easier to tap investor greed if you are a manipulator" The skull and crossbones symbol is a trendy fashion statement this fall for sneakers or scarves. via The Clarion-Ledger - Original Story

FTC stops e-mail marketing of weight-loss products

A U.S. district judge has ordered a company to stop sending unsolicited e-mail marketing weight-loss and anti-aging products that allegedly did not work, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission announced Thursday. via Infoworld - Original Story

How to filter fake membership and e-card spam mails

The Internet community has been pestered with yet another wave of spam mails containing fake membership information and e-cards. The spammers use two attack vectors if you click on the ip that is listed in ... via GHacks - Original Story

Those dang spammers at IconBuffet

The gloves are off. It's not funny anymore. Really sick and tired of getting these stupid emails because someone couldn't actually test their own code, actually. via Life.firelace.com - Original Story

Lerach Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman and Robbins LLP Files Class Action Suit against ValueClick, Inc.

Legal Newswire - Lerach Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins LLP today announced that a class action has been commenced in the United States District Court for the Central District of California on behalf of ... via LawFuel.com - Original Story

E-cards: I delete them all unopened. ... You?

"Greeting card spam remains a spammer favorite. Symantec saw over 250 million of these spam messages being targeted towards a sample set of customers in July." Submitted by Paul McNamara on Wed, 08/15/2007 - 1:22pm. Send me an e-mail and chances are you'll get a reply. via NetworkWorld - Original Story

Spear Phishing: A Targeted Attack

One of the common, well known attempts at identity theft is phishing. You may received email asking you to do things like verify your PayPal account or your eBay account. via Flying Hamster - Original Story

Stopping Spammers at The Point of Sale

"The availability of scam infrastructure is critical to spam profitability -- a single takedown of a scam server or a spammer redirect can curtail the earning potential of an entire spam campaign" August 10, 2007 Stopping Spammers at The Point of Sale By Andy Patrizio A group of researchers from the University of California at San Diego offered up what they felt was a new and unique way to target ... via InternetNews - Original Story

Google mistakes own blog for spam, deletes it

"Google Custom Search, is the wonderful product from Google which many webmasters have been looking and dream for" Readers of Google Inc.'s Custom Search Blog were handed a bit of a surprise Tuesday when the Web site was temporarily removed from the blogosphere and hijacked by someone unaffiliated with the company. via ITworld - Original Story

Behind the mask

Australian Federal Police agent Nigel Phair is one of Australia's most experienced online crime fighters. via The Age - Original Story

Spam filtering with qpsmtpd

Posted by Steve on Mon 30 Jul 2007 at 12:21 There are many methods used to fight spam which are tied to particular mailserver implementations. via Debian Administration - Original Story

The New Yorker on Spam

The New Yorker on Spam [9:25 am] A little history, and some scary statistics: Damn Spam [] "The amount of harm done by any of the cited - unfair' things the net has been used for is clearly very small,'' the ... via Furdlog - Original Story

How to avoid your automatic mails being marked as spam?

Posted by TommyCarlier // Tue, Jul 31, 2007 7:34 AM Our company is about to release a product we've been working on for more than 3 years, and we're running into this annoying problem. via MSBuild RSS Feeds - Original Story

Cyber crime low, but the red flag's up

"In India, strong family-oriented values act as a dampener for any cyber crime related to infiltrating computers with malware, spams and viruses" A research by US-based IT security and control firm SophosLabs shows that only 2.8 per cent of all spam or malware - software designed to infiltrate or damage a computer system - comes out of India. via The Telegraph - Original Story

Spamford Wallace banished from MySpace

"Even under defendant's more restrictive interpretation, however, messages sent through MySpace.com fall within the definition of 'electronic mail message' sent to an 'electronic mail address,'" Sanford Wallace, perhaps the world's most persistent and reviled spammer, has been banished from MySpace by a federal judge who ruled the social networking site is likely to prevail in a lawsuit that claims ... via The Register - Original Story

Before the Call: Staying Secure Computing

Usually, I'm in favor of billions of anything. But that's not the case with spam. via Fool.com - Original Story

Cybercrime Poses Challenges for Government, Industry Says Report

Published: Monday, July 23 2007 @ 10:14 PM CDT Contributed by: Tommy Over 150 million U.S. citizens are connected to the Internet. via LinuxElectrons - Original Story

MX Lab detects first Excel based spam

MX Lab has intercepted the first Excel based stock spam messages! These messages appeared today in the afternoon local Belgian time. via Mxlab.be - Original Story

You've Got Mail... Way Too Much

"Our research shows that storage is the number one messaging-management problem" "We are trying to get out in front of this ongoing trend for e-mail inboxes to grow and grow and grow by reducing the e-mail people are sending. via Data Storage Today - Original Story

Accused Spammer To Decide Fate Of Anti-Spam Crusader

"We denied all of that and proved we did not send spam, although Mr. Mumma would like to redefine spam so that he can continue to call our clients spammers" "Spam" has become the latest four-letter word that causes businesses to take offense when it's directed at them. via InformationWeek - Original Story

Hydra-headed 'Storm' attack starts

Web-based attack poses as greeting card, tries three exploits June 28, 2007 -- A new round of greeting-card spam that draws users to visit attack sites relies on a sophisticated multipronged, multiexploit ... via Computerworld - Original Story

FBI: Don't Open Emails

According to an advisory today, the Department of Justice has recently become aware of fraudulent spam e-mail messages claiming to be from the Department of Justice, or DOJ. via News Max - Original Story

US porn spammers guilty as charged

Two men who ran a spam operation to promote pornographic websites had the book thrown at them today. via Channel Register - Original Story

Bogus E-Mail, FTC Warning Consumers

"This country has a long tradition of open court proceedings, and we're pleased that as we present our case to the Court of Appeals, the millions of affected AT&T customers will be able to see our arguments and evidence and judge for themselves." Consumers, including corporate and banking executives, appear to be targets of a bogus e-mail supposedly sent by the Federal Trade Commission but actually sent by third parties hoping to install spyware on ... via Technology News Daily - Original Story

Re: 3D Mailbox

"People who need people are the luckiest people in the world" Robert Savage is a software inventor with all his heart, producing many awe-inspiring and highly original results. via Google Blogoscoped - Original Story

FBI Pulls Plug on Several Botnet Hackers

"You've got to do the same types of things with your computers." More than 1 million computers _ possibly yours, too _ are used by hackers as remote-controlled robots to crash online systems, accept spam and steal users' personal information, the FBI said Wednesday. The government has no way to track down all the computers, both in the U.S. and elsewhere, that hackers have massed into centrally controlled collections known as botnets.But the FBI has pulled the plug on several botnet hackers, or zombies. One man was charged this week in a scheme that froze computer systems at Chicago-area hospitals in 2006 and delayed medical services. Read more - Original Story

SMX Notes - SEO, Meet SMM

"Successful brands get into the mind slowly. A blurb in a magazine. A mention in a newspaper. A comment from a friend. A display in a retail store. After a slow buildup, people become convinced that they have known about a brand forever." Ready to get more out of social media? The leaders in social media marketing dish on how to get in on the action-everything from why to where to how. via Marketing Pilgrim - Original Story

Making the Most of Apple Mail

At first glance, Mail seems to be a simple e-mail client, but there is quite a lot of power beneath its Spartan exterior. via InformIT - Original Story

New type of image spam hides in e-mail wallpaper

"It's going to be yet another update that will have to be made to the filtering programs in order to be effective in blocking this new methodology." A new type of image spam found this week is able to bypass many filters by presenting a message as wallpaper within an e-mail, according to the vendor Secure Computing. via Network World NetFlash - Original Story

NY man pleads guilty to spamming AOL subscribers

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Brooklyn man pleaded guilty on Monday to sending spam e-mails to more than 1.2 million subscribers of America Online in a scheme that foiled the Internet company's spam-filtering system.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.According to prosecutors, Vitale and another man, Todd Moeller, defeated AOL's filter system by using several different computer servers to relay the e-mails and changed the e-mail header information to ensure the spam e-mails could not be traced back to them. Read more - Original Story

Fast Forward's Help File

"The spammer community has gotten pretty sophisticated" Q Some of the spam I get doesn't seem to advertise anything at all -- it's just meaningless strings of letters. via Washington Post - Original Story

Putting spam back in the can

"I wanted to let you know about a service called Project Honey Pot " Junk email wasn't on the radar. But it didn't take long for advertisers to realise the Net was a great new promo vehicle. via P2pnet.net - Original Story

printer version

A new Lyris deliverability report shows content isn't a major reason ISP spam filters deliver your messages to your recipients' junk folders or block them outright. via Clickz - Original Story

Tech, digital music searches are riskiest

"We've seen some incremental steps in the right direction" Search terms related to technology and digital music are most likely to return Internet sites with spyware, adware and spam associated with them, a new study finds. via Star Tribune - Original Story

Spam King Just A Criminal Joker

"Our investigators dubbed him the 'Spam King' because he is responsible for millions of spam e-mails ." Spam King Indicted on Multiple Counts of Fraud, ID Theft May 31, 2007, By Gina M. Scott On May 30, 2007 Robert Alan Soloway, one of the most persistent professional spammers, was arrested after being indicted ... via Legal Search Engine Blog - Original Story

Man described as a top spammer arrested

"He's one of the top 10 spammers in the world" A 27-year-old man described as one of the world's most prolific spammers was arrested Wednesday, and federal authorities said computer users across the Web could notice a decrease in the amount of junk e-mail. ... via The State - Original Story

Massive Splog Hunt: Your Help Needed

I'm sure I don't need to tell anyone how much of a pain spam blogs are. They seem to clog up everything to do with blogs, despite the best efforts of many people to stop them. via The BritBlog Blog - Original Story

The ROKSO spammers list -here they are

The ROKSO Spammers List provides details on around 200 of the top spammers in the world. via The Red Ferret Journal - Original Story

Alko Protects Its E-Mail With IBM Solution

May 24, 2007 -- IBM today announced that Alko Inc., the state-owned independent retail chain, has chosen an IBM IT security solution to protect its e-mail systems from spam and viruses. via Market Wire - Original Story

Cloudmark Announces Innovative Upgrade to the Cloudmark Desktop Anti-Spam Product

"Spammers have changed tactics and are increasingly using randomized images to outsmart messaging security products that rely solely on text analysis and landing URLs to detect spam" Cloudmark Desktop 5.2 blocks multiple types of image spam, including those using PNG, GIF and other file formats. via Market Wire - Original Story

BC regulator steps into fight against stock spam

"With the huge amount of spam circulating that can cause improper or unfair trading, we are stepping up our public warnings by issuing alerts and taking immediate action with temporary halts" People with inboxes crammed with unsolicited emails touting penny stocks can now help the British Columbia Securities Commission in its fight against spam by forwarding the unwelcome emails. via Canada NewsWire - Original Story

OnlyOnce: A Thankful Moment

While there are certainly some aspects of being a CEO that are full of those proverbial thankless tasks...there are some moments that are just the opposite. via NewsFactor Network - Original Story

Blog Blunder: Nothing New

One of my favorite tech blogs fell flat on its face Wednesday. Engadget posted a story yesterday claiming the expected June launch of the iPhone would be delayed until October and the Leopard October debut ... via PC World - Original Story

Definitions of spam

Definition from Wikipedia:
Spamming is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited bulk messages, which are generally undesired. While the most widely recognized form of spam is email spam, the term is applied to similar abuses in other media: instant messaging spam, Usenet newsgroup spam, Web search engine spam, spam in blogs, mobile phone messaging spam, internet forum spam and junk fax transmissions. Spam is also called junk mail. Some email clients or servers have spam filters, which try to delete or move the spam messages.


As you see, there are a lot of different types of spam. The most common variant is probably e-mail spam, and most people get a few spam e-mails every day. The ways to combat spam get better every day though, making spamming a volatile business.

E-mail spamming is the only variant of spamming that's illegal in most countries. Most e-mail spammers operate from countries with sloppy/outdated laws, or even no electronic laws at all. That's why it's so important to spread the knowledge and make spamming illegal all over our planet. Can you imagine having a spam-free inbox? :)

Hi and welcome!

I've decided to start a blog about how to combat spam. You might have noticed that the URL I've chosen looks very spammy :) I thought it'd be a funny thing to start an anti-spam blog on a spammy URL - call me crazy if you like :)

I'll go right ahead and post a couple of definitions of 'spam' to kick things off.