Michael Gracie

I know the link for this post won’t last long, as phishers come and go like the wind. If you are quick about it, you can see a Paypal phishing site in all its glory here: http://justroman.com.previewyoursite.com/.logs/1/index.html. The link came to me via email this morning, embedded in a pretty little jpeg.

Don’t click if you feel your computer isn’t well protected from malicious code (although I didn’t see or feel any - but then again, I am on a Mac), and/or you are stupid enough to actually enter your account data.

A new study has just been released that says spam can be good for you.

Great. Now we are going to get more pharmaceutical, diet control, and now…lots of spam from the local gym.

Someone please take Dr. Ron Plotnikoff’s medical license away, please!

Its either development of conscience or the first step in avoiding a lawsuit. Either way, adware firm 180solutions is now notifying unsuspecting “customers” on how to remove its software from their systems.

The company is pointing the finger at “rogue distributors” (meaning their affiliates) which get the software installed via whatever sneaky means possible. They are “hoping” to stop those effort, although I am not sure what means an adware company could have to get folks to willingly submit to an install.

Good for 180solutions, if in fact it is a genuine effort. Now lets see how fast they die.

A fine Texan based in the UK was busted for stealing credit card details via phishing emails, and now he and his partner are headed to the slammer.

Douglas Havard stole banking information from innocent folks, retrieved bank encoding schemes from some Russian crooks, and bagged a [minimum] $1 million bucks. His partner, Lee Elwood pleaded guilty a few weeks back, and has been sentenced to 4 years; Havard got six.

Of course, its no big surprise that Doug has long been aligned with criminal activity, and I won’t be surprise if he picks up where he left off in 2012, considering the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit and the US Secret Service aren’t really sure how much money the guy actually bagged.

As if you haven’t noticed, I am on a circle kick today.

While Slashdotters generally dislike blogs, I find their latest comments on search engine spam and weblogs interesting if not amusing.

Search engine spam is ruining the internet in the name of selling a few extra digital cameras (which are obsolete in a week anyway). While I don’t necessarily agree that weblogs should be separated from base indexes at engines like Google (because there actually are some useful, informative weblogs out there..hint hint), something must be done to stop the flood of mortgage offerings in every keyword search we do.

Maybe the answer is Yahoo! Mindset, or something like it.

Short and very to the point, Techdirt relays this message.

Identity thieves steal from big companies that are in the business of gathering data on you. When the data disappears, those same companies are there to protect you with credit monitoring services and other such nonsense.

It is nothing more than a circle of thievery.

News that will repulse some, and make others very happy - porn spam is on the rise again.

The only problem with this is that most Bayesian spam filters (i.e. SpamAssassin) already have so many base keywords related to porn built in, that I doubt much porn spam is going to hit everyday Joe and Jane’s inboxes.

Again, good news for some, and bad news for others.

If you send an email to a child in Utah or Michigan, beginning this week you could wind up in jail.

The two states are starting up their child “do not mail” registries, and those who send email to kids on that list face stiff penalties and fines.

Policing these rules is going to take massive efforts. I suspect there are going to be a lot of accusations flying when Uncle Pauly sends nephew Nick daily fishing updates from Florida.

BusinessWeek just this article about some of the big name companies that have promotion being distributed via adware.

While this is nothing really new, it does show you that adware is now a mainstream problem, for both consumers and companies. Consumers can’t stand the stuff, and companies, due to the byzantine affiliate network behind adware promotors, can’t control it.

Read up. Meanwhile, here is a list of the companies targeted by BusinessWeek…
Read more »

The FTC just announced that they have closed down and frozen the assets of one of those fake anti-spyware removal companies.

Nice job FTC. Stick to the big names, computers users.