June 2005 Archive

Nice Paypal Phishing site for you

June 30th, 2005 | No comments

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 [...]

Breaching the absurdity barrier

June 30th, 2005 | Comments Off

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!

Adware firm giving fair warning

June 29th, 2005 | No comments

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 [...]

Jail time for bankcard phishers

June 29th, 2005 | No comments

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 [...]

Circle of Search Spam

June 28th, 2005 | No comments

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 [...]

Circle of Theft

June 28th, 2005 | No comments

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.

Good news or bad news?

June 27th, 2005 | No comments

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 [...]

How to win jail time, quickly

June 27th, 2005 | No comments

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 [...]

Big advertisers in the pop-up game

June 26th, 2005 | No comments

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 [...]

FTC shuts down “Spoof-Spyware” software company

June 24th, 2005 | 1 comment

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.