Michael Gracie

Blue Mountain, the online greeting card company, sold for hundreds of millions, and everyone loved getting their product. I doubt anyone thought those cute little dancing greetings would become such a nightmare. Yes, I have talked about these things several times before (see here and here), but I am not trying to harp on the issue. There is a point here, and it is based on trends.

I think the next place malfeasance is going to rear its ugly head is in popular services such as Evite. Seemingly innocent, revolve around fun, and preying on the fact that so many folks rely on online elements for organizing their social lives. I could reach further by saying that Match.com, eHarmony and the rest of the online dating services might not be far behind either, due to the sheer numbers using the services (giving spammers potential similar to blanket sending of financial services phishing lures much like getting a Washington Mutual security notice when you know you don’t have an account there).

Then again, I could be completely off base, since I don’t use any of those services (I am not afraid of picking up the phone, and like my social schedule planted firmly in my notebook’s calendar), so I am not sure what types of security measures they take. Nor have I figured out what some bad hacker stands to gain, other than trashing someone’s computer. Any thoughts?

According to Brian McWilliams, Spam King Scott Richter has been taken off ROKSO, otherwise known as the Registry of Known Spam Operations.

Now speculation is being made as to whether Richter has gone legit. I say it is simply too soon to tell.
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I am not sure whether this is the first of its kind, or the only one of its kind. A Nigerian woman is getting two and a half years in jail for, get this, pulling off a $242 million heist from a South American bank (most of the money was later recovered, but some bank officials are taking the heat as well).

The Nigerian government is claiming this is the first prosecution of its kind. Lets all hope the enormity of the scam is a one of a kind.
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It what could only be described as a silly idea, a new startup aims to stop spam by inundating spammer websites with requests to quit bothering you. While the concept is a noble one, it smells a lot like a distributed denial of service attack (which by the way is against the law).

The company, Blue Security of Menlo Park, even admits that the sheer number of requests should be enough to slow spammers’ websites down, making spamming less economical be reducing the number of transactions that can be had.

The Slashdot crowd had this to say about the approach.
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Movable Type has a new version of their blog software now in beta. Included in the latest feature set are a variety of admin tools, and a new comment/trackback spam filtering system. The new spam enhancements are supposed to work like traditional Bayesian spam filters, scoring comments and trackbacks according to relevance, and dropping the garbage into a junk folder.

I’ll send over a report after testing, post-beta of course.

As if you were a bit skeptical about the idea that setting up a bigtime spam reporting system might not work that well, based on the fact that so much spam comes from zombied PCs whose owners have no idea what is going on, here’s something that might change your mind.

According to MX Logic, roughly 62% of spam came from zombies during the month of June, and it has been growing fast.
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I love it when a news report comes out that explains the extremely obvious. It fills a void, the publishers make a few bucks in the process, and in some cases the software company involved with the study sells a few more products. Here is a classic example: Email users that respond to spam messages actually lose money to scams.

What a revelation.

I am going a bit out on a limb here, mostly because readers know I am a dummy. I’ll bet that it won’t be long before cell phone spam takes over US wireless networks. My thinking is simple (easy for a simple mind):

Wireless carriers are already getting hit by spammy messages and calls. Second, people are use to entering their email address into all types of webforms, and that is not helping the spam fighting cause.

Now, the US has reached a hurdle that many other countries (mostly developing) hit a while back…more cellphone lines than landlines.

And with every ecommerce webform on the planet requiring a contact phone number for purchases, how long do you think it will take before those numbers are being sold to every Tom, Dick and Harry?
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I don’t really get this, so I am looking for a little input.

Microsoft is cramming Sender ID down everyone’s throat by making it a requirement for legitimate messages in Hotmail; meanwhile better than 80% of spam already uses some authentication scheme (including, in cases, Sender ID).

Please help me here. What is Microsoft thinking?

I call this wishful thinking, because there is great software out there (like SpamAssassin) which still has trouble stopping spam. Nonetheless, the Australians think they can do a better job by getting email users involved in the fight, and are about to distribute some spam reporting software to assist.

Unfortunately, much of the spam you see in your inbox each day does not come from a bigtime spammer - it comes from their unknowing minions - meaning zombie computers.
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