Michael Gracie 

Techdirt notes that infamous spammer Alan Ralsky is rumored to have been busted and is now behind bars. Furthermore, the talk is he may sing, meaning more arrests could follow. The chatter is running on this thread at news.admin.net-abuse.email (via Google Groups), as is the skepticism. It is known that Ralsky was knocked off his [...]

Phishers have decided that rather than point someone to a fake website, why not give them a phone number to call for the purpose of grabbing account information. The article pointed to VoIP, but it isn’t really the culprit here. Voice over IP services just make the job a little easier for the scammers to [...]

Webroot recently reported a dramatic rise in spyware incidents, most of it targeting financial data. While the company’s report may be biased, the fact that spyware has roots in commercial enterprised (i.e. adware) means there are more people working on the stuff. The fact that viruses are generally individual endeavors means they will take a [...]

It’s hard to believe that spammers would get their highest response rates from pornography. That was a joke – of course sex sells. No surprises there. Or here.

NewsFactor has a laundry list of action items to protect against online ID theft. I’d say you can read the subheader and get the gist: Ultimately, while technology can help protect you, the fight against identity theft must be fought with common sense, informed caution, and a solid understanding of what you are up against. [...]

UC Berkeley knows stolen laptops, and stolen laptops are an ID thief’s dream come true. No wonder the school is trying to tighten up its security act.

The University of Texas announced Sunday that their computer systems had been breached and a ton of personal records had been compromised. This type of news usually means that I would be kicking the crap out someone, but in this case it is anything but. Within two days of the breach (they found out last [...]

eWeek thinks the anti-virus software market is ripe for consolidation. They cite large players reporting impressive numbers, and small players getting squeezed. Sounds to me like large players are going to be buying small players at nice discounts. Or small players just fade away. And what about Microsoft, who is hot on the heals of [...]

Maybe in a year or two. While OS X gains popularity, more threats are going to arise. And Mac users’ inability to admit it could exacerbate the problems. Same goes for Linux, although I suspect that Linux desktop users are technically competent, and are apt to take better care of their systems. The threats may [...]

In the never ending battle against weblog comment and trackback spam, MovableType’s SpamLookup is a gem. I’ve said it before – I use it, and I get very manageable levels of blog spam. Seems I am not alone (again). Note: Spamroll and its author have absolutely no affiliation with SixApart, other than being a paid [...]