Michael Gracie

The first sign that you may be a habitual computer thief is getting arrested and going on trial for, uh, computer theft. The second sign (and an almost certain one that you have a serious problem), is stealing computers from the court you were on trial in.

Next.

Many (including myself) were sad to hear Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, was killed by stingray barb while filming a recent documentary. It is even sadder that spammers would take advantage of the incident to harvest email address.

Very sad indeed.

An Illinois court order Spamhaus to pay $11.7 million for improperly blacklisting local e360 Insight LLC. e360 is the proprietor of BargainDepot.net, a small ecommerce site with an email subscription front end that allows people to get notice of upcoming sales.

Sign up for The Bargain Alert to find out about secret sales and special savings before anyone else.

A case of improper blacklisting, or a court that didn’t get the internet? Maybe just some really slick attorneys?

No matter. Spamhaus told them all to piss off - according to Steve Linford the Illinois court has no jurisdiction over the UK-based anti-spam outfit.

***UPDATE***

Slashdotter’s take on the situation here.

At a cocktail party full of institutionalized lackeys, it means you are a dreg of society, a misfit. At Spamroll, it often means you just broke into a government computer system, and are now headed to jail. But, it’s more often a badge of honor, at least computer geeks in the trenches - “he’s a great hacker” is a compliment that makes even the most humble engineers smile. Bruce Schneier has more.

There are a lot of people in the world that hate corporate America - I’m not one of them. They are pounding spammers with reckless abandon and the latest win is at Earthlink, where a judge has awarded them $11 million from the pockets of a mortgage spammer.

I was wondering when mortgage spammers were going to get a clue - the real estate boom looks like it is over. Since that didn’t get them to stop, maybe this Earthlink win will.

All you hear about these days is spyware and viruses. Whether transported via email or your favorite social website, spam is not getting it’s fair shake nowadays. So for all you spam lovers out there, here are a few tidbits on our old friend spam:

- Notorious AOL spammer Jeremy Jaynes is still headed for jail, after losing his appeal against tough Virginia spam laws. The North Carolinan’s argument - jurisdictional.

- Microsoft won a civil case against spammer Paul Fox, based on breach of contract. Fox used Hotmail for spamming, a violation of MS’s terms of service. Britain’s anti-spam laws were just too weak for Microsoft - mean the government isn’t going to change them now that they realize litigious corporate America will do their work for them.

- An Australian man is being accused of sending two billion spam emails, for Viagra. He wouldn’t have done it if there wasn’t so much demand - this proves humans are still horny, and many are still ugly. I am waiting for the conspiracy theorists to suggests Pfizer’s complicity, but something tells me the company is having no problems selling its product without spammers’ help.

- The spam copywriters’ union is about to go on strike, as spam email messages go subliminal.

Have a nice day.

Either that, or Nigerian 419 scammers are now in kahoots with BBC News.

Two “wives” of a dead Nigerian multi-millionaire are now fighting over his $55 million estate. Ha!

I wonder if the women will suffer from the “boy who cried wolf” phenomena.

If you are posting personal information on an open webpage, expect harrassment, sooner or later. Blogs and MySpace accounts are not immune. Online dating services have taken some measures to protect information, but the bottom line is unless the site is some type of completely private, user authenticated affair where only the people you invite in (i.e. people you already know) get to see your headshot, then you are playing with fire.

Jason Fortuny’s “experiment” (results posted at Encyclopedia Dramatica) with Craigslist personals highlights this lack of privacy. While Jason is bragging away about the publicity he garnered I am sure there are quite a few men hunting for his name, address and phone number.

This doesn’t stop at webpages either. Any email you send may very well get circulated to others - while you have some minimal protection in the fact that forwarded email generally doesn’t contain previous header information (instead just a copy of the original text), what you say and what you attach are fair game. If it is confidential/company information, don’t send it period. If it is nude photos of yourself on a lawn chair, designed to lure some overnight company while the spouse is away, have at it - you are likely already doomed.

***UPDATE***

Wired has an analysis of the “experiment” - they are calling Jason sociopathic. I’d tend to agree, although I’ve seen email sent to people considered credible, “pillars of the community,” find their way back to the sender with very “colorful” commentary.

Facebook added “mini-feeds” to its service, allowing users’ friends to subscribe to the feeds to see updates, versus having to log in. Instead of seeing this as a great improvement designed to make life easier, and an step up for Facebook’s street cred (versus, say, slapping sponsors all over the site and requiring a ten step log in process through them), users revolted. The site’s service additions were deemed “creepy”, forcing Facebook to capitulate.

According to TechCrunch, users now get more control over what “gets fed.”

I think users will continue their “revolt” and turn off much of what has been given to them, at least in the short-run. But they’ll come around, once they quit listening to the crowd.

TechWorld reports that Samsung Telecom’s website was hijacked for use in malware distribution. Samsung doesn’t seem to be on the quality control track nowadays, as one of their new phones is purportedly pretty easy to break too. According to Websense, Samsung didn’t seem in much of a rush to fix their website:

How long the malware has been sitting on the servers is not known, though Websense feels it was probably “some time.”

They are rushing into the phone problem though - as in threatening lawsuit against the person who outed it.