I would like to invite you to join my personal network called ” Email Marketers’ Club “. My goal is to make this a vibrant community of email marketers across the globe where we can all share experiences and … via Best Practices in B2B Email Marketing
Read More… (From Email Spam News)

This has been ongoing for a couple of days now. Spamhaus and two other major blocking list providers have been under a distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attack. Steve Linford of Spamhaus believes that the source of the attack is the same people who executed the attack against Blue Security last year which effectively destroyed their Blue Frog anti-spam project.

Spamhaus has implemented anti-DDOS countermeasures and is weathering the storm. Uribl has closed up shop, redirecting their IP address to 127.0.0.1 until things blow over. (One wag has suggested that they redirect to 255.255.255.255 in order to get the attention of the ISPs hosting the zombies. Bit of network geek humor there.)

More information can be found in Linford’s announcement on usenet news.
Read More… (From The Spam Diaries)

The June State of Spam Report highlights the ongoing trend in the decline of image spam first reported last month in the May State of Spam Report. Image spam, which reached a high of 52 percent of overall spam in January, has shown a noticeable decline in most recent months, dropping around 10 percent each month in March and April to just 16 percent in May. One reason for the drop image spam is that spammers are always going to follow the money. The drop in image spam over the last two months tells us they think they can find a more effective way to get their messages into inboxes. While we have seen this decrease in image spam, the percentage of overall spam continues to remain the same at an average around 65 percent of email traffic for May. While image spam continues to show a marked decline, spammers are implementing new tactics for driving traffic to images. One trend we have noticed is an increase in spam that uses links and embedded URLs to reference images hosted elsewhere. This particular tactic is very similar to the traditional image spam, but whereas traditional image spam consisted of a raw image embedded in the body of the spam message, this new tactic embeds links to image hosting sites to reference the spam images. Additional highlights in the June State of Spam Report include:Scams and fraud spam on the rise. Combined, these two categories of spam continued to rise from 9 percent in March to 13 percent in May. This upward trend is indicative of the continued shift in spammer behavior to targeted, financially-motivated attacks and the success that they are generating. Spam trends in Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ). This regional focus sheds light on the differences in the percentage of spam in specific categories we have seen globally and that is local to APJ. While the percentage of spam in specific categories seen in APJ is very similar to the global market, there are a few exceptions. The two main exceptions are the higher percentage of scams and the lower percentage of health-related spam seen in APJ. One reason for the higher percentage of scams is a spam type referred to as invoice spam” which is unique to the APJ region. The purpose of this spam is to create fake invoices from a legitimate” company and sell them to generate a profit. These invoices come complete with directions on how to complete the transaction. For additional insights into these highlights, as well as graphics and samples, refer to the June State of Spam Report.

Read More… (From Security Response Weblog)

“We know how necessary it is for people have a secure computer with the growing amount of spam, so we have developed a free version of SPAMfighter, allowing everyone to have an effective spam filter, no matter what economic class they’re in”

Posted by Charles W. Moore on 06/07 at 01:20 AM People who use e-mail privately at home, or for non-commercial reasons are able to use the anti-spam program, SPAMfighter Standard free for as long as they want. via Applelinks
Read More… (From Email Spam News)

The trio that brought us Blue Security and their Blue Frog, the DOSing service that planned to DOS spammers, and that went belly up after a spammer instead DOSed them (well, duh), has apparently decided that spamming is more lucrative (again, well, duh), and founded a new company called Collative to do just that.
Read More… (From The Internet Patrol)

“If you send above a certain threshold you immediately get them all junked as ’spam’.”

In a move that could alienate it from a lion’s share of free e-mail account holders, Web host GaltGroup Internet Services has turned its back on Windows Live Hotmail — as well as all the products, services and … via PC World
Read More… (From Email Spam News)

Think that commercial software you just bought has been adequately tested and is ready for deployment? Think again.
Read More… (From Network World on Security)

Connecticut schoolteacher Julie Amero, convicted in a classroom computer-porn incident she says happened because spyware took over the computer at her desk, today was granted a new trial instead of a possible jail term.
Read More… (From Network World on Security)

In a move that could alienate it from a lion’s share of free e-mail account holders, Web host GaltGroup Internet Services has turned its back on Windows Live Hotmail — as well as all the products, services and partners of Hotmail’s parent company, Microsoft.
Read More… (From Network World on Security)

Study participants who were asked to go on the Web to purchase two items a package of batteries and a vibrating sex toy were more likely to buy from sellers with good privacy policies. On average, they were willing to pay about 60 cents extra on a $15 purchase when they were satisfied with the sellers privacy policy.
Read More… (From Network World on Security)

Accellion on Monday announced a version of its secure file transfer appliance that features internationalization, an enhanced user interface, and new management capabilities.
Read More… (From Network World on Security)

IBM announced its intent to acquire vulnerability-assessment security firm Watchfire for an undisclosed price.
Read More… (From Network World on Security)

CBS reality show Survivor contestant Yau-Man Chan is director of information systems for the College of Chemistry at the University of California Berkeley. Yau-Man, who survived until the final four contestants, recently talked about his adventures on the top-rated show and his experience in IT.
Read More… (From Network World on Security)

Testing in-house and vendor-built software for security holes should be an enterprise priority, said a group of vulnerability research experts speaking on a panel at the Gartner IT Security Summit held here this week.
Read More… (From Network World on Security)

Microsoft will participate in a meeting later this month with vendors and organizations that are backing several different identity management systems, an indication that cooperation between the software giant and its peers is improving.
Read More… (From Network World on Security)

A school teacher facing jail time after spyware programs exposed her students to pornographic images has been given a reprieve.
Read More… (From Network World on Security)

Two weeks ago, I wrote about how spyware maker Zango is suing PC Tools for labeling them as spyware and removing them from users’ computers.

The latest news from SunbeltBLOG is that their request for a temporary restraining order has been denied by the court (pdf, 9 pages). (Link via Spam Notes.)

To summarize the court papers: The latest version of PC Tools’ Spyware Doctor program gives Zango the most benign rating available, but still lists them. Zango says this isn’t good enough because older versions of Spyware Doctor are still available, and because Zango doesn’t want to be listed at all. Zango admits they distributed harmful malware before, but says they’ve gone straight since they were fined $3M by the FTC.

The court agrees that Zango will suffer harm to its reputation if it PC Tools continues to label them as a “Potentially Unwanted Application” but disagrees that the harm is significant enough to warrant a TRO, especially given that PC Tools has already taken steps to mediate the harm.

More significantly and here are the best parts the court has stated that it thinks that Zango is unlikely to win their case on the merits (page 6).

But most significantly of all, on page 8, the court rules that the public interest favors the defendant. That is, “it is in the public interest to allow companies similar to Defendant to be able to exercise their judgment and block potential malware applications”
Read More… (From The Spam Diaries)