Is text based CAPTCHA on the way out? The folks in India sure hope not. CAPTCHA cracking has become big business there. These businesses, calling themselves “data processing” services, pay workers to solve CAPTCHAS. These are then sent on to spammers, who are able to sign up for thousands of accounts with services such as GMail, Yahoo! Mail, Craigslist, Facebook and Blogger (to set up spam blogs, AKA “Splogs”) and more. Of course these businesses would never admit that the service they are offering is illegal. They claim to be doing it to aide the visually impaired or as a “study” to help improve the CAPTCHA system.

Several of these companies promise a quarter of a million solved CAPTCHA’s a day at the bargain rate of $2 per 1000 solved CAPTCHA’s. Remember, this is India, where such rates are considered quite high. This new business model is so successful that a franchise model has been developed. Here are some ads from these companies, courtesy of ZDNet: Read the rest of this entry »

So you have taken the time to research, select and install a world class anti spam solution, such as GFI MailEssentials. And 80,000 satisfied customers say it’s the best.  To enhance this solution consider implementing a continuous “anti spam” education program in your company.  Although the automated solution dramatically cuts down on the majority of spam, email users still help proliferate it. Read the rest of this entry »

A new study by a University of Cambridge computer scientist revealed that the first letter of your email address makes a difference in how much spam you get. It found that addresses that start with “A” “M” or “S” get more than 40% spam while those starting with Q or Z get only about 20% spam.

Dr. Richard Clayton analyzed over 500 million spam messages and discovered that “A” “M” “S” “R” and “P” are favorites of spammers. He says this has to do with the dictionary attacks spammers use to generate addresses to spam. There are simply more names starting with those letters than any others. However some exceptions to this rule were found. For example, email addresses starting with “U” get over 50% spam despite it being an unpopular letter for names to start with. Read the rest of this entry »

I laughed so hard when I read this story. This certainly adds a new twist to the Nigerian spam email we have all received over the years.  Network World previously reported a disturbing “hit man” scam email being distributed as spam. This is an update to that story, where a so called “hitman” threatens” to kill the reader, unless money is sent immediately.  I pray people are not that gullible to buy into this utter nonsense.  Unfortunatley some will. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a follow up on a breaking news story “Spam King Solaway Faces Jail Time” reported by successful freelance journalist, Sue Walsh.  Robert Soloway was scheduled to be sentenced on July 14.  At that time he faced 25 years in prison and over $300,000 in fines.

Judge Marsha Pechman apparently delayed the sentencing proceedings July 14, 2008.  At the end of the testimony, Judge Pechman scheduled another day of hearings on July 22.  The judge ruled she might be prepared to hand down a sentence at that time, but cautioned that she is struggling with a determination of an appropriate penalty.  “When I look at the guidelines, this crime doesn’t fit easily into slots,” Pechman said. She was referring to sentencing guidelines judges’ reference to determine sentences. Read the rest of this entry »

 All of us hate spam, right? Not exactly. A new poll by security firm Marshall has found that a surprising 29% of all web users have purchased something advertised in a spam message. The most commonly purchased items, perhaps not quite as surprising, are sexual enhancement pills, adult toys and software, along with knock offs of brand name fashions and jewelry. A similar poll conducted 4 years ago found that 20% of web users had purchased items from spam, so unfortunately for us, spam appears to be increasingly effective. Read the rest of this entry »

Anyone who’s been around the net for a while is probably quite familiar with ASCII. Before color monitors and high end graphics, ASCII was the cool way to embellish emails, newsgroup posts, the opening pages of BBS’s and network login screens. It was simple enough: “#” represented dark pixels and “*” represented light ones. Whole fonts were made from collections of characters. It was fun and very creative. Read the rest of this entry »

Whether it’s high profile publicity stunts or really making a statement, spammers are on notice from social networks. The “terms of use” agreement every person has to electronically sign, before becoming a member of MySpace or Facebook, is being used against spammers in court. Read the rest of this entry »

Federal authorities in New Orleans have indicted a Brazilian man on charges he was planning to sell a botnet he created to a Dutch spammer. Prosecutors say 35 year old Leni de Abreu Neto created a botnet of over 100,000 compromised computers and was in negotiations to sell it to Nordin Nasari of The Netherlands, a spammer who wrote the virus Neto used to take control of the computers in his botnet. Nasari agreed to purchase the entire operation for $36,800. While Nasari s being prosecuted by Dutch authorities, Neto faces charges here in the U.S. and is facing up to 5 years in prison and a fine of up to a half million dollars. Read the rest of this entry »

Spammers have been exploiting the headlines for quite awhile now, so it’s not too surprising that a new wave of spam exploiting the Russia/Georgia conflict have hit inboxes across the net. The messages contain headlines from a fake BBC story claiming Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili is embroiled in a gay sex scandal, and invites the recipient to click on a link to read more. If clicked what it actually does is lead to a malicious site that downloads malware onto the victim’s computer and adds it to a brand new and very pro-Russian botnet. Researchers at the University of Alabama, Birmingham traced the malicious spam back to 44 computers, all which have no previous spam record, and several are located in Russia. It’s not yet known if the domains are truly malcious or have simply been hijacked by the hackers behind the attack. Read the rest of this entry »