As a former marketing professional, I ran an agency that consulted with some very large companies. I helped my clients understand the best methods for convincing people to purchase their products and services. We used phrases like ‘demographics’, ‘target audience’ and ‘market penetration’ to define the parameters for advertising campaigns and marketing pushes. We used every tool in our marketing arsenal, which at the time included more traditional methods like print publishing, direct mail and electronic (i.e., radio and TV) advertising. eMail and the Web as effective marketing vehicles were still fairly nascent concepts at the time, and Google was barely a glint in Sergey Brin’s and Larry Page’s eyes.

Why am I telling you this? Because I’m here to denounce some of the activities described above to discuss the evils of marketing, especially as they constitute themselves today. Indeed, if I was still in the marketing game, I can’t say for certain that I wouldn’t be wrapped up in the spam activities which I so revile and which make up a large part of modern marketing activities.

What got me incensed is an article I came across recently. Entitled Eight Simple Rules to Evade the SPAM Folder, it’s not the first article of its type that I’ve come across. In fact, there are plenty of associations dedicated to helping companies market themselves online, and while many appear to be legitimate organizations, it’s still their job, like the purpose of the “Eight Simple Rules” article, to throw knuckleballs at our spam filters so they can arrive at our inboxes. The article reads like The Anarchist’s Cookbook for email marketers. Simply put, it provides tactics to circumvent the spam filter. Things like avoiding using all caps, a high number of images, or catch phrases like ‘Buy Now!’, the eight methods listed are designed to undo what we as IT people fight hard for: the right to inboxes unencumbered by unnecessary and unwanted email.

Spammers are known for being persistent, annoying and, at times, malicious. Apparently some of them are comedians as well. Some detected spam recently caught the eye of researchers due to its required CAN-SPAM disclaimer. The spammers behind it obviously decided to …

  Email is an important part of any company’s marketing strategy. You spend time designing the perfect campaign, coming up with great promotions, carefully designing emails and eye catching content, then hit send and wait for the sales to roll …

There’s a reason why I am bringing this up here. There were a small handful of articles online that I saw this week which caught my eye, all of which seem to indicate that Facebook is working on monetizing spam …

  The stats for 2012 are in. Overall spam levels dropped by 53% compared to 2011. Despite the drop, malicious spam campaigns and spear phishing attacks rose and are expected to continue to rise in 2013. Here are the trends …

Few would argue the fact that spam is an infestation that habitually invades inboxes everywhere. Spam is a problem for end users and it’s a headache for network administrators. Frequently gobbling up bandwidth and laden with threats of malware, spam just plain sucks. Because spam is traditionally associated with criminal activity, dangerous attachments, and despicable scams designed to separate honest people from their hard-earned savings, many countries have jumped into the arena to put in place laws or penalty systems that deal with those who can’t keep their urge to hit Send to themselves. Although many countries have made good on their legislation, some are notable for actually declaring war on spammers and making good on a promise: if you’re a spammer and you get caught, we’re going to make you pay. In Australia, Virgin Blue Airlines learned an expensive lesson in 2011; the British government saw fit to hammer a couple of texting-happy spammers late in 2012; and the U.S. has had mixed success with its CAN-SPAM Act of 2003.

But while governments tend to be very good at creating legislation, not all legislation is created equally, nor are all governments. Case in point: the government of Canada, which seems to have missed the point of legislation altogether: it only works if you, uhm, I dunno, actually enforce it. That seems to be an appropriate observation about Canada’s government, which made news more than two years ago when it passed the Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act of 2010. The law’s notoriety was due mostly to incredibly stiff penalties threatening trigger happy businesses which, as the adage goes, were not part of the solution. Under the original law, any businesses that posed part of the problem could expect fines up to $10 million, and individuals with their hands caught on the Send button could face penalties up to $1 million.

Originally this post was meant to address targeted spam and how spammers are able to find out more about you and use this information to trick you into opening their emails.

However while researching the post, I found an article written for the blog of a large email security vendor that spoke of the problem of targeted spam, interestingly the post was dated 2009.

It told the story of someone receiving an email warning that a package was not able to be delivered and that the attached file contained tracking information that would help her receive the package more quickly.

In 2013 we know that this is not likely a legitimate email, or at least we should, but is it spam?

Absolutely not.

Unfortunately people are often confused between spam and phishing, particularly spear phishing, because of how the two are presented to them. This creates a problem because the security concerns between the two are quite different.

  Netcraft’s latest report took data collected about phishing attacks and created a world map showing the most and least likely countries to be hit by a phishing attack: Morocco(1 in 102 ) Turkmenistan(1 in 103) Ivory Coast(1 in 199) …

There’s a new spamming/spoofing trend going on that has an alarmingly high success rate when fooling both filters and end users. In the latest round of things we shouldn’t have to deal with but do, malicious users are starting to harvest contact information from LinkedIn and making associations between users. In the preliminary stages of this spoof, a malicious user will parse through LinkedIn looking at users who have two things the attacker needs; a publicly viewable profile with an email address, and a list of that user’s connections.

  Canada’s anti-spam law took a glacial step towards being enacted when Industry Canada, after nearly two years of foot dragging, published their draft regulations and invited feedback from the public. Industry Canada, which is the government department responsible for …