What we need is an Internet standard that allows this level of protection to work at scale – without any discussion, without any partner agreements,” said Brett McDowell, a security manager at PayPal who serves as chairman of the group. “That is what DMARC does.”

Setting industry standards is an important step, but still more important is getting the corporate world to adopt them. There will probably be some protesting and the inevitable excuses such as “I don’t have the time to implement them/train my IT department” and the most popular excuse “cost too much in time/productivity/money”. It may take some time to get most businesses aboard, but I think once they are, it will make a dramatic difference in the amount of spam and phishing attacks sent from corporate addresses or exploting popular brands.

What do you think? Will your company adopted the new standards? If not, why?

Liked this post? Get more anti-spam related news from AllSpammedUp.com!

Banks and Top Websites Develop New Spam Fighting Techniques

1. Bad Subject Lines
Most spam filters are programmed to look for words like “free”, “sale”, “deal” and “discount” in subject lines. Since spammers love to use such words in an attempt to lure people into reading their messages, more often than not, legit emails with those words in the subject line will end up flagged as spam. It’s also important to check and double check before you hit send. I’ve received marketing emails with blank subject lines or “Type Headline Here” as the subject, indicating the person in charge of sending the marketing blast was either careless or inexperienced. Not only does this make your company look very unprofessional, but it can get your messages flagged as spam.

2. Careless Use of the CC Feature
You should never send emails to a large group using CC. This not only exposes your customer’s email addresses, but if one of them decides to respond and chooses to hit the ‘reply all’, it will end up causing an unintentional spam loop and a lot of unhappy customers. Emails with huge CC lists are also a common feature of spam generated via dictionary attacks. Use BCC or a mailing list manager like Constant Contact.

3. Sending Attachments
There should never ever be a reason for you to send your customers attachments, but I’ve gotten a couple of marketing emails with them. It was almost always caused by a poorly formatted HTML message which included the graphics as attachments. A big no-no!

4. Bad IPs
It’s important to check your IP addresses regularly to make sure they haven’t been placed on blacklist. False positives aren’t uncommon and it’s also possible to have your server compromised without knowing it. Email sent from a blacklisted IP will never make it to any recipient whose IP subscribes to that blacklist.

5. Buried Unsubscribe Instructions
There will always be people who subscribed and then changed their minds, and many will become easily frustrated and simply report your newsletter as spam instead of doing the right thing. Don’t rely on a tiny link buried at the end of the email. Make sure your unsubscribe link is easy to find.

Liked this post? Get more anti-spam related news from AllSpammedUp.com!

5 Tips to Keep Your Emails Out Spam and Junk Folders

Spammers, always trying to stay one step ahead of the game, realize this. They know full well that businesses conduct trainings for their employees, IT departments spend thousands of dollars on spam filtering technologies and many of their intended victims have just grown wise to their methods over the course of time.

So, like any good criminal would, spammers have adapted.

Over the years they have ventured out into other avenues in which to launch their attacks using social media, text messaging services and even the content used by websites has become a method for spammers to advertise their products.

However now spammers have not only changed how they attack their victims, but they have changed the victims themselves.

More Spam Targeted At Children

Children have always been the indirect casualty of spam since the day they sign up for their first email account. Once that address is captured by a spammer’s list they will most assuredly start receiving ads for pharmaceuticals, financial help and even mail order brides.

But for quite some time their receipt of these messages was based on mere coincidence. Their email address was caught in the cross-fire.

Spammers didn’t target them directly because the messages sent to them were essentially worthless. Most 13 year olds weren’t looking to get out of debt or interested in meeting singles in their area (over the age of 18 that is).

But that has all started to change.

Spam itself has changed as well. Sure there are still enough email messages pleading for your assistance moving money out of a war torn nation, but for the most part this type of spam has slowed down. Taking its place are phishing scams and the delivery of malware. And both are much more dangerous than the Nigerian prince hoax.

Children Are Easier Targets

Children may be more adept at using technology than their parents, but they are still kids. And what is one thing that kids love to do on the computer? Play games.

Of course, this quickly became a breeding ground for spammers.

Spammers can easily target the email addresses of younger Internet surfers to advertise fun, arcade style web sites that specifically appeal to children. Clicking on the link provided in the spam email takes the eager-eyed kid directly to a site where they can choose from hundreds of online games to play.

By infecting the website with malware spammers have found that they can easily attract thousands of visitors who are far less skeptical and much more willing to click a link or download a file if it means that they can soon have access to a wealth of games to keep them occupied.

So bad is the problem that some security firms report that there are more than 60 arcade game sites that contain malicious software aimed at children. Some of these sites were designed specifically to serve malware and others are the unknowing victims of cybercriminals who have injected the malicious code into a perfectly legitimate web site.

Why Kids?

If kids don’t have the money to fork over to the spammers, then why have they become the targets of these attacks?

Because it gives the criminal easier access to their parents information and data.

Since most children share a computer with other family members, spammers have picked up on the fact that by tricking little Johnny or little Sally into downloading a keystroke logger through their site, they can have complete access to any information their parents may have there.

Taking it one step further, by requiring a credit card to access premium content or to purchase additional game features, scammers can easily capture thousands of freshly validated card numbers from parents who allow their children to make these purchases online.

Unfortunately, education doesn’t really work as well with kids as it does with adults. Adults quickly see the ramifications of spam and avoid it. Children, on the other hand, are much more impulsive thus, clicking on a link that promises fun outweighs the risks.

To fight this trend it is going to take vigilance on the part of parents to stay on top of their children’s Internet activities and the implementation of the right technologies to help keep kids off of sites that pose such a risk.

Liked this post? Get more anti-spam related news from AllSpammedUp.com!

Spammers Targeting Kids Through Gaming Sites

“We regret and apologize for the problems that were created,” Assistant Director Don Reuter said Thursday. “We were wanting to wish people a pleasant time, and we created some aggravation. That’s unfortunate.”

The department immediately disabled the reply all function when they realized what had happened, and says they will not send any more emails until they are sure their employees know how to make sure the ‘reply all’ function stays off.

This is a fairly common blunder for businesses and institutions to make, and it depends on user ignorance to really get going. A mass email is sent out without the ‘reply all’ disabled, and sure enough there is always someone who will immediately respond with a demand to be removed from the list. Those who get the demand will reply demanding to know why they received the demand, and it just snowballs from there. Soon an email loop will have formed with people replying to replies wondering why people won’t stop replying. It can get very ugly. If you decide to do any mass emailing, make sure you know exactly how your mailing program works and that it is configured properly. Check twice and then check again!

Liked this post? Get more anti-spam related news from AllSpammedUp.com!

North Carolina Parks Department Blunder Results in Spam

Not a fun thing to deal with but it did get me thinking a bit more about how often individual accounts are compromised to send out spam.

Of the larger messaging services, Yahoo! Mail appeared to be the most susceptible according to an end-user survey by Commtouch with 27% of Yahoo’s users claiming to have had their account compromised. Facebook came in second with 23%, Gmail followed with 19% and Windows Live rounded out the list with 15% of people admitting that their accounts had been targeted at one time or another.

The most frightening statistic from this survey was that 62% of these people had no idea how their email account was compromised. This does not reflect carelessness on the victim’s part but instead, shows how the threat landscape has increased in sophistication.

It used to be you downloaded a malicious program that infected your email client and sent out messages to everyone in your inbox however with the malicious links appearing in social network feeds, legitimate web sites hosting malware, drive by downloads and cyber criminals snooping in on public Wi-Fi narrowing down where your credentials were stolen is akin to finding a needle in a haystack.

Why Your Personal Account is a Target

You would think that large corporate email accounts would provide a much more lucrative target for spammers. After all, if they can compromise a good number of addresses they will have much more to work with.

However, cyber criminals have long abandoned the mass spam tactics of the past. This is evidenced by the fact that the amount of email spam has reduced over the years, and trends show that this will likely continue.

People have learned not to respond, or act, when they are sent an arbitrary email message from an unknown account. Over the years, they have been warned and trained that if you don’t know the sender don’t trust the message.

Personal email accounts, for this very reason, have become much more attractive to spammers and cyber criminals. Instead of blanketing mailboxes with spam that generates extremely small returns, their email campaigns have become much more targeted.

Harvesting smaller amounts of personal accounts to send their junk may not be able to hit the sheer numbers they used to use, but the odds of someone opening the email and taking action are greater because of the trust factor.

What To Do When Your Account is Compromised

First and foremost, don’t say your account was hacked. Security experts and people who understand the definition of hacking don’t appreciate that term. Explain that your account was compromised.

Next, don’t be like the 23% of people who admitted in the Commtouch survey that they did nothing when finding out that their account was being used for nefarious purposes.

When you finally realize that something fishy is going on with your account take the following steps:

Update your anti-malware software.

You are going to scan your computer but if your signature files, or definitions, are out of date your security software very well could miss files that have infected your computer.

Boot your computer into safe mode and run scan your computer.

Many people automatically assume that you should change the password to your account first. However, if whoever compromised your email account did so by means of a keystroke logger that is still running on your computer then they will be informed of your new password. Clean your computer of any malware in safe mode before you do anything else.

Change your password.

Once your computer is malware-free you need to log into your email account and change the password. However make sure that you avoid using passwords you use to log into web sites or other types of accounts. This could very well be the place your password was stolen from since criminals know that people frequently use the same passwords over and over. Add to that the fact that many accounts use your email address as the username and you have a perfect mix for disaster.

Of course, you are going to want to also make sure you use a strong password consisting of a combination of upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols.

Taking precautions will never completely eliminate the possibility that your email account will be taken over, but being smart and aware will certainly minimize the risk.

Liked this post? Get more anti-spam related news from AllSpammedUp.com!

When Spam Comes From a Friend

False positives, as this scenario is referred to, can be a problem for both business and personal emails alike. Unfortunately, most people are under the impression that there is nothing they can do to prevent their emails from being falsely labeled as spam. They couldn’t be more wrong.

Spam filters often employ Bayesian filtering to determine if a message should be allowed to pass through to the recipient’s inbox, or if it should be cast aside as spam.

The way this filter works is by scoring the content for the entire message. By looking for certain flags in an email message and assigning each a value, the spam filter can ascertain if a message is spam by totaling up the score and measuring it against a pre-set threshold. Emails that score too high are discarded while those that are considered legitimate safely find their way.

Email etiquette

Most organizations address email etiquette in their email policies to help protect the company’s image. A poorly written email can be embarrassing to a company. It looks unprofessional and it can cost a company money in lost accounts and lost respect.

But emails written with etiquette in mind can also help keep them in good graces with the spam filters as well.

When emails are written the right way, they wind up looking less like spam. The following rules of email etiquette will show you just how taking the time to write your messages properly will help get them delivered.

1. Clean up the spelling and grammar

Poorly written English is one of the first things a spam filter looks for. Excessive spelling, grammar and wrongly used words are clues that the content is not legitimate. Take the time to run your messages through a checker before you send them. If your email client does not offer this, write important emails in a word processor so they can be checked prior to your sending them.

2. Don’t over use the cc: and bcc: fields

At times it is important to include other recipients on an email message, but the more people that you include the more your message looks like spam. Remember, spammers would lose money if they had to send email messages one at a time so they send them in large batches.

3. Include an email signature

Most spammers don’t use an email signature. You should because the spam filters have the ability to read whether or not a signature file is used .

4. Avoid abbreviations that are unnecessary

If you are sending an important email message then you shouldn’t use abbreviations like LMAO or LOL. First of all if you are conducting business you don’t want to look like a gossiping teenager. Second of all, these abbreviations look like gibberish used to fool the spam filters so what do they do? Count this against the total spam score.

5. Avoid all caps in the email and the subject

Some emails are more important than others. Parts of your email may be more important than others as well. But there are better ways to show this than by using all caps.

We all know that writing in all caps is rude, but it also makes your message look like spam.

6. Avoid colored text

Professional emails don’t need fancy dressings like fonts that look like handwriting, animated gifs and certainly they don’t need colorful text. While colors, especially red, are often used to call attention to certain parts of email message, or even to responses, they also call attention to the message itself in the eyes of the spam filter.

7. Use punctuation properly

It is hard to show emotion when writing an email message. To compensate, we often overuse certain punctuation marks and symbols. Most commonly, the exclamation mark !!!, the question mark ??? and the dollar sign $$$. Overuse of these are as bad as using all caps in the eyes of the spam filters.

Liked this post? Get more anti-spam related news from AllSpammedUp.com!

7 Ways Email Etiquette Helps Get Your Messages Delivered

When we think of businesses most affected by sustainable practices industries like construction, waste management, transportation and manufacturing often come to mind.

However, much has been done over the years in the information technology field to go green. Web hosting companies promote their use of wind, hydro and solar power for their data centers. Companies that manufacture servers and desktops promote power saving features that reduce carbon footprints and even planting trees to offset any negative effects their products may have on the environment.

But when WebpageFX Weekly released an infographic detailing just how bad spam can be for the environment it made people take notice to just how much can be done to by the information technology field when it comes to saving the planet.

According to the data presented, spam is more than just an annoyance and more than a security threat. It is a bona fide problem that wreaks havoc on the environment.

The data states that the green house gas emissions associated with opening one spam email is equal to that of driving three feet in your car.

But the three feet equivalency does little to show the real problem behind spam and the environment.

Multiply that number by the 95 trillion spam emails sent in 2010 and it is comparable to the emissions that would result in a car driving around the world two million times.

If that is too hard to grasp, consider this. Each year 28.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide is created due to spam.

The emissions are a direct result of the power used by having the computer on, the processor cycles required to open your mail client and the power required by your server to store and deliver that message to you. It also takes into consideration the process of harvesting your email address and storing it, writing the email and of course sending the message. But just how much does each step of the process affect the planet? Let’s take a look at the numbers:

• Harvesting addresses – less than 1%
• Creating spam campaigns – less than 1%
• Sending spam messages – less than 1%
• Incoming mail servers processing spam messages – less than 1%
• Storing messages – less than 1%
• Transmitting spam messages over the Internet – 2%
• Filtering spam messages – 16%
• Searching for false positives – 27%
• Viewing and deleting spam – 52%

So looking at these numbers you see that fighting and deleting spam makes up 95 per cent of the carbon footprint associated with spam.

Filtering email accounts alone makes up a sizeable chunk of this number, and if you break it down to something a bit more visual, spam filters account for 4, 560,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide.

So shouldn’t we just ignore spam if we really wanted to save the planet?

After all, fighting spam seems to take a much greater toll on the environment than the sending and receiving of these messages.

There is one last statistic that negates this thought. Should companies fail to filter spam on their incoming email green house gas emissions would increase by 270 per cent.

Companies shouldn’t rely on these statistics alone as a reason to put a solid anti-spam solution in place. While the efforts would make for a more socially responsible workplace, the fact that when spam is able to make its way into the inboxes of your users it not only puts an organization at greater risk for cyber threats, but it significantly reduces worker productivity.

When you consider that over 100 billion hours are spent each year reading and deleting spam it is easy to make a case for the need to stop it from ever reaching the inbox.

It is nice, however, to do the environmentally conscious thing and let people know that you are doing your part to go green by eliminating as much spam as possible.

To see these numbers in all their graphical glory, check out WebpageFX’s infographic.

Liked this post? Get more anti-spam related news from AllSpammedUp.com!

Fighting Spam and Going Green

However, since spam is entirely reliant on electronic communications, it can easily be tracked and studied. By collecting data from anti-spam tools and filters those tasked with fighting the spam menace can put together information that not only helps them discover trends, but helps the end user gain the all important education that so many professionals feel is the best way to attack the problem of spam.

So, if you are one of those who wish to better educate yourself, or better educate others, read on.

Trends in the subject lines

One of the easiest ways that end users can identify spam is through the content of the message itself. Starting with the subject line.

Spammers understand the need to entice victims into opening the email by using an intriguing subject line. To do this they either try to scare the recipient with a warning message or instill curiosity by using a short, non-descriptive subject.

In early August spammers took a more retro approach using a subject line stating that a package from UPS, FedEx or DHL could not be delivered. More recently the following subject lines have become popular:

• One that simply reads “Changelog”
• One that states the email contains an end of the month statement requiring immediate attention
• One that claims to have come from a company’s internal accounts department
• A warning that the recipient is being notified of traffic charges
• Those promising adult content

Where is spam coming from?

It is no secret that most spam originates from developing countries. While the targets may be the inboxes of those living in the United States, Great Britain and Canada, they rarely come from these countries.

The top ten originators of spam messages are:

1. India – 15.6%
2. Indonesia – 11.7%
3. Brazil – 9.2%
4. Peru – 6%
5. Ukraine – 5.8%
6. Korea 3.6%
7. Colombia 3.6%
8. Taiwan – 3.2%
9. Italy – 3%
10. Thailand – 2.1%

Spam as a marketing tool

When people think of spam they often think of its use as an advertising medium. For years people have used different messaging systems to generate interest in their products. By category, the most commonly advertised products/services from the past month are:

1. Pharmaceuticals and medical services – 45.7%
2. Financial services – 20.6%
3. Adult content – 5.8%
4. Computers – 5.5%
5. Education – 4.3%
6. Travel – 1.7%
7. Gambling – 0.9%
8. Interior design – 0.7%
9. Surveys – 0.3%
10. Electronics and gadgets – 0.3%

Email attachments and spam

While marketing is commonly associated with spam, many spammers realize that the profit from their trade comes from other revenue streams.

Infecting computers with malware can yield much higher returns for spammers as these infected computers can be controlled as zombies or botnets, deliver scareware in the form of fake anti-virus software or simply send passwords and financial information back to a database.

Ever wonder what it is that infects so many computers? Take a look at the malware that was frequently sent via email during the month of August:

1. Trojan-Spy.HTML.Fraud.gen
2. Email.Worm.Win32.Mydomm.m
3. Trojan-Downloader.Win32.Deliver.II
4. Trojan.Win32.Yakes.bss
5. Trojan.Win32.Yakes.bwb
6. Trojan-Dropper.Win32.Injector.azq
7. Trojan-Downloader.Win32.FraudLoad.ibu
8. Trojan.Win32.Yakes.bqc
9. Trojan.Win32.Yakes.btp
10. Trojan-Dropper.Win32.Injector.bvw

Phishing

Phishing still remains a popular reason for people to send spam. The number of messages that can be considered phishing attempts has been increasing steadily.

The list of websites targeted by phishing scams covers a broad range of sites with online shopping, financial services, social networking, online gaming and even the US government represented:

1. PayPal – 35.91%
2. eBay – 10.17$
3. Habbo – 9.77%
4. Facebook – 8.67%
5. Orkut – 6.03%
6. Santalander – 3.19%
7. Google – 2.84%
8. RuneScape – 2.62%
9. Halifax – 2.37%
10. Internal Revenue Service – 1.94%

Even though the numbers in each of these lists represents only one month out of the year they show us two things: spam remains a serious threat that continuously needs to be addressed, and with the scope of the various threats changing from month to month education regarding spam is more important than ever.

Liked this post? Get more anti-spam related news from AllSpammedUp.com!

A Look Inside Spam’s Numbers

It may bother you, and it may incite you to fits of rage. It may make you want to escape to a log cabin in the woods. It may even compel you to change careers and become a spam bounty hunter who tracks down spammers and eradicates them like the insects they are. But if you think you know spam, think again. Simply put, you asked for it. In this article, we take a look at how many bona fide organizations suggest that you take it and like it, and we might even reveal how you asked for it.

It can be argued that spam should be categorized into levels or degrees. Clearly, that message you received yesterday – you know, the one that read, “Dear, If I may have a moment of your precious time to consider this most tremendous offer of the utmost importance…” blah, blah, blah, kill me now, I can’t take it anymore. – is spam, plain and simple. No gray area there. How you got it is anyone’s guess, but if you’re anything like me, you take a few precautions:

• So Many email Addies, so Little Time – Multiple email addresses are the ultimate preventative medicine against those pesky little spammers.
• When Good Credit Cards go Bad, Put Them out of Their Misery – I have a specific card I use for online transactions, and it’s the only time that specific card comes out.
• Opt-Out Often – While it seems like common sense, don’t click those checkboxes which ask you to opt-in for regular emails, and don’t ever opt-in for third party offers.
• Just One More Cookie? No! – Again common sense, but most people don’t think about tweaking their browser’s cookie settings. Job number one is to block third party cookies, and if sites refuse to let you operate fully without them, then just say no to the site.

If you’re not doing these things, and other methods to reduce the risk, you’re partially to blame.

When Spam is Not Spam

Unfortunately, protecting your online presence is a battle that’s fought on different fronts, and your browser isn’t the only spam source you have to worry about. For example, I recently changed phone carriers and, within days of having the new phone number, the marketing calls started coming. Now, selling information is a necessary evil of doing business in the modern world, and we aren’t given a choice when we sign up for a service – it’s in the fine print and you can’t circumvent it. That’s why there’s something called call display.

But, when those calls evolve from spam into malicious activity, you have to wonder how a credible company like a major phone carrier can recklessly sell your information to people who wish to do you harm. Such was the case when I was targeted at least three times by the now-infamous Microsoft phishing scam. Really, phone company? It’s not enough that you bilk me for outrageous sums of money every month?

When is spam not spam? When we ask for it, and every time you sign on the dotted line, you’re at least partially responsible. Phone companies, banks, credit card companies, cable companies, insurance companies – the list goes on; companies that you have no choice but to deal with, if you want that HiDef PVR, that loan, or that legally-required car insurance. Unfortunately, there’s not a darned thing you can do about it.

Love for Sale

A few years back, an acquaintance of mine bragged that he was responsible for seventy percent of the spam emails being sent in North America. Now, knowing this acquaintance the way I do, I took his boast with a teaspoon of salt; but he did point out that the ‘spam’ activities he referred to are known in his industry as ‘qualified lead generation’ – a nice way to say that people opted-in and have asked for a perfectly legal heaping helping of spam.

Of the many activities this acquaintance partakes in, he owns a singles’ dating website. He boasted that he has a ‘qualified’ database that numbers in the hundreds of millions of users who have at one point or another given their name, age, gender, email address, credit card number… you get the point, right?

Since he has the biggest and most expensive home in the city, I’d say the love business is paying off in all sorts of ways.

Liked this post? Get more anti-spam related news from AllSpammedUp.com!

Please Sir, May I Have Some More? When Spam is Not Spam

A new malicious spam campaign is exploiting the rumors surrounding the health of former Cuban leader, Fidel Castro. The emails show a photo of Castro allegedly lying in a coffin as part of a fake breaking news alert. The emails ask the recipient to click on a link leading to a video reporting on the death, but instead it leads to a malicious domain that tries to download a Trojan onto the visitor’s computer.

The rumors about Castro’s health have been flying for several years so it’s not surprising the criminals behind this campaign chose to exploit them.

“Fidel Castro’s health situation has become more complicated and is the reason why President Hugo Chavez decided not to go back to Cuba to continue to receive chemotherapy and instead decided to go to Hospital Militar Carlos Arvelo in Caracas for his fourth dose of chemo,” said a Venezuelan newspaper.

The malware the spam is distributing has been identified as Troj/DwnLdr-JGW), a downloader that retrieves and installs another piece of malware (Troj/Agent-SYF) onto the visitor’s computer. Troj/Agent-SYF gives the criminals control over the infected system, steals personal info, and may execute browser hijacks in order to perpetuate click fraud.

Spammers have been exploiting headlines, public figures and popular trends for years. They especially favor the fake “breaking news” alert which urges recipients to click on a link to watch a video that promises exclusive footage. If they do so, they are taken to a site that tells them they need to install a codec or software update before they can view it, which is how the malware is distributed.

Recently on Twitter there was a flurry of tweets about Castro’s death, making it apparent that this campaign, which appears to be targeting Spanish speaking people, is reaching many of them. Let’s hope they didn’t fall for it and get infected!

Liked this post? Get more anti-spam related news from AllSpammedUp.com!

New Malicious Spam Campaign Exploits Castro’s Health Rumors

The attack attempts to dupe victims into downloading a report called “Blinded: The Decline of U.S. Earth Monitoring Capabilities and its Consequences for National Security” from the Center for a New American Security, a Washington D.C. think tank. The report is actually available from the organization’s website. If the victim falls for it and enters their Gmail account details into the provided form, they are sent to the scammers, who use it to take over the account which is checked several times daily. It appears the goal of this attack is to spy on the victims.

Google announced back in June that it has successfully disrupted the first attack, but the publicity hasn’t fazed the hackers at all. They made a few minor changes and kept right on going.

“Once compromises happen and are covered in the news, they do not disappear and attackers don’t give up or stop. They continue their business as usual,” said Mila Parkour, an independent security researcher based in Washington, D.C.

The Chinese government has denied any involvement but most experts aren’t believing it. The origin of the phishing attack was traced to Jinan, China, a location that has been linked to other attacks including one against Google itself two years ago. Government sponsored cyberattacks are nothing new and will probably become more and more common over the coming years as traditional warfare goes digital.

Liked this post? Get more anti-spam related news from AllSpammedUp.com!

Gmail Users Hit With Spear Phishing Attack

Over the years there has been much advancement in the fight to keep spam out of people’s email inboxes however, like any other illegal operation, if there is money to be made people will find a way to beat the system.

Spammers are usually one or two steps ahead of security researchers when it comes to their trade. They have to be or it just isn’t lucrative enough for them to stay in business. So while making sure that you have a reliable, respectable spam filter in place, it is not enough.

A good spam filter, whether it be software based or a hardware appliance, serves as the foundation to any anti-spam solution. This component is key to laying the groundwork, but you have to then build upon this to effectively contain spam.

So once a spam filtering or blocking solution is in place, what should you do to continue the fight? The following advice can certainly help:

1. Keep your email off public forums and websites.

It is estimated that 95 percent of all spam comes as a result of people posting their email address in forums and on websites. Spammers can easily scrape newsgroups, forums and websites using robots to pull any and all email addresses they find. Once harvested, these emails go into their list and are sold to other spammers.

People are commonly lured into giving up their email address with promises of a free iPad or an XBOX, or even for things that look like legitimate content like white papers or eBooks. Be careful about who you trust with your email address.

2. Learn how to display your email address.

There are certain times when you have to display your email address on the web. Most companies make it a requirement to have contact information, including email addresses, made available for customers and other people to easily find.

If you are in this situation there are two ways you can beat the email harvesters.

The easiest way is to remove the “@” sign in your email. For example, if your email is me@fightspam.com then display your address as me (at) fightspam (dot) com. People visiting the website will know immediately how to contact you but the robots won’t.

Another way is the put your email address in a graphic. If the text is placed in a jpeg or png file then the robots won’t be able to read the content but visitors will.

Years ago people were a bit annoyed when they saw email addresses posted this way but nowadays, it is rather common to see this in practice.

3. Avoid common addressing schemes.

Many times we use email addresses that are easy to remember like firstname.lastname@mycompany.com or admin@sendmespam.com. Both of these addressing schemes can make it easier for spammers to secure your email address.

In business, this practice is easier said than done. It may be difficult to justify this practice to management because it doesn’t look right. If this is the case in the organization you work for then understand you will need to be extra vigilant in fighting spam using the other recommendations.

4. Don’t unsubscribe to spam.

If you signed up for a legitimate newsletter or catalog, you can usually unsubscribe with little concern. Spammers know this and use it to their advantage.

If you receive an email that you suspect to be spam, clicking unsubscribe lets the spammer know that this is a legitimate, active email address. You just confirmed for them that you will be looking at any future emails they send to you.

A better option is to simply delete the message or report it as spam.

5. Use email rules to direct messages.

Email rules allow you to manage your incoming emails depending on the conditions you set. For example, if an email is sent from someone in your company you can make sure that it is delivered to an open folder that you have created.

If you create rules based on senders and content, you can help weed out any spam that may have made its way past your spam filters. Of course you have to still look at the email to make sure it is not spam, but at least it can help keep possible spam away from emails you know to be legitimate.

Liked this post? Get more anti-spam related news from AllSpammedUp.com!

5 Tips to Fight Spam

Microsoft has announced that they have reduced Hotmail spam by 90% and overall spam levels by 15%. The company says the reduction of Hotmail spam is due to the implementation of several tools including connection-time filtering, content filtering, blocklist and safelist preferences.

“Way back in 2006, Hotmail had a big spam problem, and we got a deservedly bad reputation for it,” group program manager for Hotmail, Dick Craddock wrote in a blog post. “Since then, we’ve made amazing advances, and over the last few years, we’ve wrestled the spammers to the ground. Between 2006 and 2009, we dropped true SITI (Spam In The Inbox)  from 35% to under 5% with a variety of investments including connection-time filtering, content filtering, blocklist and safelist preferences, and more,’ Craddock wrote. “Of course, the spammers continue to come and continue to get more and more clever. But we’ve not only held the spammers at bay, we’ve actually reduced SITI even more.”

Microsoft says the reduction in overall spam levels is thanks to the spam fighting techniques it uses, called SmartScreen. Its efforts to shutdown botnets, which have been very successful so far, have also contributed, but some experts are skeptical of the claims regarding SmartScreen.

By teaming up with the FBI, the company has managed to take down the Rustock and Coreflood botnets and is actively working to find those responsible, going so far as to offer a $250,000 bounty to anyone who provides information that leads to the apprehension of the person or persons responsible for running Rustock.

Liked this post? Get more anti-spam related news from AllSpammedUp.com!

Microsoft Claims To Have Cut 90% of Spam

The purists may suggest that we should never have made things smaller. They might even postulate that the age of innocence is over, and they would probably be right; but a new age is just beginning, and the dinosaur-sized PC that sits on your desk is now just that: a dinosaur. The ‘Big Ol’ Beast,’ as I like to call mine, sits there and stares at me sometimes, seemingly pleading with me: “pay attention to me!” “Use me!” it begs. “Bigger is better!” it pouts.

I just chuckle and Swype my finger across a shimmering sheet of Gorilla Glass, giggling like a school girl when a word is transposed into the message I’m composing, without my finger ever leaving the virtual keyboard.  Holding a fully functional computer in the palm of my hand is surreal and downright unbelievable, especially when I think about my first computer, an Atari 400 with a flat membrane keyboard, 4 Kilobytes of RAM, and the ability to display a whopping 256 different colors onscreen simultaneously. The wonderment I felt while pounding out (literally – you had to press hard on those keys) games in Atari BASIC seems like only yesterday, but the tech world is a time machine and I’ve been transported into the 21st century – where smaller is better, and just when you thought it was safe to download that new Sudoku game for your shiny new mobile device, you should think again. For as our tech gets smaller, so too does the world we live in.

“Mr. Data – Engage”

Allow me to dispense with a formality: it is Android of which I speak. I’m not going to get into a lengthy debate here, but I’m dismissing the iPhone and iOS from this discussion. While there are many millions who would vehemently disagree with me, I believe the Android OS, and the phones that support it, to be vastly superior to Apple’s offerings – and it appears there are many millions who would agree with me. As a developer who strongly believes in sharing over hoarding, I’m an open-source guy and always have been.

The problem with open-source is that while it promotes the highly admirable philosophies of collaboration, sharing, and (often) freeness, it also sends a message to the lowlifes and scum of the earth. You know the types: those who will scam little old grandmothers out of their life savings. The despicable cross-section of society that often makes me ashamed to admit I’m part of that society. The scammers and spammers – the pond-scum phishermen, as I like to call them.

Security Breach

Herein lies part of the problem: society just can’t turn down something that’s free. If the Android OS has one significant problem, it’s that its open-source nature allows anybody to put free or advertising-supported content on the Android Market. It’s no secret that Google has had their share of problems with previously valid applications being reupped to the Market, replete with all sorts of security exploits. And while it seemed strange to me to install a firewall and antivirus software on my phone, in my mind it was a pure necessity and the first thing I did when I set up my phone. (Note: this is where I tip my hat to Apple’s closed, often oppressive, approach to its marketplace. Oppressive or not, I never sensed a security threat to my iPhone).

Spam Magnet

That device in your pocket is infinitely more dangerous than anything you ever plugged a keyboard and mouse into. The open-source feeling and the sense that you’re holding a teeny-tiny little PC in the palm of your hand provides a false sense of security, one that turns your phone into a spam magnet. It’s easy to forget, especially if you’re not an IT professional, that not all spam filters are created equal. Indeed, the very nature of mobile devices means we use them on the go, making that device in your pocket a spam attack waiting to happen.

Liked this post? Get more anti-spam related news from AllSpammedUp.com!

Bigger is Better: Why Your Pocket is Filled with Spammy Goodness

Don’t spam

Better spam filtering technique has seen to a decline in the number of spam messages that are making their way into inboxes.  Unfortunately, this positive development is at times offset by inconsiderate or overenthusiastic users who fail to realize that their frivolous sending of email messages is akin to the sending of spam.

For example, I’ve seen more than my fair share of emails resent several times in the same day in a misguided bid to “update” a limited group of interested recipients on trivial developments such as the commencement of an in-company event or talk.  What these users fail to realize is that many users link their smartphones to their email accounts, and each irrelevant incoming message saps a measurable amount of time required to read and delete them.  The annoyance factor is even greater in certain circumstances such as for sales executives engaged in important negotiations outside the company, or senior executives on overseas business trips.

Fortunately, this is an issue that can be addressed with an updated and enforced usage policy.  One suggestion for organizations would be to limit the number of email messages for a particular event or topic to just one or two per day.

Make use of the BCC field

My work with a number of IT blogs means that my contact detail is captured by more than one media contact list. Amidst the flurry of press releases and marketing messages that I receive on a daily basis will be the occasional one that makes me cringe – such as when greenhorn PR folks sends an email blast by placing all the recipients in the “To” field.

Not using the BCC field in such circumstances immediately devalues the content of the message while at the same time making the sender appear computer illiterate and foolish.  The advice here is simple: remember to use the BCC field when sending out emails to a group of recipients that do not know one another.

Check before sending to an address group

Those of you who work in an enterprise will know that email address groups are both a blessing and a curse.  While greatly simplifying the task of reaching out on a department- or company-wide level, it is also one of the most commonly abused email addresses.

Because so many users are affected upon hitting the “Send” button, my advice would be to apply greater scrutiny before sending a message addressed to an address group.  This may include rereading it to ensure that the message is coherent (So as to avoid time-wasting follow-up messages), and ensuring that file attachments and embedded images are correctly added to the email.

Finally, users hailing from education institutions and larger companies are likely to be familiar with messages enquiring, or volunteering information about lost and found items. One advice here would be to create a portal to host announcements relating to lost and found items.

Consider signing off your email personally

Embedding contact information as a footnote in an email is a great idea for business correspondence.  Rather than stating your full name however, I would advocate signing emails off personally.  This adds a more personal touch, and also gives the other party an idea of how they may address you.  This is particularly helpful when you have an unusual name, or are dealing with those hailing from countries such as Asia (or vice versa) with slightly different ways of writing their first and last names.

One-click unsubscribe

Companies that send out electronic newsletters should definitely implement the ability for a one-click unsubscribe.  While it is reasonable to solicit feedback upon unsubscribing a user, I’ve come across my fair share of convoluted unsubscribe procedures that refuses to let me do so until after I submit some feedback.  This is counterintuitive in my opinion, and is unlikely to glean anything meaningful.  In addition, unsubscribe links that require users to logon are not only annoying, but could prevent users from doing so if they’ve forgotten their passwords.  This will only result in them adding your company’s newsletter to their spam list – which is a hardly desirable outcome.

Do you have any other tips for better email etiquette?  Feel free to chip in below.

Liked this post? Get more anti-spam related news from AllSpammedUp.com!

Five Tips for Better Email Etiquette

Recent activity indicates a significant reduction in spam levels, but no one should find comfort in this news. Spammers are making it personal, a new report from Cisco suggests, and at fault may be the law enforcement community for taking down the likes of Rustock and other botnets.

If email spam is a recurring nightmare from which you cannot seem to wake, read on. At the half year mark of 2011, some seemingly good news has poked its head over the horizon, with the promise of a brighter future. Unfortunately, the news isn’t all good; in fact, like spammers, it’s a little deceiving.

According to a new (June 2011) report published by Cisco Security Intelligence Operations (SIO) entitled “Email Attacks: This Time It’s Personal,” cybercriminals are dumping the ‘throw it against the wall and see if it sticks’ approach of indiscriminate spam, so much so that Cisco’s reports the, “annualized cybercrime business activity caused by mass, indiscriminate email attacks has declined by more than half.” The report goes on to state that the volume of overall random spam in the past year has declined by more than 80 percent, a figure that sounds a little on the high side, but no one can deny that spam volumes have dipped since the Rustock Botnet takedown in March.

Cisco SIO reports that the financial impact of this decline is significant.

“Cisco SIO estimates that the cybercriminal benefit resulting from traditional mass email-based attacks has declined more than 50 percent: from US$1.1 billion in June 2010 to $500 million in June 2011 on an annualized basis.”  

The direct impact of spam emails is even greater, down from 300 billion spam messages a day in June 2010 to 40 billion a day in June 2011.

Generally speaking, people continue to be smart enough to recognize a scam when they see one, but interestingly enough, those who aren’t are getting taken for more money. While Cisco SIO reports that the average user continues to be smart enough not to click that link, resulting in low user conversion rates (the amount of people who actually end up getting fleeced), that this figure “is partially offset by increases in the average user spending on conversions.” Cisco SIO attributes this increase in the spam artists using personalization tools, better-crafted scams and more effective malicious attacks, and reports that the level of personal information being divulged has resulted in larger paydays for the scammers.

So how much does an errant click cost? $250, according to the report. Cisco SIO explains the methodology used in arriving at this figure:

“This amount is in line with the low-end estimate of recent publicly disclosed scams and malicious attacks. For instance, in June 2011, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced a scam email directing recipients to send $350 to obtain a Clearance Certificate or else legal action would be taken against the recipient.”

Now for the bad news:  even though random email spam has experienced a large decline, the amount of money being made by the scammers has quadrupled. Using the estimates explained above, Cisco SIO reports that “scams and malicious attacks (as a sub-category of mass attacks) have grown from US$50 million to US$200 million over the last year on an annualized basis.”

Oh, the irony!

In what feels like a ‘why did they kick the hornets’ nest?’ moment, the Cisco SIO report explains how, in the past year, the face of global cybercrime has morphed into something different, and quite possibly, more dangerous.  “Starting in 2010 and continuing into 2011, the criminal ecosystem has been changing dramatically. Law enforcement authorities and security and industry organizations worldwide have been collaborating to shut down or limit the largest spam-sending botnets and their associates. SpamIt, a large spam-sending affiliate network, ceased operations in October 2010 after its database was leaked and Russian police pressed charges against its owner. Major botnets were severely curtailed or even shut down, including Rustock, Bredolab, and Mega-D.” The end result? “By disrupting the financial and technical business models of key cartels,” Cisco SIO reports, “threat volumes have declined in favor of more lucrative activities.”

Oh, the humanity! If what this report states is true (and it sure sounds about right), then by deposing the former ruler – the incessant glut of email-pushing online pharmacies, instant university degrees, Internet casinos, and secret fortunes waiting to be smuggled out of some foreign country – in its place the law enforcement community has established a new despot: the smarter, more focused scammer!

Evolutionary Change and Survival of the Craftiest

In fact, Cisco SIO reports:

“as part of the evolution of the criminal ecosystem, [the growing number of scams and malicious] attacks are becoming highly focused.”

Scammers are taking greater care in their approach as they carry out schemes designed to rob people of their hard-earned Benjamins. They’re taking to other means – such as SMS, social media like Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, the tried-and-true telephone scam, and even  eBook readers – and they “are choosing their targets with greater care, using personalized information such as a user’s geographical location or job position.” Examples of these scams, Cisco SIO reports, are:

• SMS financial fraud scams to specific locales
• Email campaigns that use URL shortening services
• Social media scams, where the criminal befriends a user or group of users for financial gain

Spearphishing is on the rise and has experienced its own evolution, Cisco SIO states:

“Spearphishing attacks are aimed at a specific profile of users, often high-ranking organizational users who have access to commercial bank accounts. Spearphishing attacks are typically well crafted; they use contextual information to make users believe they are interacting with legitimate content.”

If the cyber scammers are getting smarter, then it’s imperative that we, too, evolve. Cyber criminals made $150 million this year from spear phishing, according to Cisco, and that kind of return on investment speaks for itself. Spam won’t go away, ever. But like a nasty super virus that evolves and mutates into an antibiotic-resistant strain, spam marches on, even if it’s only to the beat of a new drum.

Liked this post? Get more anti-spam related news from AllSpammedUp.com!

Spam Reduced, Targeted Attacks on the Rise: Cisco

Microsoft’s Hotmail service has allowed users to append a tag to their email address, using a + sign, for ages now. Say you want to register for some service on a website called example.com, but you are not sure you want them to flood you with email on a daily basis. If your Hotmail address is admin@hotmail.com, you could enter in admin+example@hotmail.com to receive any confirmation email from the site, but once you have what you need, you could simply set your account to flag all mail sent to admin+example@hotmail.com as spam, and never deal with it again. This feature, which is offered by other webmail provides such as Gmail, has become less effective as spammers started to recognise, and automate, the removal of the +phrase from email addresses.

Now Microsoft has rolled out a new offering for Hotmail users. You can create up to five email aliases per year, associate them to your existing Hotmail account, and send and receive email from that alias for as long as you want. Once your need for this alias is done, you simply delete the alias and receive no more mail for that address.

There are limits to this however. For now, you can only create five aliases per year, with a total of fifteen per email account. While many sites are referring to this new service as a solution for disposable or throwaway purposes, Hotmail is not, and you shouldn’t consider them as disposable either. These addresses are more of a short term solution or alternate address  than a truly disposable or throw away account. The annual limit and the lifetime maximum both should looked at as aliases more than as disposable accounts. You can read more about the new Hotmail service at the Windows Team Blog.

If you want disposable addresses for short-term spammable accounts, there are several services on the Internet available to you. Here are four that I recommend.

• Mailinator

My personal favourite, Mailinator is quick, easy to use, and requires no account. However, it does display everything for all the world to see, so if someone figures out your disposable address they can view all the mail. Do not use this for password resets or any other personal information.

• E4ward

E4ward does just what the name implies; it forwards email to your ‘real’ account.

• Spamex

Spamex is more for the power user who wants to use disposable email as a regular part of their activities. While it does offer a 30 day free trial, users must register for an account and pay a $9.95 annual fee. If I needed disposable email addresses all the time, I would use this service, but for the occasional need, it is more than I require.

• Gentlesource

Gentlesource sells an application that allows you to set up a ‘do it yourself’ disposable email service on your website. If you need to enable users to exchange messages on a temporary basis, and want to maintain control of this information rather than outsourcing it, Gentlesource’s Temporary Email is just what you need.

There are many other disposable email providers on the Internet. Which do you use and which would you advise other readers to avoid?

Liked this post? Get more anti-spam related news from AllSpammedUp.com!

Hotmail adds aliases, not disposables

The assaults were launched the weekend of December 10-12. On Friday, Walgreen started notifying its customers that they may start to see email messages in their inboxes directing them to websites that will try to personal information from them. Why were the drugstore chain’s customers suddenly such a popular target for phishers? Its email list had been compromised, it explained. No customer names were captured by the intruders nor was any customer prescription information.

By Monday, both McDonalds and Gawker Media–which operates a number of websites, including Gawker, Gizmodo, Jalopnik, Jezebel, Kotaku, Lifehacker, Deadspin, Io9 and Fleshbot–also discovered they’d been hacked.

In McDonalds’ case, it had hired an outside contractor to handle its email promotions. That contractor, in turn, hired someone else to manage the email list for the promotions. It was that company’s systems that were penetrated allowing information that might have included customers’ names, mobile phone numbers, postal addresses and email addresses to fall into the hands of net bandits.

Gawker, too, confessed its systems had been hacked and the web sappers had stolen the usernames and passwords of people who had registered at the company’s websites. The information was encrypted, it said, but still vulnerable. It urged its users to change their paswords to be safe. One of Gawker’s concerns was that  a user’s password could be used to access multiple sites. That’s because it’s common for many users to use a password repeatedly rather than try to juggle scores of them in their heads.

It has been reported that emails and passwords of 1.3 million registered users of the Gawker sites were published on the Internet. Why was Gawker singled out? Apparently for its hubris. In July, hackers from 4chan.org mounted a number of denial of service attacks (DDoS) against Gawker. (A 4chan splinter group calling itself Anonymous recently mounted similar attacks against Visa and Mastercard  in retaliation for those credit card companies choking off contributions to Wikileaks.) Gawker foiled the 4chan offensive, but it wasn’t content with that. It taunted the posse at 4chan with boasts about the strength of their systems to withstand DDoS assaults. Gawker’s bravado irked an ad hoc group of net activists calling themselves Gnosis, who engineered the latest intrusion on Gawker’s systems. The group told the Mediaite website, “We went after Gawker because of their outright arrogance.”

As any security pro will tell you, no system is 100 percent secure. If an attacker has the resources and perseverance to do so, they will find a way to penetrate a company’s defenses. That said, if you can stay off the cracking community’s radar screen, the kind of resources needed to penetrate your systems won’t likely be marshaled to do so. So crowing about the invincibility of your system defenses as Gawker did, probably wasn’t such a brilliant idea.

As Daniel Kennedy perceptively pointed out in a security column written for Forbes, 

          “antagonizing the population of would be attackers at large can serve as a motivation for them to expend the time necessary to find a way into a system.”

“[C]laiming publicly that something is unhackable is usually a good way to find out that it is,” he continued. “Making unnecessary statements of bravado, statements potentially divorced from reality, changes the equation for an attacker, it suddenly makes compromising your environment worth more of his or her time.”

“Put another way, thumbing your nose at an entire world’s population of crackers is usually a lousy idea,” he added.

While the Gawker breaches could be pinned on a group, the sources behind the McDonalds and Walgreen attacks remain anonymous. However, the assaults may be linked to a spear phishing campaign directed at email service providers that’s been going on for several months.  The source of the McDonalds breach, for example, has been pegged to an email list manager working for Arc Worldwide, which is the same company Walgreen named as its promotion marketing agency of record in 2009 .

Both McDonalds and Walgreens have been mum about identifying the company or companies compromised by the hackers, but the FBI is investigating connections between the latest breaches and others at more than 100 businesses. That means we can expect more revelations about these break ins in the coming weeks.

Liked this post? Get more anti-spam related news from AllSpammedUp.com!

Email addresses filched from Gawker, McDonald’s, Walgreen

For IT administrators blogs are a lucrative treasure trove of hints and tips that are shared among the industry insiders.

Over at Talk Tech To Me, blogger Christina Goggi wrote a very useful post highlighting 27 of what she believes to be the top IT admin blogs around. These blogs discuss current tech issues and/or the latest software releases as well as any other information that is pertinent to IT administrators. I recommend that you check out this post to discover some worthwhile resources and you’re encouraged to add your own favourite IT admin blogs and share the wealth.

Liked this post? Get more anti-spam related news from AllSpammedUp.com!

Top IT Admin Blogs

One prognostication by anti-spam expert Laura Atkins at her “Word to the Wise” blog is that DKIM–Domain Keys Identified Mail–will begin to supplant SPF–Sender Policy Framework–as a method for authenticating the senders of email.

Both methods were developed to counter “source address spoofing,” where spammers make their payloads look like they originated from a legitimate email source. SPF allows an email administrator to designate the Internet hosts that can claim emails originated at a certain domain. DKIM takes a tougher approach. It adds a cryptographic signature to outbound mail that can be verified at the message’s destination.

“I think we’re on the cusp of critical mass and signing will become less of a bonus and more of a given,” Atkins writes. “Right now, it seems that senders who are signing with DKIM are seeing a bit of a reputation bump just because they’re signing. I expect this positive effect will wane, but for now anyone who is signing seems to be seeing improved delivery.”

The use of domain-based reputation as a means of verifying email veracity will also be on the rise in the coming year, according to the spamfighter. Despite its rising popularity, though, it won’t totally replace IP-based reputation as a verification vehicle. “A few people have predicted that domain reputation will replace IP reputation, and they’re wrong,” Atkins declares. “Domain-based reputation will augment but not replace IP-based reputation.”

She added that a fertile clientele for domain-based reputation technology will be smaller email marketers who share IP addresses with others. “Small senders often have to share IP addresses with other senders and domain-based reputation will allow them to establish their own reputation separately from the reputation of other senders using the same IP,” she explains.

Another augury that could spank spammers is the increased use of engagement filtering by ISPs. Two mainstays of spamfighting used by ISPs have been complaints and email bounce rates. Online Web mail providers have long included a spam button in their interfaces to allow users to quickly complain when they receive a message that they believe to be spam. By the same token, if a message is sent to a suspicious number of invalid email addresses and is bounced, an email provider will leverage that information to block future messages with similar characteristics. However, measures like complaints and bounce rates can be “gamed”–manipulated by spammers to fool ISPs into thinking that junk mail is actually desired mail.

In recent times, ISPs have taken their filtering efforts to a new level through engagement. With engagement, what they try to do is read how their users feel about a piece of email by how they interact with it. If they ignore it, for instance, or fail to follow links in it, the message isn’t engaging that user’s attention so it’s likely that the user didn’t want it in the first place and won’t want messages similar to it in the future.

“‘Wanted’ mail will no longer be measured using the proxy measurements, as those have proven to be easy to game,” Atkins writes. “Instead, ISPs will directly measure how much recipients want a particular mail. These changes will force senders to stop sending mail that [generates] complaints and start sending mails that recipients are eager to receive.”

While social networks are all the rage on the Internet and marketers have been burning brain cells attempting to exploit the phenomenon, Atkins predicted that email will continue to be a pillar for online hucksters. “I don’t see social networking replacing email marketing at any time,” she notes. “I do see, though, email marketing giving recipients opportunities to share information with social networks.”

Savvy marketers, she asserts, will use email as a key to open up a target’s social networks to them. To do that, however, the marketer needs to offer the target something that’s wanted, wanted so much that he or she will want to tell the members of their social networks about it. If marketers followed that advice, it might not have any impact on spam, but it would significantly reduce the amount of marketing email flooding inboxes across the Internet.

Liked this post? Get more anti-spam related news from AllSpammedUp.com!

Email predictions could be bad news for spammers