John J. Moser, Of The Morning Call, reports a Pennsylvania federal judge dismissed a woman’s lawsuit. The suit claims East Penn Township, PA police used excessive force. The judge’s dismissla of the law suit said her attorney ignored a dismissal motion and the judge’s order to respond to it.

But attorney John P. Karoly Jr. of South Whitehall Township, who represents Susan R. Shuey and her husband, John, has asked Judge A. Richard Caputo to reconsider, blaming the lapse on the judge’s e-mail errantly going to his office computer’s “spam” folder.

The Shueys sued the township, township Supervisor William Schwab and police officers Brian P. Horos and Alan W. Beishline on June 28 for more than $300,000 plus attorneys’ fees. The suit stemmed from a June 23, 2006, incident in which Susan Shuey, 47, was charged with obstructing administration of law, simple assault, persistent disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. The suit says she was twice shocked with a stun gun during her arrest.

The suit says the Shueys approached Horos as he wrote a traffic ticket to a motorist to talk about a ticket issued earlier that day to their son Josh. The suit says East Penn had a policy, ”conceived and directed” by Schwab, to cite as many motorists as possible to ”create a revenue stream” from fines. Read the rest of this entry »

A precedent has now been set in South Africa.  Repeat spam offenders are now on notice.  Spammers now have a price on their heads and their names on a Wall of Shame.  It would be nice, if this was a sign of things to come for other countries to place bounties on spammers.

Jani Meyer of the Sunday Tribune reports that a South African Spammer Bounty Hunter Programme offers multiple rewards.  There are 3 ways anyone can receive a reward for providing Information that leads to successful prosecution:

• 7,500 Rands ($958.00) is paid if a spammer admits guilt.

• 15,000 Rands ($1,916.00) if a spammer is convicted in the magistrate’s court.

• 30,000 Rands ($3,831.00) bounty is paid for a conviction in the high court.

Alan Levin, Internet Society of South Africa (ISOC) spokesman, said spam made up more than 70% of monitored e-mail traffic.

He said one of the weaknesses in the current system was that it depended on the recipients to act on the spam they received. Read the rest of this entry »

The Virginia Supreme court has overturned the state’s anti-spam law, citing it as a violation of the First Amendment right to anonymous free speech. As a result, the conviction of Jeremy Jaynes, who was sentenced to 9 years in prison for sending hundreds of thousands of spam messages to AOL customers, was overturned.

           Everyone agreed Jaynes was incredibly guilty, but the issue was the peculiarity of the Virginia law in that it could be read to apply to people who were sending junk e-mail but not quite as naughtily as Jaynes was doing it,” said John Levine, president of the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE). “In the United States, we have this ancient tradition where political and religious speech are very strongly protected, but the Virginia law applied equally to all speech, commercial or not.” Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Spam news, anti spam No Comments Tags: anti spam, Spam news

In the United States the John McCain and Barack Obama presidential campaigns are not the only events cranking up into full swing. With vice presidential running mates now selected, there are recent warnings about political email and blog spam increasing.

Due to a legal loophole in the CAN-SPAM Act that allows politicians to send political email without limits, this will contribute to the volume of spam increasing. This also creates opportunity for spammers. So beware of spam disguised as legitimate political email. Since this presidential race is running so close, both sides will be ramping up email campaigns.  With the emotional content of the issues both candidates are trying to present, people will be easily tempted to open email from unknown senders.  Spammers count on this type of behavior, which causes people drop their guard. 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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »