| Stop writing, calling, and emailing me!
Albany - - Many people like you have dodged those annoying phone calls from telemarketers by signing up for do-not-call lists (www.donotcall.gov), but how do you get rid of direct marketing that comes to your mailbox or to your email? Unfortunately, other than spam filters offered by some email programs, there may not be a good way to block those unsolicited emails. But experts say there are things you can do like not posting your email address on public online forums or if you do, try leaving out the "@" symbol and just typing the word "at" out (IE: JohnDoe AT email.com) Also, if you get a spam email that asks you to reply to it in order to be removed from a mailing list, don't. That's just a way for spammers to confirm they've reached a working email account.
Owner of Online Dating Firm Arrested for Sending 5.4 Billion Spam ...
Wakefield, MA - infoZine - Experts at SophosLabs, Sophos's global network of virus, spyware and spam analysis centers, have warned companies to abide by anti-spam laws following the arrest of a man suspected of sending 5.4 billion spam emails promoting his dating website. Japanese authorities arrested 47-year-old Yoshimitsu Hirono, president of Tokyo-based dating website Takumi Tsushin, along with three other suspects. Approximately 90 million spam emails a day are said to have been sent promoting the site over a two month period. According to reports, the four men have admitted the allegations against them. "Competition between websites is fierce, and if found guilty these men would not be the first to have used illegal means to get an edge over their rivals," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos.
Image spam becoming a growing challenge
There are hundreds of millions of spam email messages being sent every day. This has been a significant problem as spam covers 90% of all emails worldwide. Now this has become an even bigger challenge due to increased volume of image spam.
Image spam is a serious and growing problem, not least because of its ability to circumvent traditional email spam filters to clog servers and inboxes. In just half a year, the problem of image spam has become general enough to be representative of 35 per cent of all junk mail. Not only this, but image spam is taking up 70 per cent of the bandwidth bulge on account of the large file sizes every single one represents.
Apart from taking up valuable bandwidth, the time taken to filter out and destroy spam represents a significant burden on both IT staff and personnel in businesses and organizations.
Hitman spam threatens users for cash
Spam email pretending to be from a hired killer is being sent out in an effort to blackmail recipients for up to $80,000. The emails usually start with a cheery greeting of 'Good day' or have a subject line saying 'Read this to be safe and a new life in this new year' before going on to threaten the reader. "Do not contact the police or FBI or try to send a copy of this to them, because if you do I will know and might be pushed to do what I have being paid to do, beside, this is the first time I turned out to be a betrayer in my job," the main text reads. The emails then claim that the recipient has been stalked by a hired assassin for 10 days, but that the hitman is prepared to drop the contract if he is paid a total of $80,000 (£41,200).
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