UGN Info Manager UGN Info Manager
The following is a collection of Spam and Virus references which have appeared in InfoManager from January to May, 2004
The Federal government has charged four people under the "Can Spam" act -- two spam operations that have clogged the Internet with millions of deceptive messages and violated federal laws. Hopefully more to come and others will drop out. Read more...
Hey... you laughed earlier this year when we reported on AOL's sweepstakes to give away a $47,000 dollar Porsche Boxster S Cabriolet... well, on Friday Charles Chase, a 73 year old Veteran from Northern Virginia is now driving that Boxster! Just rewards for the spammer? Yup -- the Porsche was formerly the property of the spammer, confiscated by AOL following their legal victory. (Applause!)
Click to see a Photo ... Read more at USA Today
You knew it had to happen someday. Network Associates has decided to concentrate on virus protection. Therefore, the name change. Read more...
UGN News Editor Fred Showker cites his favorite news items from the Wired News service -- including the Google IPO, Spammers Canned, Legal Music Copying, iPod Ear bud shoot-out, Apple rebuffs RealNetworks, Online pirate drag-net, taxing the web, porn malware, TVO clones and more .... Read more...
The CBS Market Watch web site's Frank Barnako's Internet Daily newsletter ran this story about a person who actually has screen views. He said the service does not append advertisements to outgoing e-mail.
So therefore it concentrates on incoming. Thus spamming its own users. Nice features are 1 gigabyte of storage for e-mail, the use of labels and keywords for coding messages, and the ability to use Google's search technology on e-mail. The same article also mentions that Gmail has been trademarked in the UK and is used in 80 countries. So Google may have to rename it when it comes out of beta. (I couldn't find a copy of the newsletter on line. In fact, I couldn't even find the newsletter subscription area on the website, at least not for this particular one.) (See Screens)
UGN News Editor Fred Showker cites his favorite news items from the Wired News service: IPods, Music Group Sue, Congress to Criminalize P2P, Gates, Comcast Buys TechTV, Topica, Outcrawl Google, Privacy vs. Profit, new MP3 format LWDRM, CIA Hackers, Virus Era, Spam and the U.N., Net Hoaxes, and USB Ports. UG Net News Department
As if it weren't bad enough already, ICANN is seriously considering new domain names. While dot-com still reigns as the main TLD, they seem to think they need more like dot-asia, dot-xxx for porno and dot-mail for "spam-free" e-mail. Right! ICANN should be concentrating on policing renegade registrars (what they're chartered to do) from spamming rather than providing them with yet more domains to scalp. Humpf. Here's the article by John Pallatto in Friday's eWeek.
I have mentioned SnapMail a number of times in this column. It is a terrific e-mail program for the small to medium sized office. Now it works cross platform and provides "ease of use and Ôadministration free', messaging."
It now runs on Windows 98, 2000 and XP as well as on Apple's Macintosh OS X, and OS 8.6-9. This software limits the e-mail to in-house messages. So no spam. Get more details on SnapMail's web site at: Glass Bead dot com
Bob Vila fans may get their feathers ruffled when they learn a Californian ISP is taking Bob's home improvement to court for alleged violations of America's CAN-SPAM Act. According to John Leyden in his Register article Friday, messages were sent with fraudulent email headers and without a valid physical address, and sent to harvested addresses -- all violations of Can Spam. Here's Leyden's article.
Digest of news from Wired for week of March 5th through the 7th... includes: First Can-Spam Lawsuit; Microsoft Memo Is Legit; Borgs Invad Vegas; in Tune With Sharing; Hands Off Kids' Data; Buy Offline, Get Spammed; and five others. In the News Dept.
This article in Computer World looks at how much better off Mac users are than PC users when it comes to handling viruses. It basically comes to the conclusion that since OS X is based on Unix and since Unix has been targeted in the past, there is a chance that the Mac OS can be attacked as well. Full story at: ComputerWorld
Fred digests the news each month for subscribed members, we thought his list would interest Info Manager readers: EBay Scam Uses IPods as Bait; rapper Eminem sues Apple, right behind five class-action suits filed by unhappy iPod owners; GarageBand inspires legions of amateurs to create music; Dr. Bull compares iPod to Walkman; Open source spam filters called 'better'; Congress to tax web phones and nab domains with false whois; New 'MyDoom' virus making the rounds; Google pre IPO; Spam money trail; Kazaa raided by authorities; Foiling Laptop Data ThievesRadio tapping directly into your headphones; New Adware spreads to AOL IM; Critical security flaws in Windows Read more...
AACUG member sends in this item commenting "this is mostly for windows users...but still good common sense.... 10 easy tips for keeping your system safe from attacks. Ed Skoudis is the author of "Malware: Fighting Malicious Code," shows you how to keep viruses, trojan horses, and spyware at bay. He provides a list of actions you can take to prevent attacks on your computer. See: Read more...
Tenon's Post.Office Mail server (and list server) is upgraded free for OS X server users. Non-Mac platforms can even daisy-chain their existing Post.Office non-Mac servers with Mac OS X boxes. The SpamAssassin plug-in has been added along with the ability to run McAfee's Virex scripts. In addition, scripts include a number of scanning options like discovering unwelcome file attachments; and file quarantine. Read more...
Time magazine's issue for this week has an article about Instant Messaging now being the target of spammers. According to the article Yahoo is reporting that 2% of all IMs sent on its messenger service are spim, which is the new word for spam sent via instant messaging. Guess the spam filters are starting to have an effect. Now we got a new worry. Full story at: Time.com
The New York Times reported this story. Gates said that within two years spam e-mail will be gone. He was speaking at the World Economic Forum. There are three methods that Microsoft is going to use to rid us of spam. The first two would involve having computers reply automatically to any e-mail not on an improved list making a request that only a human could handle. The third method to happen later is to charge a fee to strangers. That fee could be waived by the receiver, but not likely to happen if the e-mail is spam.
I hope he is correct, I could stand to get rid of about 40 messages a day on my work PC and about 20 on my home Mac. Just don't know how he is going to track those sending spam. After seeing the story at the NY Times, I did a search and found it again at new.com.au.
Our friend over at Tourbus.com starts off with a statement I am not sure I agree with he says: "If you keep your email software updated, you CANNOT get a virus just by opening or reading your email." I once believed this whole heartedly, but with current Visual Basic for Applications spam, I am no longer sure it is true. The rest of his recommendations would be hard to dispute. Read the full article at: The Tour Bus
spam filtering software for Apple Mail, Emailer, Entourage, Eudora 5.2, Mailsmith and PowerMail - Bayesian spam filtering for higher accuracy, fewer false positives ... SpamSieve
Is what one analyst is saying Apple is doing with iTunes Music Store and the iPod. The New York Times article compared that to Microsoft's idea of selling the XBox at a loss so that they could make a profit on software. But the Microsoft Home Entertainment division lost nearly $1 Billion last year. It is available at the New York Times web site, but it is a paid archive also by now.
Notice how more and more sites are doing this as they determine that advertising alone won't pay the bills. Even when they are selling names to spammers.
Sidebar: Lynn, twenty years ago the product development department would drive the marketing department... today it's the other way around. Microsoft drove the concept to an art, now the others follow. They discovered all the benefits of locking a popular software to another 'new' software or hardware add-ons. The printer industry caught on big time; they practicaly give away the printers knowing the user will have to return again and again to buy exorbitantly inflated ink cartridges. Cheap tunes from the Apple Music store are MP4, which require the new QuickTime. It's not such a big deal to have millions of users upgrade to the latest QuickTime -- it's the marketing data they're after. At least they were smart enough not to require an iPod to play those tunes. And, as predicted, the users are smart enough to break the music files out of the iTunes lock. . . Fred
Got comments? Suggestions? Gripes? Praise? Let us know about it...
I first heard of this web site a couple of years ago, while Bob LeVitus was visiting CowtownMUG here in Fort Worth. It does seem to connect you to almost everything in the MacWorld, but UGN. (Beware, heavy spam - turn your cookies off!) SiteLink.net
According to AOL, these are the topics that spammers send most. It wouldn't be hard to filter them out and reduce the count by 50% or more. They are:
* Viagra and other drugs, such as Xanax, Valium and Celebrex
* Online pharmacy
* Get out of debt
* Sexual enhancement
* Online degree or diploma
* Low mortgage rates
* Low insurance rates
* Work from home/be your own boss
* "Hot XXX action" and lots of porn variants
* "As seen on Oprah"
Full story at eWeek.
Have a great week...
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