Symantec Quietly Buys SpamSquelcher

Symantec, the anti-virus people, has recently bought TurnTide, the company behind the SpamSquelcher technology. SpamSquelcher was originally developed by the ePrivacy Group as anti-spam software that, in the words of CNET, “analyzes incoming mail and, in a technique known as ‘traffic shaping’, targets broadband connections serving as great riverbeds for spam.” This traffic shaping basically … Read more

Beware Evaman

The Sydney Morning Herald is warning of a new Doomsday with ”a new internet virus is expected to clog mail servers, cause severe slowdown and wreak financial damage as it spreads rapidly around the world when businesses return to work today”. It is a mass-mailer worm called Evaman, and Symantec is likening it to MyDoom, using … Read more

Will Unsubscribe Stop The Spam Deluge?

Here’s some good news about spam: Unsubscribe really works. At least, that’s according to anti-spam product manufacturer Lashback which according to thespamweblog says in a recent study that ”85% or more of unsubscribe links actually work”. But does this mean, as Anne Mitchell of spamweblog puts it, that ”given that eight-five percent or more of the links … Read more

The Trojan Spammer: You

You, my friend, may be the problem. Further to my earlier posting about worms, here’s another piece from Sandvine (actually today, I think: This was the one I was looking for originally. So far it’s not on their website): It looks at how spam trojans — the bits dropped on board a PC by the … Read more

Spam And Social Engineering

(Please see a subsequent post on this: Apologies for getting it wrong and thanks to everyone for writing in) Spam always surprises. This morning I got an HTML email from seemingly credible email address with just one line in it: http://drs.yahoo.com/jeremywagstaff.com/NEWS Hmmm, I thought, my name! I was almost going to click it, but then … Read more