Further evidence of viruses being turned into advertising spam: MailWatch kindly informed me that a message sent in my name had SoBig F aboard: “MailWatch has scanned your e-mail message and determined it can not be delivered as originally sent,” the message says. As I’ve pointed out earlier, just because a virus appears to be … Read more
Sobig wasn’t quite as big as they feared: The second stage of the virus fizzled when folk disconnected the servers the virus had instructed infected PCs to download new instructions from, CNET reports. The experts feared that the software could be used to spy on the computers’ owners or launch another wave of spam. The … Read more
Fears that the next U.S. presidential election is going to be a spamfest has helped launch a Political Spam Hall of Shame. If you receive a political spam, particularly for a national campaign where the winner gets to go live in Washington DC, (and particularly if you don’t actually live in the U.S. or are … Read more
This from reader Rulf Neigenfind about Windows, Macs and Spam: “You have certainly heard about the built-in mail client in Mac OS X that comes with an AI equipped spam filter. This filter uses “adaptive latent semantic analysis” to identify junk mail and works amazingly well. Once more I can only state how lucky I … Read more
If you want to know how spam really works — and how closely it’s tied to legitimate big business — read an excellent piece by Bob Sullivan at MSNBC. He describes pursuing a spam “from Alabama to Argentina, from a tiny Birmingham-based firm and someone named ?Erp? past a notorious spammer named Super-Zonda ? and … Read more