Internet Defense Technologies

The better question is do Spammers try to take advantage of anything that captivates the American attention?

The obvious answer: YES!!!

Get the idea that these guys are like the evil underworld version of advertisers. If they can get your attention, then by god, they will! Shy of running decapitation videos, they will stop at nothing. Although, that may soon become a gray area…

One security specialist from ZScaler, Michael Sutton, (who by the way, has an uncharacteristic resemblance to the dad from the Movie “The Incredibles”, so, how can you not believe him), stated something to the effect that Spammers who are targeting Olympic fans look so bonafide it is hard to tell that you are being hit with Malware. While that statement may make one feel less feebleminded about the fact that they foolishly got infected with something it nonetheless doesn’t change the fact that it is rampant and very dangerous for the end user.

Ultimately, this is a problem that has to be dealt with in the same way any vicious crime is dealt with, severity, incarceration and possibly public hangings, okay the last might be a little rough, but until then the best defense is a good offense.

Don’t download ANYTHING that you don’t FULLY understand. If you have an IT person make sure you have the latest Malware detection and the most up to the minute Spam solution to prevent the door from opening in the first place. If you are your own IT person talk to a friend, get on message boards, and do your research on real solutions to the problem of Spam!

In the past year the number of particles of Spam has increased so substantially it has become a major crisis in the security world.

One of the major issues with Spam is that much of the American public don’t even understand that they are in effect becoming “zombie computers” (a computer that is basically being run by some type of software that has “taken over” the actual computer and now turns out email etc that isn’t actually from the person who owns the computer) for the big Spammers.

Many Americans log onto a site rather innocently only to have their computer become a drone (like a worker bee in a hive, in this case used to illustrate the computer then is “working” for a spammer without the knowledge of the owner) for such large scale botnets as “Zeus” (a designer name for a type of spam/virus) or “Koobface” (another designer name for a type of Spam/virus). Unbeknownst, they become a carrier of viruses, spyware etc.

In real terms, it would be like someone carrying the HEPC virus, not knowing they had it and walking around French kissing everyone they came into contact with – graphic – I know, but nonetheless illustrative.

The recent increase in this doesn’t appear to have a level off point in sight, which is a major problem for the hi-tech industry at large. If the Spam problem continues on this trend the need for anti spam, anti virus, anti Malware solutions could explode.

There is a new study out which offers some evidence that spam mass mailings can generate sales at a notable rate.

Results show that in the weight-loss category, a significant percentage receiving spam-mail pitches purchased the products.

• 18.5% of those who described themselves as suffering from weight issues bought products
• 5% of those without those hurdles purchased them.

Even, the lesser 5% conversion rate dwarfs direct mail and likely much of so-called permission-based email.

Open rates were also high:

• 40%-plus of those with weight problems opened messages
• 18% of those without weight troubles opened the messages

Helps to answer why people keep sending spam out.

The study appears in the latest issue of the Southern Medical Journal and was conducted by Joshua Fogel, an associate professor in the Brooklyn College economics department, and Sam Shlivko, a former student at the college.

More information:

Losing Argument: Study Finds Spam Works For Weight Loss Pitches

Spam Works for Weight Loss

Ever hear the old adage you get what you pay for?

There is an ever increasing number of fake Spam products that are disguised as real protection for your computer.

This is known as Scareware. It’s those little flicker boxes that jump up on your screen telling you “click here for a free trial - you’ve been infected” or some other such scare tactic.

Imagine for a moment you are walking along a bustling metropolis street and a guy jumps out at you and “Hey hey I got the real deal designer bags over here, come take a look!” he then proceeds to show you “Prada”, “Chanel”, “Fendi” and all sorts of other “real” designer bags at one one hundredth of the cost it would be in Saks or Neiman Marcus etc. Now, you may consider buying one of these bags, but you would have to know somewhere in your mind that they are fake being that they are being sold in a dark alley on a side street by a guy who clearly doesn’t look legit.

That is not unlike Scareware. So, if you imagine the little pop up boxes etc that hit your computers the way you would in real life it is likely you wouldn’t bite.

If someone offered you a free security system for your house you just have to give them a set of keys you probably wouldn’t go for it right?

You get what you pay for.

There are so many problems with service based internet issues today it’s a wonder anyone still emails! From Spam, to Malware, to Viruses, Phishing attempts and on and on it is a barrage of funk.

Imagine walking down the street and people yelling at you to buy this or try that or whatever other random comments real life Spam would consist of. Or if you went into a department store to buy something and no one was there to charge you for your purchases. I’d walk out and never go back!

As was recently announced Google’s Postini was shut down preventing many people from getting emails for hours and some for days.

Service support, per Tweets was nil. Which only adds to the irritation because if there is anything worse than having problems with internet and mail it is having problems with trying to resolve those problems!

There are REAL solutions to Spam and the host of other internet related filth out there!

Total Mail Defense (TMD) – not to be confused with Total Male Enhancement – is one of those providers!

I have had great success, uninterrupted, by using this service. There is no “Spam folder” to have to deal with, it is set up for real people who have real lives that don’t need extra work created by a “solution”.

Unfortunately, the answer is yes.

Often times when there is economic strife people will look for a get rich quick scheme, or buy more Lottery tickets than usual, or look for a great deal on something they are looking to buy.

In today’s economic and electronic times this means more Spam, more Spam, more Spam.

Spammers are predatory in that they don’t care who they solicit or what they solicit. They only care about their own bottom line. Not the American way, certainly not the way of a Republic, but it seems to be the growing trend in today’s modern world, an “all for one, one for none” type of an attitude, which helped with the economic collapse the world is experiencing today.

Recent surveys from the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) suggest that 80% of consumers surveyed after visiting a Spam site or responding to a Spam message in the U.S. don’t think that it is possible to get a virus, mal-ware etc., from such a visit.

This “never going to happen to me” attitude is problematic because in fact it likely will happen to anyone clicking through to a dangerous site solicited by Spam.

Further, according to the survey, most people who think that they cannot be infected are the best targets because they don’t pay attention and look for problems in their system and therefore are in a “dangerous” position.

Our CTO and founder, Ron Edison, recently wrote an article for Business Solutions Magazine called Philosophies of Spam Solutions.  It is now being featured on their website and I wanted to give you an excerpt here:

While spam by the billions reaches out to users around the globe, they are scanned, blocked, deleted, sorted, filtered, rejected, quarantined, moved, dropped, replied to, and bounced by a panorama of spam solutions and email systems as varied as they are many. Accompanying the ubiquity of spam is a mixed bag of strategies and applications to deal with it.

And, while users rail at spam, they typically complain far louder about “false positives” (legitimate messages treated, blocked, etc., incorrectly by spam filtering systems) — and for good reason. If there’s anything worse than getting drowned in spam, many users agree, it is missing “that all important message”, which at least seemingly is often subject to collateral damage as servers wage their constant battle with spam. Here there is opportunity for an effective solution as long as it can deliver accuracy.

While spam and its effects have been the topic of endless discourse, rarely mentioned in much detail is the underlying philosophy or even exact goal of one solution or another. Certainly, one could say that — of course — the goal is to block all spam and deliver all “ham” (the colloquial for “legitimate email”), but there is more to this than meets the eye.

Enter “reputation.” (read more)

Been seeing people complain on twitter that the first email they received in 2009 was spam. While I would love to offer each and everyone of those people a trial of our email filtering software (haven’t heard anything from our guys) it is an interesting thing to note.

The “email marketing” and spamming culture in our lives is huge. While there is a big difference between these two things (email marketing versus spamming) to some people, they mean one and the same.

Email is an amazing communication channel that we now use all over the place. It is so fast that we can coordinate virtually anything with counterparts anywhere in the world.

I have several marketing friends, some who are consultants, and I hear them talk about how they are doing email marketing - but not spamming. On a few occasions I have questioned them more thoroughly and have found elements of the way they organizing these email marketing campaigns which could easily get them labeled as spam EVERY TIME.

My new year’s resolution for 2009 is to work out how to broadly “Clean Up the Net”. Hope to announce more on this shortly.

Would also love to hear what the first email you received in 2009 was.

Canada ranks 5th worldwide as a source of email based spam, behind only Iran, Nigeria, Kenya, and Israel.

Canada is the only G7 country (definition for this here at Wikipedia) with no anti-spam laws, and more and more spammers are taking advantage of that.

Recently Facebook won a lawsuit against some spammers, but their servers are based in Canada so this may lead to some problems.

It’s clear Canada must wake up and inact anti-spam legislation soon. Otherwise spam filtering companies might have to take drastic actions.

Links:
Is Canada a Spam Haven?

I have heard many complaints about the spam that gets sent around inside Facebook. This is something they definitely need to address and somehow work out how to minimize this action.

It now seems the spammers are using the fact that we do get some emails from Facebook we want to exploit us and get us to open emails.

Like reports of getting an email saying: Lawrence Lessig confirmed you as a friend on Facebook (do a search on his name to find out who this is, it is funny that they picked his name). These emails don’t actually have anything to do with Facebook and should just be deleted, but how do you know if this is something you should pay attention to.

My suggestion is if you don’t recognize the name of the confirmed friend, don’t click through the email.

Go straight to Facebook itself.

Login and see if you have the note there, if it isn’t there, it was definitely spam.

If it is there, well not sure about that, you will have to decide for yourself.