Internet Defense Technology

Been seeing a lot of people talking about changing their email address to get away from the spam.

They wonder how long before they are going to have to change it again.

There is no set rule on how long it will take to get spam again. This depends on how you use your email address.

Obviously, if you never give it out to anyone you are going to have a pretty clean box. If you only give it to a few friends you trust (and tell them never to give it out) then you are probably ok.

As soon as you start buying stuff on-line, signing up for e-newsletters or put your address up on any webpage (your site, your social network identity, etc.) that is when you start opening yourself up to spam. You can see my other blog post on How Did the Spammer Get My Address? which goes over this in more detail.

So, there is no answer to that question really. It depends on your activities.

Now for the usual part (considering this is an email spam filtering company’s blog) you should just get a great filter that stops the spam from ever reaching you and you don’t have to worry about that. Of course, that means you need to check out ours here.

Saw a report from the Federal Trade Commissions (FTC) recently released a list of the top email scams:
1. Advance Fee Fraud
2. Phishing
3. Check Overpayment Scams
4. Work-at-Home Scams
5. Weight Loss Claims
6. Foreign Lotteries
7. Cure-all products
8. Investment Schemes
9. Pay-in-Advance Credit Offers
10. Debt Relief

You can forward any emails you get on this to spam@uce.gov

Forbes also did a list of the top scams which all of which can be done via email. There list was:
1. Home Construction
2. Bait and Switch Mortgage
3. Fake Check
4. Internet Coaching Services
5. Layaway Loans/Payday Loans

Hopefully these lists will help you be aware of what can come to your email box and that it should just be deleted. Don’t get trapped in one of these scams.

When you forward email from one address to another this can sometime lead to difficulties with filtering.

The worst example would be having a hotmail email address that you know forward to work or even gmail.

One of the checks that spam filters do is to check and see who the email is coming from (one reason spammers like to fake a real legitimate email as the from). If they see that it is coming from your toher legitimate email address, they won’t check any further.

While any good filter will check more than that, not all of them do and this can lead to you having a lot more spam in your inbox.

Solutions:

* Tell people about the email address change and give everyone a deadline to change over all their records. Examples, my old email address will be off in 6 months please update your records to “new address”, adding this in the footer of your emails out for a little while too.

* Get a better filter that checks much more than where an email is coming from (and there is my plug for our product, of course).

My favorite is the first one “maybe even you” is a cute touch as to why you are getting spam:

• Someone from your email address, maybe even you, had recently requested our vacancy list
• Make your babymaker hard as rock
• I have an obscured business transaction for you
• Cheney visits Afghan President, Shoots Him in the Face
• I want sale you rolex. Do you want one?
• Sperm-flavored cocaine all the rage in LA
• Huge Love Weapon is Never Too Much
• How’s the palo so far? I loved your blog about spain and the bumtapper. I laughed my head off
• The Technology of the HairMax LaserComb
• Angelina’s Newborn Twins Marry Each Other
• Parking domain names is about the same level as a baby seal hunter, ENLARGE-YOUR-PEN!S spam and Michael Bolton.
• Thousands of excellent anals from Congleton
• Make Your Love Wand Function Better.
• Britney Spears Shaves Head At Request of Zombie Overlord
• Britney Spears To Be Adopted By African Child
• Midget immigrant stowaways found in Lindsay Lohan’s gaping…
• What do Somalia, Long John Silvers and the U.N. have in common?

Not to be out-done here is a small collection of the Paris Hilton email spam subject lines:

• Paris Hilton Wins Pulitzer Prize
• Paris Hilton Sells Her Soul to the Devil, Admits it on Larry King
• Paris Hiltons vagina begins prison sentence
• Paris Hilton gives birth to twins… aliens
• Paris Hilton To Invade Rwanda
• Sponge Bob named in Paris Hilton paternity lawsuit
• Aliens Deny Impregnating Paris Hilton
• Stephen Hawking Defends Paris Hilton Against Sex Allegations
• George Bush Caught Naked with Paris Hilton.

This celebrity thing is definitely a new thing, just a few months ago there was not this much spam centering around the celebrities. Someone realized that most people are fascinated by them and thought could catch a few more people if targeted them.

I have seen several complaints of an email with the subject line: “Hey we have hijacked your baby but you must pay once to us $50000. The details we will send later.”

This is spam and totally fake (people who don’t have babies have gotten this email).

I am in shock that spammers would send an email with this headline. All to get an email opened.

I am so sorry if you got this email and it caused you even one second of worry or pain.

When I tell people that I work for an email spam company, one of the first and most surprising questions I get asked (after how do I stop the spam) is why do spammers spam.

Well, results from a new survey by Marshal show that 29% of respondents to a recent survey admitted they made purchases from spam messages. This is up from 2004 where only 20% admitted to doing so.

That pretty much says it all, unfortunately, spammers do it for the money and enough people buy stuff or get caught by the scams to make it worth their while to keep going.

My objective, educate everyone I met on email spam, how not to get caught, not to respond and definitely not to buy. Really in the end, if we hit the spammers where it counts (in the back pocket) they will eventually give up.

Seems to be a lot of spam email going around with Britney Spears doing all sorts of strange things. Seems ashame because she seems to finally be calming down and getting her life in order a little and now this.

Anyway, here are some fun, ridiculous samples for your enjoyment:

• Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt adopt Britney Spears
• Britney sues vagina for divorce
• Britney Spears to Join British Army
• Britneys vagina to attend AA on its own!
• Dalai Lama denies receiving fellatio from Britney Spears
• Britney to Celebrate “Rehab Lice Ate My Extensions”
• Britney Spears Confession: ‘I’m the Father of Anna Nicole Smith’s Baby!’
• North Dakota Man couldn’t care less about Britney Spears, Jamie Lynn Spears or Ron Paul
• Britney Spears’ New Hair Extensions Are Lindsay Lohan’s Pubes
• Britney Spears is shaken but unhurt after a suicide bomb attempt
• Britney Spears vagina attacks warder and escapes rehab?
• Bald Britney Spears says shaved head goes well with shaved vagina

A few more fun ones:

• If Barack Obama Is An Oreo, What Is John Mclaughlin?
• Steve Jobs Names God As Successor.
• Would you like to be my husband?
• John Edwards Admits Fathering Clay Aiken’s Baby!
• John McCain Takes the Gold in Olympics
• Batman & Robin: We’re Gay. Watch the video
• Angelina Jolie Set To Destroy Own Vagina
• msnbc.com - BREAKING NEWS: McDonald’s Happy Meals In San Francisco To Include Gay Marriage License
• BREAKING NEWS: Polar Bear Finds Yoga Great For Flexibility, But Murder On The Balls

I am getting back to my email spammer series with Michael Dolan as he was recently (a few days ago) sentenced in Connecticut federal court to seven years in jail plus three years of supervised release. He’s pled guilty to fraud and aggravated identity theft.

His crime (along with others who all pleaded guilty, as did Michael Dolan in 2007) was to hunt through AOL chat rooms for user ids. Those user’s would get a “greeting card” spam seeming to come from places like Hallmark.com or BlueMountain.com.

These email spams would actually installed malware (programs which spied on all the activities you did on your computer and sent the information to someone) on the victim’s computers. So, the next time the victim attempted to log onto AOL, the malware would ask for credit card numbers, bank accounts, and other personal info. If the user refused to cough up, the malware prevented them from logging in.

Allegedly Michael Dolan engaged in various forms of witness tampering, including a death threat, during the trial.

Dolan’s scam brought in over $400,000 from 250 victims.

Previous criminal record (he is only 24 years old) include being sentenced to two years of probation after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor count of accessing a computer without authorization. His probation was revoked in 2006, after the ruling judge discovered that he had taken several trips out of state, including at least one trip overseas. Dolan was then sentenced to nine months of imprisonment, and was charged in the AOL scam on September 28, 2006.