spammers

Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. Which of these G8 countries is the odd one out? Well, I suppose that each of them is in some way, but Canada is unique among the G8 nations for not having any form of anti-spam legislation. Surprising, eh?

Spam comes in all shapes and sizes. Besides the traditional email spam, spammers target forums, blogs, and now, for the first time I’ve seen them targeting Web 2.0 B2B sites with a variation of the old Nigerian 419 scam, this one involving advanced fee fraud. Small businesses and one-man shops should take note and beware of this activity.

The spammer that Facebook won a landmark $873 million settlement against last month operated out of Canada, leading to criticism of the country’s lax anti-spam regulations. They did attempt to address the problem of spam in 2004 when they formed the National Task Force on Spam.

Spammers know that they can be tracked through the “Received:” lines in the headers. Therefore, they often attempt to obfuscate the headers to confuse matters. Although “Received:” headers can also be forged, it is somewhat more difficult than simply forging the return address.

A web hosting company allegedly responsible for at least 75% of the daily spam volume worldwide has been forced offline, thanks to evidence gathered by security experts. McColo Corp, based in California, had its service terminated by its ISP, Hurricane Electric earlier today.

ICANN, the organization charged with overseeing the address system of the internet, has revoked the right of notorious registrar EstDomains to sell domain names. EstDomains is known as a registrar that caters to phishers, spammers, and other cybercriminals. ICANN handed down its decision after the company’s president was convicted of fraud.

Every day, millions of people receive dozens of unsolicited commercial emails, known popularly as “spam.” Some users see spam as a minor annoyance, while others are so overwhelmed with spam that they are forced to switch email addresses.

One of the main issues with the original development of email is that it was never designed to be secure. The focus of email was mainly to be functional and easy to use. Today these core functions, which made the invention of email successful, are now the root cause of the problem. Spammers can send millions of messages for a minimal cost.

While criminals thought it was based in Eastern Europe, the Internet’s top English-speaking cybercrime forum was secretly run by the FBI from this building on the banks of the Monongahela River in Pittsburgh. Photo: John Monroe Butler/ Wired.com

A new wave of malicious spam is using fake Windows security alerts to deliver its payload. According to Microsoft, the emails claim the alerts are part of a new, experimental and private version of an update for all Microsoft Windows OS users.

In the United States the John McCain and Barack Obama presidential campaigns are not the only events cranking up into full swing. With vice presidential running mates now selected, there are recent warnings about political email and blog spam increasing.