December 2009
105 posts
Computerworld: Online ad networks mostly comply... →
A Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) report says that most NAI member companies mostly follow the rules that they (as the NAI) defined for themselves, and therefore they believe that no additional public oversight is necessary.
DarkReading: 2010 Security Outlook: Reply Hazy,... →
“Security researchers, experts don’t show much agreement on the coming year’s threats…. We suspect the widespread use of Ouija boards, crystal balls, tea leaves, and chicken entrails. Seriously, folks, is this the best the security industry can do?”
USA Today: Cybercrooks stalk small businesses that... →
“A rising swarm of cyber-robberies targeting small firms, local governments, school districts, churches and non-profits has prompted an extraordinary warning. The American Bankers Association and the FBI are advising small and midsize businesses that conduct financial transactions over the Internet to dedicate a separate PC used exclusively for online banking.”
Lauren Weinstein: Web Sites Display Stolen... →
‘With politicians clamoring for massive deployment of full body scanners at airports, how long do you imagine it will take before we start to see headlines like the title of this posting, inappropriately blaming the Internet generally and Search Engines in particular for the mess that these scanners are likely to create?’
AP: NJ Lawmakers Target Unsolicited Text Message... →
“Noting that such ads can be a costly nuisance for consumers, Sen. Joseph Vitale says the practice needs to be stopped immediately. He’s co-sponsoring legislation that would provide stiff penalties for violators, especially if they knew — or should have known — the consumer receiving the ads was a senior citizen or someone with a disability.”
PC World: Good Guys Bring Down the Mega-D Botnet →
“Chalk up one for the defenders. Here’s how a trio of security researchers used a three-step attack to defeat a 250,000-pronged botnet.”
CAUCE North America: This Decade in Spam: 2007 →
“Scott Richter made the news again in 2007, MySpace sued him for phishing and spamming their members. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission became active in shutting down pump & dump spamming organizations. Several major companies, including the Bank of America and Pfizer were found to be hosting zombie computers. Physician, heal thyself. New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore...
Michael Geist: The Year in Tech Law and Policy: My... →
“The past twelve months in law and technology were exceptionally active, with new legislation, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission hearings, national consultations, and very public battles over digital issues.”
Rohit Khare in TechCrunch: Privacy Theater: Why... →
“As long as the same information that social networks piously prohibit their own customers from using is being bought and sold on the open market by giant marketing companies, social networks are only pretending [to] protect your privacy.”
CAUCE North America: This Decade in Spam: 2006 →
‘Spam grows 143% in 2006. Christopher ‘Rizler’ Smith threatens to kill a witness in his trial, Alan Ralsky partner Daniel Lin pleads guilty. Datran Media settles a lawsuit filed against them over what is called “the largest deliberate breach of Internet privacy discovered by U.S. authorities”. Goodmail stuns California senators, Blue Frog hops off into the sunset,...
CAUCE North America: This Decade in Spam: 2005 →
“2005 saw Scott Richter file bankruptcy to avoid paying fines, Alan Ralsky arrested, and CAN-SPAM evaluated for renovations. AOL gave away gold. Spammer gold.”
CAUCE North America: This Decade in Spam: 2004 →
“2004 saw Bill Gates make an infamous prediction, CAN-SPAM came into play and is immediately criticized by those who must enforce it, DomainKeys & Sender ID battle it out in a popularity contest, and Scott Richter appears on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, debates a spam cop, and goes into the shmata business. None end well.”
Canada.com: A decade that cost us the right to be... →
“Call this decade — this decade without a name — the decade of surveillance. The decade when we abandoned our long-held cultural notions of personal privacy. When we surrendered some of our most basic civil liberties, not just in the name of security, but in the name of consumerism and fashion.”
Privacy Rights Clearinghouse: Resolve to Be a... →
“Use our ten tips below to minimize your risk of identity theft, protect your personal information and assert your rights to privacy.”
CAUCE North America: This Decade in Spam: 2005 →
“2005 saw Scott Richter file bankruptcy to avoid paying fines, Alan Ralsky arrested, and CAN-SPAM evaluated for renovations. AOL gave away gold.”
Alan Reiter in Internet Evolution: Ads in... →
‘Social networking company Brightkite has incorporated advertising from mega-retailer Best Buy in its cellular phone augmented reality (AR) application. Although it’s still early in AR’s development, this should raise some warning flags. …While a search for “electronic stores” will produce Best Buy locations, so will a search for “pizza.”’
CAUCE North America: This Decade in Spam: 2003 →
“2003 was the year of CAN-SPAM, AMEY (AOL, Earthlink, Microsoft & Yahoo!) legal initiatives, the FTC Spam Conference, Scott Richter being sued for spamming, and the Sobig and Blaster viruses.”
Messaging News: Why Does My Text Look Funny?... →
“It is likely that you see character set encoding problems all the time. If you have ever opened an email, a web page, or document and some of the letters looked wrong then there this is a good chance this is due to a character set encoding mismatch. You are mostly likely to notice problems with curly quotes, bullets, and accented characters.”
Sky News: Silence Of Spam Fraud Victims Costs... →
‘…victims of the scams have demanded better advice and support to avoid falling for the cons again, according to the largest survey of victims of fraud ever done in the UK.
…Many fraudsters keep and sell “sucker lists” of those who have been gullible and handed over money to them in the past and then repeatedly target them with different scams in a variety of...
Washington Post: As attacks increase, U.S.... →
“Demand is so intense that it has sparked a bidding war among agencies and contractors for a small pool of special talent: skilled technicians with security clearances. Their scarcity is driving up salaries, depriving agencies of skills, and in some cases affecting project quality, industry officials said.”
threatpost: Can Howard Schmidt Make a Difference? →
“At first glance, the selection of Howard A. Schmidt as the White House Cybersecurity Coordinator looks like little more than a safe and easy choice designed to quiet the critics who for seven months have been howling for action from the Obama administration. But a closer look shows that Schmidt’s appointment may in fact be a milestone in the government’s handling of information...
“We view spam as sending a commercial e-mail to someone with whom a marketer has...”
– Jerry Cerasale, Vice President of the Direct Marketing Assocation, in January of 2002
CAUCE North America: This Decade in Spam: 2002 →
“2002 marks a year when politicians Sean Connery, Bill Jones & Elizabeth Dole used spam to various effect, Ellen Spertus won $4.26 in her suit against a spammer, Joey McNichol was sued for calling someone a spammer in Australia, and Joel Hodgell lost a case and had to pay a spammer’s legal fees. The FTC determined that unsubscribing from spam did nothing positive nor negative,...
CAUCE North America: A Look Inside the European... →
“Last week the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA), which assists the European Commission and its member states with network and information security issues, published its third Anti-Spam Measures Survey. The survey provides insight into how network operators in Europe are responding to the continued onslaught of email spam.”
ENISA Anti-Spam Measures survey →
“In 2009 ENISA launched an Anti-Spam Measures survey, asking e-mail service providers in Europe about the measures they take to combat spam in their networks. This survey provides a view of how the fight against spam has evolved since the last survey two years ago.”
Consumer Affairs: Top 10 Scams Of 2009 →
‘Scam artists grew ever more sophisticated in 2009, moving away from spam emails and fast-talking telemarketers towards a more “corporate” image. …A credible-looking Web site and a few inexpensive Internet ads are all it takes to get started in the theft-by-net business.”
Seth's Blog: It's no wonder they don't trust us →
“The digital world, even the high end brands, has become a sleazy carnival, complete with hawkers, barkers and a bearded lady. By the time someone actually gets to your site, they’ve been conned, popped up, popped under and upsold so many times they really have no choice but to be skeptical.”
Al Iverson's Spam Resource: Aweber Hacked; Email... →
“…the email service provider Aweber was the victim of some sort of cyber-attack that resulted in bad guys getting access to email addresses stored in the Aweber system. This was tracked by way of spam starting to be received at unique addresses only given to various companies using Aweber for their email list management.”
David Brooks in the New York Times: The Protocol... →
“In the 19th and 20th centuries we made stuff: corn and steel and trucks. Now, we make protocols: sets of instructions. …A protocol economy tends toward inequality because some societies and subcultures have norms, attitudes and customs that increase the velocity of new recipes while other subcultures retard it. Some nations are blessed with self-reliant families, social trust and...
Associated Press: Visa cuts off 100 merchants for... →
“Most of the time, the swindlers use Internet ads to lure their customers. The ads often feature unauthorized photos of celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and Rachel Ray, implying endorsements for supplements like acai berries or teeth whiteners.”
DarkReading: Attack Of The RAM Scrapers →
“Why go after the data in RAM? Because in many ways it’s easier to grab there. Current PCI compliance standards require the end-to-end encryption of sensitive payment card data when being transmitted, received, or stored. Data then is exposed at the endpoints, during processing, when the unencrypted credit card data is resident in the POS device’s RAM. That’s where the RAM...
CAUCE North America: This Decade in Spam: 2001 →
“2001 was a year fraught with legal wrangling in Washington State, Arizona, the U.S. congress, and the EU, false positives, ORBS operator Alan Brown being sued and threatened with arrest, and a spate of new email viruses.”
Terry Zink: Has my family learned nothing? →
“Here I am, a computer security expert who preaches about the need for antimalware protection and my own brother is infected like the dickens. I have clearly failed in preaching my message to the people closest to me.”
Robert J. Hansen in Internet Evolution: A Lesson... →
“The security geeks I know are a cynical lot. By and large, they — we, I should say — got that way by being asked for our opinion, giving wise counsel, seeing that advice ignored, disastrous courses of action undertaken instead, and then being blamed for the problem we predicted all along.”
draft toward an email etiquette guide
cdixon:
1) always ask people if it’s ok before introducing them to each other (double opt in)
2) after being introduced to someone, don’t cc the introducer more than once.
3) never, ever use bcc. for one thing it’s rude. for another, you can get caught with reply all. instead, forward after sending.
4) vacation auto responders are lame and for n00bs
5) keep emails short. five sentences...
CAUCE North America: This Decade in Spam: 2000 →
“Today, we open our look back at the past decade in spam with the year 2000. Y2K is possibly best described as the year the Mail Abuse Protection System got sued. A lot.”
“If you don’t know, as of today, Facebook will automatically start plunging...”
– seen on Facebook
Digital Inspiration: Gmail and Google Apps Account... →
“Things were now no longer in my control. Someone had successfully managed to change the password of my Gmail account, my Google Account and the most terrifying part was that the hacker also gained control over my Google Apps Account….”
SophosLabs: A shady domain →
“…I was thinking to myself if you’re going to come up with a fake address, at least come up with something believable. What kind of fool do they take me for? For some reason though I decided to plug the address into Google Maps and was surprised to see that the address did in fact exist. Google Street View had even passed by the specific home, and it actually looked nice!”
ComputerWorld: Hackers take Twitter offline for a... →
“Based on Twitter’s account of the attack, it’s possible that the company’s servers were never compromised. The actual attack may have instead targeted Dyn, the DNS service provider that manages Twitter’s DNS records….”
Consumer Reports: Web scam or aggressive marketing... →
“Imagine shopping at a brick-and-mortar store and, after you’ve paid, not being able to leave until you listened to a salesperson’s pitch. You wouldn’t put up with that and neither would most people. But that’s how Buy.com treated me recently, after I made a purchase…those who don’t carefully read all the copy before take advantage of its offer may not realize that they are authorizing...
Chris Minnick in Internet Evolution: A Decade on... →
“To many of us who got our start working on the Web in the 1990s, the 2000s may have seemed like a letdown. We had dreams of a Semantic Web, the Dow at 8 million, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, groceries delivered to our doors at the click of a mouse, and retiring at 30.
What we got was a dotcom bust, terrorism, war, natural disasters, recession, air travel becoming unbearable,...
New Zealand Herald: Computer virus cripples... →
“While the main hospital in Hamilton and smaller outlying hospitals were continuing to function, spokeswoman Mary-Ann Gill said it was important people only came for treatment if it was absolutely necessary.”
Emails From Crazy People: A Mellow Workplace →
“Effective immediately, any server or host who fails to collect at least 20 email [addresses] per week, will be fined $100. Anyone failing to collect at least 20 emails for two weeks in a month will be fired immediately. No matter what. No matter who you are.”
AllThingsD: Facebook: Privacy Advocates Ask FTC to... →
“…I don’t think the proposition that Facebook is offering its users–the opportunity to share every detail about their online lives with anyone with a browser–is an inherently bad one. There are lots of people who are comfortable with the notion.
The problem is that Facebook has switched course midstream. It started off as a site that limited users’ information to the outside world and...
Join the Meat Squad
Tumblr recently added an interesting feature which allows you, the Box of Meat reader, to submit articles into an editorial queue. We’ve been wanting to expand and invite more contributors for a while, so this is perfect.
If you (yes, you!) have some meat to share, visit http://boxofmeat.net/submit or email boxofmeat@tumblr.com. We assume there must be some spam filtering on that...
CNET News: Facebook sues men for allegedly... →
‘The defendants are accused of launching at least four spam campaigns over the last couple of years, the latest in the last three months being responsible for nearly three-fourth of all spam on the site, according to the suit. The latest “escalated attack” included spam offering a colon cleanser, fake messages purporting to show a video of the recipient and offers for recipients...
Daggle: Dear San Jose Councilmember Pete Constant:... →
“There was no link to unsubscribe from this email at the end. There were no unsubscribe instructions at all. …I wasn’t asked to confirm my subscription for announcement from a councilman who serves a district far from the city I live in.”
Al Iverson's Spam Resource: Receiving Duplicate... →
“The other day, somebody asked me what causes a recipient to receive the same message more than once. I run into duplicate message issues perhaps once or twice a year; not too often, but often enough that a recipient gets really angry at the sending ESP, assuming it’s they’re fault, because it doesn’t seem to be happening with other email. To that end, I’ve compiled...