March 2009
61 posts
Federal Computer Week: States take growing role in... →
“It’s unclear whether cyber crime is increasing or simply being reported more often — or a combination of the two. But as the number of cyber crime cases increase, state and local law enforcement agencies are taking an increasingly active role in investigating them.”
McSweeney's Internet Tendency: E-mail Addresses It... →
(via @laughingsquid)
MX Logic: Conficker Fact and FUD, Flaw In Worm... →
“I am guessing that most people are suffering from Conficker information overload today! As such, it is very important to be able to separate the Conficker Facts from the FUD.”
Getting Email Delivered: How Vacation Reply... →
Anne Mitchell took a break from twittering to write “Every time you get an email in, your server sends out what is an essentially identical message to each person who sent you email. Over time, your mail server is sending out potentially hundreds or thousands of identical messages to hundreds of thousands of different people. Just like a spammer.”
Ben Laurie: More Banking Stupidity: Phished by... →
“Allegedly this protects cardholders - by training them to expect a process in which there’s absolutely no way to know whether you are being phished or not.”
(via boingboing)
MetaFilter: GhostNet →
“A vast electronic spying operation has infiltrated computers and has stolen documents from hundreds of government and private offices around the world, including those of the Dalai Lama, Canadian researchers have concluded. In a report to be issued this weekend, the researchers said that the system was being controlled from computers based almost exclusively in China, but that they could...
CNET News: Melissa virus turns 10 →
“It was the first mass-mailing virus, which used e-mail to spread on a large scale.”
PandaLabs: Don’t get taken in by the Conficker... →
“It’s been a while since we saw so much coverage in the general media and I don’t want to tell you to disregard this, because it does contribute to general awareness and make users more conscious. But I also want to say that perhaps it does more harm than good.”
Seth's Blog: The high road and the low road →
“The reason manipulative media doesn’t work as well as you might expect is that people have a choice. Sure, on a per thousand basis, the manipulative tricks you might decide to use seem to work, but people don’t have to show up in the first place. Generally, the people who do show up for these low road attempts at manipulation aren’t the right people to begin with.”
CCFC: Need a Pothole Filled in Your City? Call KFC →
‘In an unusual cause-marketing push, KFC is tackling the pothole problem in Louisville, Ky. in exchange for stamping the fresh pavement with “Re-freshed by KFC,” a chalky stencil likely to fade away in the next downpour.’
PC Magazine: Verizon Settles Telemarketing Suit... →
“Verizon sued Utah-based Feature Films for Families last month after it allegedly used an auto-dialer to call Verizon customers and encourage them to see the upcoming movie The Velveteen Rabbit.
The company has agreed to cease all future calls and pay a $25,000 cash settlement, which Verizon said it will donate to the National Domestic Violence Hotline (NDVH).”
(via consumerist)
techPresident: Twitter is NOT a Strategy →
“Not to put Twitter down, because it definitely has valuable uses, but it’s just a tool — and if you don’t know WHY you’re using it, you’re probably not going to get much out of it.”
The Email Wars: Is Everyone a Social Media... →
Word to the Wise: Email is store and forward →
“Many of us are so used to email appearing instantaneous, we forget that the underlying protocol was never designed for instant messaging. …But there are a lot of things that can slow down email delivery.”
Talking Points Memo: Wow, I Needed That →
“As part of their efforts to make the scale and scope of Bernie Madoff’s crimes clear to Judge Denny Chin…the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York submitted emails from Madoff’s victims….
My Name is Mr. [redacted] but my origin is from Republic of Congo. I have an inherited fund I want to invest in a business in your country with a help of...
Word to the Wise: What is an email address? (part... →
wherein Steve gives some very helpful advice on how to confirm that email addresses received via web forms (or imported lists) are likely to be valid, beyond the strict (but lenient) RFC requirements.
7 tags
Return Path: Finding the Truth in DKIM
Image via Wikipedia
Over the past three weeks I’ve been publishing a five-part series about DKIM on Return Path’s blog and CircleID. Hopefully this’ll help to cut through the overly simplified “elevator pitch” about authentication that everyone in the industry got tired of years ago, and help us all understand DKIM at a deeper level.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
...
The Onion: Internet To Reduce E-Mail Delivery To 6... →
TechCrunch: Why Advertising Is Failing On The... →
“The internet is the most liberating of all mass media developed to date. It is participatory, like swapping stories around a campfire or attending a renaissance fair. It is not meant solely to push content, in one direction, to a captive audience, the way movies or traditional network television did. It provides the greatest array of entertainment and information, on any subject, with...
“my delivrifier 9000 says it’s “on target for an OLA of 5 nines of...”
– Bengt-Erik Norum, replying on Twitter
DarkReading: Small Business: The New Black In... →
“Enticed by poor defenses of mom-and-pop shops, hackers turn away from hardened defenses of banks and large enterprises. …And many small businesses still don’t know they are targets….”
PC World: Connecticut Man Sentenced for E-card... →
“Thomas Taylor Jr., of West Haven, Connecticut, and his colleagues spammed thousands of AOL subscribers with e-mails that purported to include electronic greeting cards from sites including Hallmark.com and Bluemountain.com. When people tried to view the cards, their computers became infected with a Trojan that prevented them from accessing AOL unless they entered information including their...
Washington Post Security Fix: FTC Takes on... →
TeamNimbusWest: Your problem is you’re really... →
Direct: Stupid Marketer Watch: Big-Name Spammers... →
“Think just fly-by-nights spam? Think again. Some of the best-known names in American commerce are engaging in it. …their spam doesn’t just hurt them, it hurts every other marketer….”
SC Magazine US: ATM malware appears, Diebold... →
“Security firm Sophos reported this week that it received three samples of a trojan that was customized to run on Diebold-manufactured cash machines….”
Network World: Two men settle stock spam charges →
“Two Texas men have settled U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charges that they created a huge e-mail spam campaign to drive up demand for low-value stocks they owned, with one of the men agreeing to pay US$3.8 million to settle the charges.
…The SEC investigation was prompted by a spam e-mail an attorney at the commission received in August 2005.”
Geek.com: E-mail news spam gets local with IP... →
“What the spammers are doing is sending out fake e-mails that look like legitimate news reports from Reuters. The news includes details of a bomb explosion, but to make the reader more interested the location of the bomb is said to be in the city they live in – hopefully compelling you to want to know more and clicking the link.”
Google Public Policy Blog: Why the next generation... →
“IPv6 presents a classic chicken-and-egg problem. The benefits of any one network operator, device vendor, application and content provider, or Internet user adopting IPv6 are limited if there is not a critical mass of other adopters. As a result, adoption lags.”
Online Marketing Blog: Best and Worst Practices... →
“Any number of companies…entered the social media world oblivious to the formal and unwritten community rules and treating social channels simply as another dumping ground for current advertising assets. …Identifying best and worst practics is a work in progress of course, as communities develop, grow and change.”
(via @StephanieSAM)
“If I do it, it’s clever marketing. If someone sends it to me, it’s...”
– Guy Kawasaki, quoted by Joshua Baer on Twitter
John Levine: How Hard Is It to Deploy DKIM? →
Consumerist: AT&T Mobility Sues Over Auto Warranty... →
“You know those annoying robocalls on your mobile phone about renewing your car warranty? The companies behind the calls use spoofing to remain hidden, but AT&T Mobility just filed suit in federal court to track down the culprits…the FTC and FCC both don’t seem too concerned about the matter.”
Reuters: Nigerian student gets 19 years' jail for... →
“A Nigerian undergraduate has been sentenced to 19 years in prison for obtaining $47,000…from an Australian woman by convincing her over the Internet that he was 57 years old, white, and madly in love with her.”
Washington Post Security Fix: Massive Profits... →
“Unsuspecting users who view one of these hacked sites or ads see a series misleading warnings saying their computers are infected with malware, and offering a free scan. Those who agree are prompted to download a program that conducts a bogus scan and warns of non-existent threats on the user’s system. The software also blocks the user from visiting legitimate security Web sites. The...
eWeek: BBC Responds to Botnet Controversy →
“Despite taking some criticism, the British Broadcasting Corp. is defending its decision to buy a botnet in an effort to inform the public about the dangers of cyber-crime.”
BtoB Magazine: Study: Many e-mail campaigns... →
“A large proportion of e-commerce companies employ faulty e-mail marketing practices that have the potential to aggravate their customers and sabotage subsequent targeting opportunities….”
Brand Republic: New rules advocate opt-in for... →
“The [UK] Direct Marketing Association has released the first-ever guidelines on Bluetooth marketing, advising brands to seek user permission before sending messages.”
iTnews Australia: Cybercrime-as-a-service takes... →
“Malware writers that sell toolkits online for as little as $400 will now configure and host the attacks as a service for another $50…”
I’m Not Actually a Geek: Microblogging Will... →
“As more companies take up microblogging…communications amongst employees will both increase and divert away from email. …In an office setting, I continue to find the way Dave Winer describes it quite useful: narrating your work.”
Harvard Business Review: The High Priests of IT —... →
“The dirty secret of corporate IT is that its primary mission is to serve yesterday’s technology needs, even if that means strangling tomorrow’s technology solutions.”
(via boingboing)
blumenthals.com: Google Maps vs Locksmith... →
‘Google is changing the playing field of local marketing and they are defining it in a whole new way. They are on the battle lines between doing it right and letting the “bad guys” have their way.’
TechNewsWorld: Symantec Bungle Unleashes Torrent... →
“One little mistake — like failing to sign the certificate when you push out a patch for your antivirus product — and all of a sudden you’re a malware-producing, censoring spam bot. That’s how it seemed for Symantec when an error spun wildly out of control.”
“Regardless of how noble the intent, unsolicited bulk email is still spam-...”
– Evan Burke, on Twitter
A VC: Unsubscribing From Unwanted Email →
“…I think I can basically eliminate the unwanted email by continuing to click on the unsubscribe links.”
“If you have to put “please do not reply” in the SUBJECT LINE of your...”
– Stephanie Miller, on Twitter
Time: How to Spot a Ponzi Con Artist? Follow the... →
‘But you know you’ve really been “Ponzi-ed” when your investment guru has his own Caribbean island, a $10 million moated castle in Miami, $100 million fleet of private jets, three or four “outside wives” along with his real one, and calls himself “Sir,” when not officially knighted.’
(via huffingtonpost)
Yahoo! Developer Network: Using Hadoop to fight... →
Citizens Against Ugly Street Spam (CAUSS) works to... →
“got junk?, single? single singles looking for love I buy houses we buy Houses I buy homes avoid forclosure rent to own, lease purchase sell your house in 9 days sell your home in 7 Days cash for your home CEO income at home don’t believe it don’t call real estate apprentice wanted become a real estate agent millionaire training work at home I lost 40 pounds have a pc and quality...