May 2009
38 posts
PC World: Four Indicted in Giant College Spam... →
“The Shahs allegedly developed e-mail extracting programs, which they used to illegally harvest more than 8 million student e-mail addresses from more than 2,000 colleges and universities, the DOJ said. They allegedly used this database of e-mail addresses to send targeted spam e-mails selling various products and services, including digital cameras, spring break travel offers and pepper...
April 2009
41 posts
“Products that help people be/do something awesome become social without brand...”
– Kathy Sierra, on Twitter
Bruce Schneier in the Wall Street Journal: Do You... →
“Almost none of more than 27 million people who took the RealAge quiz realized that their personal health data was sold to drug companies, who in turned used that information for targeted e-mail marketing campaigns.”
“…if your advertising giveth and your EULA [license agreement] taketh away don’t be surprised if the FTC comes calling.”
Laughing Squid: Public Ad Campaign Takes Over... →
“The billboards are illegal because the parent company never received permits and there are too many of them for the city to tear them all down. That means they are open game for public art!”
All Spammed Up: Former Senator On Board of Major... →
“Former Senator Bill Bradley sits on the board of a company called QuinStreet, which…has been the target of many complaints about its allegedly aggressive spamming activities….”
McAfee Avert Labs: Swine Flu spam →
Swine flu spam has begun — and so have the domain registrations. If the flu doesn’t kill us, the spam and SEO will.
GigaOM: Why Email Clients Need to Change →
“With every birthday reminder, bill confirmation, new friend, direct message, password recovery, and mailing list, the content of our inboxes becomes less and less a means of communication and more and more a record of all we do online. Email is the lowest common denominator of digital identity. It’s our web keychain. It’s the catch-all of our online lives.”
Al Iverson's Spam Resource: Speaking of Business... →
Al links to discussions of live twittered responses to a conference presentation which attempted to defend some of the worst practices common to email marketing.
Email Marketing Reports: Targeted opt-out email:... →
“Every proponent of opt-out I’ve ever talked to overestimates the value and relevancy of their email. Every single one was convinced that their product or service was so good that people would be grateful to hear about it. Here’s the reality….”
CDT PolicyBeta: What Went Right in the Fight... →
“Companies that were engaging in these practices [and] receiving venture capital from legitimate investors and advertising from mainstream companies were the immediate threat to the Internet.”
Network World: Cloud computing a 'security... →
“Swamp computing might be a more appropriate name says one security expert.”
MEAT CARDS: Business Cards Made From MEAT AND... →
Get a box of these for your next conference appearance, and you’re guaranteed to never do business with vegans or vegetarians.
(via boingboing)
Leslie Harris on the Huffington Post: Because... →
“What if the criminal in question had lured his victims using newspaper classifieds? Would we be calling this the Boston Globe Killer? Or better yet the Boston Phoenix Killer, which has numerous ads for massage services? Would the news networks be hosting a parade of talking heads calling for sweeping new content and usage restrictions for newspapers?”
Yahoo!: GeoCities will close later this year. →
“We have decided to discontinue the process of allowing new customers to sign up for GeoCities accounts as we focus on helping our customers explore and build new relationships online in other ways. We will be closing GeoCities later this year.”
Well, that’s one way to keep spammers from signing up for new geocities accounts. Congratulations to Yahoo! for finally making the...
Bruce Perens: A Cyber-Attack on an American City →
“Just after midnight on Thursday, April 9, unidentified attackers climbed down four manholes serving the Northern California city of Morgan Hill and cut eight fiber cables in what appears to have been an organized attack on the electronic infrastructure of an American city. Its implications, though startling, have gone almost un-reported.”
This is not fiction.
Dave Crocker on CircleID: A Few More Thoughts on... →
SFGate Technology Chronicles: Another year of... →
“Security vendors say they are not doing enough and government officials say they are not doing enough because attacks are getting worse….”
Washington Post Security Fix: Time for an Internet... →
“Stewart says the world needs a more concerted effort to identify — if not apprehend — top cyber criminal actors. He also said that ISPs need to be held more accountable when they ignore overt signs of persistent criminal activity on their networks.”
ComputerWeekly.com: Police e-crime unit collars... →
“The expertise and knowledge-sharing with our stakeholders in the banking and financial industry has been combined with conventional policing to create a co-ordinated and sustained fast response to e-crime and the most up-to-date in computer forensics.”
The Onion: Spam A Global Warming Issue →
the only sane response I’ve seen to this extremely flawed study
DMNews: Potential FTC changes may affect WOM →
“Under the proposal, bloggers and brands would be held accountable for any false statements they make about a product in the blogosphere or on a social network.”
(via @ddayman)
spamnation: Who's a-scraping? →
“…an email address that was handed out to a web crawler running on a server hosted at theplanet.com in December 2007 now receives just under 40 spams a day. The spam sent to that trap consists of the usual fake watches, diplomas, penis enlargements and pharmacy spam.”
Seth's Blog: How to opt out of cookie sniffing and... →
“To be really clear: I don’t mind the cookie sniffing. I don’t mind getting better ads. I don’t mind the sites making money.
I mind the sneaking around part.”
Box of Meat agrees.
EEC: UK Subscriber Study: Email Must Say Something... →
“Almost 64% of the respondents in the Emailcenter survey say that only a quarter of the marketing messages they get are relevant to them.”
Consumerist: Here's What A Card Skimmer Looks Like... →
Cloudmark Blog: Blocked Email Part 1: “Why me?” →
David Romerstein explains why some messages get caught in spam filters, for an end user audience
Washingon Post Security Fix: World's First Mac... →
Premiere Global: For Sale: 99% Deliverability and... →
“I understand why ESP’s make the claim; I just wish you guys didn’t always fall for it. I have to resist the urge to call out every one of these claims when I see them, because that battle would probably cause my head to explode.”
Laughing Squid: A Nigerian Dictator Scam on... →
Todd Lapin plays gently with an advance-fee fraudster on Craigslist, and still hasn’t sold his comfy-looking sofa.
MX Logic: What Can We Learn from Twitter's... →
“…based on the reported numbers, Twitter’s growth does not seem to have been hampered at all despite the numerous security flaws that have been patched over the past 8 months. Perhaps this is because there hasn’t been a serious incident of data theft or widespread malware infection as a result of one of these exploits. Rest assured, those are coming!”
PC World: EU Sues UK Government Over Treatment of... →
‘“European privacy rules are crystal clear: a person’s information can only be used with their prior consent. We cannot give up this basic principle, and have all our exchanges monitored, surveyed and stored in exchange for a promise of ‘more relevant’ advertising. I will not shy away from taking action where an E.U. country falls short of this duty,” said [EU...
Email Marketing Reports: What you can learn from... →
“a quick, painless, gracious, positive unsubscribe experience makes a good impression on a subscriber who’s leaving the list but not necessarily leaving your brand or business.”
Michael Hammer on CircleID: A Few Thoughts on the... →
“This is not simply about protecting brands, companies or deliverability. It is about protecting endusers, their personal computers, the organizations they work for and society as a whole.”
spamnation: Remember Geocities? Spammers do →
“In essence, Geocities is now an immense spam redirector.”
.eduGuru: Step away from the computer: When NOT to... →
“Every time you send a message, you are impacting whether or not your users will open and respond to future messages.”
(via @StephanieSAM)
Steve Crocker in the New York Times: How the... →
Steve Crocker chronocles the history and impact of internet (and pre-internet) standards, celebrating the 40th anniversary of RFC #1.
McAfee Avert Labs Blog: Egg-Hunting With New... →
“The malicious presentation files abuse a new, yet unpatched hole in Microsoft PowerPoint and causes it to execute code infiltrated by the attackers.”
I’m going to start including this in every presentation!
GNUCITIZEN Security Buzzword Generator →
Are you protected against offline log timing attacks? Or wireless packet surfing? What about insecure dumpster stalking?