spam

Epsilon, which manages e-mail communications for TiVo, JP Morgan Chase, Capital One Financial, US Bank, the Kroger grocery chain, and other clients, said this week that it suffered a security breach that revealed data on some of its clients' customers.

Epsilon, which says it sends 40 billion e-mails annually, released a statement yesterday saying that on March 30 it detected an "unauthorized entry" into its system that exposed customer names and e-mail addresses. The company said "no other personal identifiable information associated with those names was at risk."

Bloomberg reported that an Epsilon representative would not … Read more

Phishers use all kinds of come-ons to lure their victims. But one persistent piece of spam tries to trick people by offering an upgrade to Adobe Acrobat.

Detailed by security provider Cloudmark in a blog posted yesterday, this type of advertising spam e-mails users a notice to upgrade to the new Adobe Acrobat Reader. Those who click on the link are directed to a Web site touting the benefits of the software.

The Web site domain name contains the word "adobe," says Cloudmark, as an attempt to give it some kind of legitimacy. But of course, it's … Read more

A trio of gaming sites has been caught getting users to vote stories into popularity on social-news site Reddit.

The effort, which had been run by a Reddit user called "MasterOfHyrule," made use of multiple accounts to submit, vote, and comment on stories from gaming sites GamePro, G4TV, and GamrFeed. Those stories would then have a greater chance at making it to the front page of the site's gaming subcategory and possibly onto the front page of the site where even more traffic could be had.

After being called out in a post by Reddit user Deimorz … Read more

The successful takedown of the Rustock botnet cut the volume of spam across the world by one-third, according to Symantec's March 2011 MessageLabs Intelligence Report.

By the end of last year, the notorious botnet was responsible for sending out 44 billion spam messages per day, or more than 47 percent of the world's total output, making it the leading purveyor of spam. Though Rustock lost some steam this year, it still managed to send out more than 13 billion daily spam e-mails earlier this month prior to its takedown, said Symantec.

But legal actions by Microsoft and raids … Read more

Links from Friday's episode of Loaded:

Microsoft helps the feds bring down a large e-mail spam outfit.

The New York Times announces its pricing structure for access to digital editions.

Microsoft launches a mobile app to help men be cool.

The FCC may not allow cell phone boosters.

Samsung launches 3D video on demand in Korea.

Google is ready to fire a shot across the bow of the so-called content farms, willing to acknowledge recent criticism of the quality of its search results but still not quite ready to detail specific remedies.

The company plans to announce this morning that it has heard the complaints over the past several months regarding the quality of Google search, without question the most important component of Google's public image. While no hard details were provided in an interview prior to the announcement, Google's Matt Cutts, principal engineer and lead voice on search-quality issues, told CNET that the … Read more

The U.S. is the spam leader across the world, responsible for one out of every five junk messages sent, according to a report out today from Sophos.

The security vendor's fourth-quarter "Dirty Dozen" report of spam-relaying countries found that the United States upped its percentage of global spam from the third quarter and now accounts for 18.83 percent of all junk e-mails.

That percentage is almost three times higher than second-place India, which is responsible for deploying 6.88 percent of all spam across the globe, according to Sophos. Other countries named on the Dirty … Read more

Most big-time e-mail clients offer some kind of spam filtering, as do many antivirus packages. There are also standalone spam-stoppers out there; as it happens, one of the best we've tried is also free. It's called Spamihilator, short for spam annihilator, and seems to sound best when pronounced "spam-EYE-uh-lator." It's a brainy e-mail filter that stands between your e-mail client and your account's connection, scanning incoming messages and sorting out the spam. It learns as you use it, with a little help from you. It supports plug-ins, POP3 and IMAP accounts, and secure connections.… Read more

Google has made it possible for Google Apps customers to sign their outgoing e-mail using a technology called DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) that makes it easier to ensure a sender is who he or she says he is.

Google has been using DKIM since 2008 to show Gmail users when incoming mail really is from PayPal and eBay--two major brand names often caught up in spoofed e-mails used in phishing attacks. Now the technology is available more broadly and for the e-mail Google Apps users send.

"Today...we're making it possible for all Google Apps customers to sign … Read more