spam

Antispam developer: New method is only a first step

Editor's note: This story was updated at 2:51 p.m. PDT to clear up confusion between DomainKeys, a standard already in use, and DomainKeys Identified Mail, the up-and-coming technique to which some are now migrating.

WASHINGTON--A new antispam technology that recently got a preliminary nod from an international standards body holds promise, but an engineer who helped develop the technique says it's not a surefire way to evade e-mails from criminals.

The technique called DomainKeys Identified Mail, or DKIM for short, relies on a quietly inserted digital signature on the sender's end, which is designed to … Read more

The Wrong Way to Build Links from Blogs

I'm an evangelist when it comes to blogging as a way to build brand, thought leadership status, and links. Heck, I've written a lot about making blogging pay off in terms of SEO (here, here and here, for example). However, my enthusiasm does not carry over to spamming the blogosphere. Not through comments. Not through trackbacks. Not through spam blogs (a.k.a. splogs). Not through payola.

There are firms out there that hang out their shingle as "blog marketing firms," that take your money and promise many links from other blogs to your site or … Read more

Spammers defeat Captchas

According to security vendor BitDefender, spammers have defeated a system designed to differentiate humans from machines when registering new accounts online. Known as Captcha (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart), the system won't allow users to advance until distorted characters in a box are correctly entered. BitDefender says a new threat, Trojan.Spammer.HotLan.A, is using more than 15,000 automatically generated bogus Microsoft Hotmail accounts to spread and is registering 500 new accounts per hour, suggesting the Captcha system has been defeated.

BitDefender says the Trojan horse accesses one of the free … Read more

Blizzard suing 'WoW' gold sellers

World of Warcraft publisher Blizzard Entertainment has filed suit in U.S. federal court against a popular gold-selling operation for spamming players with ads for virtual gold, according to the Warcry Network and other sources.

In its post, Warcry's Razorwire blog quoted a Blizzard employee as saying, "We felt that it was important to share with the community just how serious we are in our efforts to combat (in-game gold spamming). Blizzard has filed a federal lawsuit against the operators of Peons4hire, a popular gold-selling organization."

Blizzard spokesperson Shon Damron, in an e-mail, confirmed the lawsuit.

It'… Read more

Wizard of WordPress, part two: When open source fails

In part two of my interview with Matt Mullenweg (see also part one) of WordPress and Automattic, we discussed the release of WordPress 2.2, including its new widgets and Ajax-enhanced interface.

I asked Mullenweg what his favorite widgets were and although he said he "doesn't like most widgets," he did call out some of the blogosphere utilities like Sphere (review) and Technorati.

No conversation with Mullenweg would be complete without a discussion of the WordPress antispam utility, Akismet -- a service inspired by the young developer's mother. I also find it interesting that while Mullenweg … Read more

Phishers hook up to Web 2.0

There's something unusual about a phishing scam doing the rounds, which uses a news hook--a fake report that Australian Prime Minister John Howard has had a heart attack--to try to lure in victims. That's not new--worm wranglers have turned to Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein to get people to click on dodgy links. What is interesting is that the hackers are using Web 2.0 technology in their scam.

People who fall victim to the scam download a Trojan horse to their computer that records their keystrokes and Internet activity, according to security company Websense. So far, so … Read more

News Roundup

-- IE 7 reaches 100 million users. Even with all those users, it still comes in second to Internet Explorer 6, which makes sense considering IE6 is the default browser on nearly every single PC. (News.com)

-- Google plugs account hijack holes. The vulnerabilities in question affected both Google Documents and GMail, giving hackers full access to your e-mail and spreadsheets. (News.com)

-- Report: Apple to charge some Mac users for wireless technologies. 802.11n, the next-generation wireless protocol, has secretly been shipping in Apple's computers for the past several months, but that functionality hasn't been … Read more

Boxbe: File it under 'too good to be true' -- we think

I guess this must be a pretty empowering concept to some people. Take those nasty spammers who fill your inbox with "Ch3ap V1c0d1n!!!!" and "FREE Credit Rating Analysis!" and tell them that if they want to make their way into your Gmail, they're going to have to pay the toll. Kind of like that troll-under-the-bridge fairy tale--or was that a Monty Python sketch?

I digress. There are a few companies out there that are trying to convince you that opting into spam is not only good, it can get you some pocket change (InboxDollars comes … Read more