A federal grand jury Thursday indicted a Nigerian national and a British citizen living here in an alleged Internet hoax that promised a share of $20 million in a box at Bush Intercontinental Airport.
Nigerian Patrick Omu, 36, and Ambrose Agwuibe, 43, were charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and 18 counts of wire fraud and are in jail here.
If convicted, they could receive five years in prison on the conspiracy charge and 20 years in prison on each wire fraud charge, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay Hileman said.
Numerous people in the United States and Canada were sent e-mails promising them a large share of $20 million if they would pick up a box at the airport and keep it until its owners could retrieve it. People were asked to wire money to cover shipping, handling and inspection fees. [HoustonChronicle.com]
The DMA’s doublespeak on spam
CNET News.com’s Declan McCullagh explains the real story behind the Direct Marketing Association’s position that unsolicited e-mail entreaties to us shouldn’t be considered spam. [CNET News.com]
An amazing reduction in Spam
Since moving with my job, I am amazed at how much less spam and as a result how much less email I get. I am going through a slight withdrawal from constantly responding to the new email sound, but in many ways feeling good about this change. I know we use a spam filter at the network level which is taking care of some of my issue, but I think the main thing is that 2 legacy domains I used for about 7 years are no longer forwarding to my newer email. This is great! I still get all my work email and none of the former BS. POPfile is no longer being used since it does not work with IMAP, but I am not really getting any spam … whoa. What few are coming through are now picked up simply with the Entourage Junk Filter.
I went from 48% spam, to less than 1%. Let’s see how long this can last!!
AOL to Get Tough on Spam
Internet.com: AOL Moves to Thwart New Forms of Spam
AOL now plan to extend its war against spam to include bulk instant messaging, which is becoming an increasing annoyance to IM users.
Date Set for Cross Sector Spam Summit
Lawmakers debate antispam plan
The Bush administration urges Congress to enact a new law criminalizing pornographic and fraudulent spam. Lawmakers spar on whether an “opt in” or “opt out” approach is better. [CNET News.com]
Approaching the SPAM Barrier
It is with this in mind that I bring to your attention the fact that we–as a society–are beginning to approach the SPAM Barrier. That is, according to BrightMail, very soon better than half of all email will be SPAM. That means that, given any random piece of email, there is a greater probability of it being SPAM than it being anything else.
Just checked my POPFile log and noticed I am pretty close myself… 4,960 ( 48.34%) of my messages are currently marked as Spam.
First email client with built in POPFile
The Courier Email client has code in the latest version to automatically find the X-POPFile-Link decode the link and add a “Reclassify…” menu item.
If you use Windows and enable POPFile within your email client, this could be a very nice alternative to Outlook…
Yahoo Spam Filter Thwarts FTC
While hundreds of thousands of Americans rush to sign up for the Federal Trade Commission’s new do-not-call service, many Yahoo users are left wondering why they haven’t received their registration confirmation. The reason? Yahoo’s spam filter doesn’t like the FTC’s onslaught of e-mail. By Amit Asaravala. [Wired News]
Microsoft urged to fry its own spam
The software giant recently launched an antispam campaign, but critics say the company should be more introspective if it is serious about reducing the scourge of unwanted e-mail. [CNET News.com]
Deficiencies in Microsoft’s spam behavior range across a number of its divisions that offer e-mail services, according to Atkins and others. These include the company’s small-business-oriented bCentral portal; MSN, which has its own e-mail service; and Hotmail, a separate, Web-based e-mail service that uses many of the same systems as MSN but operates under different rules.
Perhaps the loudest hew and cry against Microsoft emanates from some network administrators tracking the spam problem, who claim that a sizable chunk of the spam now clogging the Internet’s arteries emanates from Microsoft’s own servers.
These spam watchers complain that while Microsoft has implemented badly needed controls on Hotmail, such as technology designed to identify software robots and prevent them from registering for accounts, Microsoft has left loopholes large enough to run rivers of spam through the related MSN e-mail service.
NewsHour on the Spam Wars
I had missed this PBS NewsHour report on spam — caught the program Friday (with the wonderful James Gleick being interviewed on the subject), but overlooked the online transcript…. [JD’s New Media Musings]
High level (it was on the radio…) but good.
Top bulk e-mailers
Ronnie Scelson, who sends 60 million to 70 million spam e-mails a day, is among the USA’s best known. Among the others:
Avg. daily spam
Type of spam
Eddy Marin, 41
250 million
Viagra, mail-order brides, loans, computer software.
Brendan Battles, 31
50 million
CDs of e-mail addresses.
Alan Ralsky, 58
30 million
Vacation giveaways, mortgages, work-at-home opportunities.
[USA Today] (thanks, Dad!)
Gates roasts spam
In a letter to customers, Microsoft’s chairman highlights the company’s campaign against unsolicited e-mail. [CNET News.com]
“Spam is so significant a problem that it threatens to undo much of the good that e-mail has achieved,” Gates wrote in one of his periodic e-mail missives to customers.
I find that hard to argue… POPFile has categorized 2,221 ( 46.86%) messages in just over a week (I did a new install). I’ve had 69 false positives and 77 false negatives. I am currently running a 95.9% of accuracy with 7 buckets being used for classification.
46.86% of my email has been spam!! That is a pretty serious statistic and one that easily highlights the intensity of the problem.
Setting the rules for ISPs and spammers
CNET News.com’s Declan McCullagh says a case that pits EarthLink against an independent film producer may decide what Internet providers can legally do to fight spammers. [CNET News.com]
The Next Step in the Spam Control War: Greylisting.
Evan Harris: The Next Step in the Spam Control War: Greylisting. The obvious extension is to make the blocking time adaptive. I also wonder if this can be implemented with the database as soft state. [Hack the Planet]
it just gets worser and worser
Dan Gillmor nicely captures the truth around the emerging spam consensus in DC: A spam bill that will make it (1) harder to decline UCE from companies with famous logos, and (2) impossible to block UCE from spammers.
Senate Panel Overwhelmingly Passes Anti-Spam Bill
Calling for up to a year in prison and maximum fines of $1 million for spammers, Burns-Wyden measure goes to full Senate for consideration. [internetnews.com]
Worse Than Spam?
Perhaps the most dramatic illustration of the way that Internet architecture supports self-reliance rather than regulation is the persistent problem of unsolicited commercial email, commonly known as spam. There are solutions to spam based on self-reliance that are reasonably effective. Other solutions, which threaten the architecture of Internet email, are much worse than the problem.
A good read…
Turning up the heat on spam
The Senate, Washington state, an organization of 30 countries, Microsoft and other software makers look to slice and dice unwanted e-mail. [CNET News.com]
MIT Technology Review: Spam Wars ….
MIT Technology Review: Spam Wars. Despite deep divisions among this assemblage on who has the best tools for eradicating spam, there’s broad consensus on one point: if there’s one thing worse than a piece of junk e-mail, it’s the prospect that a spam filter will stop a legitimate message from reaching its recipient. [Tomalak’s Realm]