Spam Rate Declines As Volume Increases

Spam's slice of the e-mail pie has dropped by 12 percent so far this year, indicating that defensive strategies and technologies, and perhaps high-profile prosecutions of big-time spammers are having an affect, a message filtering firm announced Thursday.

Through August 2005, said Denver-based MX Logic, spam accounted for an average of 67 percent of the messages run through the company's filters. At the same point in 2004, spam accounted for an average of 76 percent of all mail.

Governor signs bills on identity theft, military families

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed legislation Thursday that increases the penalty for e-mail spam, bolsters identity theft laws and helps families of active military members.

IDENTITY THEFT: Sending unsolicited commercial e-mails -- known as spam -- in violation of California's anti-spam law will now be a misdemeanor, punishable by fine of up to $1,000 or up to six months in county jail. The anti-spam law took effect last year, but this legislation, by Sen. Kevin Murray, D-Los Angeles, adds the punishment element.
San Jose Mercury

EarthLink lands a win in phishing suit

EarthLink can't be held liable for incorrectly identifying the Web site of a legitimate bank as a fraudulent attempt to snatch customers' identities, a federal judge has ruled.

U.S. District Judge John Shabaz in Wisconsin has tossed out a case that Associated Bank-Corp. brought against the Internet service provider in April claiming negligence and injury to its business reputation.

EarthLink had warned its customers who installed a free "ScamBlocker" toolbar--and visited AssociatedBank.com--that the Web site was "potentially fraudulent" and said that they should "not continue to this potentially risky site."
CNET

Imagine Widespread Anti-Phishing Use

Opinion: There are many anti-phishing tools for Windows, but they're all small-timers. That all changes with Internet Explorer 7.

Jaded old jerks like me who are skeptical of everything don't need anti-phishing software. I don't trust anyone, let alone some vendor sending me an e-mail. But anti-phishing software is definitely a good thing, and I have high hopes for it.
eWeek

After the Storm, the Swindlers

Even as millions of Americans rally to make donations to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, the Internet is brimming with swindles, come-ons and opportunistic pandering related to the relief effort in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. And the frauds are more varied and more numerous than in past disasters, according to law enforcement officials and online watchdog groups.

Florida's attorney general has already filed a fraud lawsuit against a man who started one of the earliest networks of Web sites - katrinahelp.com, katrinadonations.com and others - that stated they were collecting donations for storm victims.

In Missouri, a much wider constellation of Internet sites - with names like parishdonations.com and katrinafamilies.com - displayed pictures of the flood-ravaged South and drove traffic to a single site, InternetDonations.org, a nonprofit entity with apparent links to white separatist groups.
New York Times

Suckers For Spam

Hard as it is to believe for long-time Internet denizens, online scammers and spammers are still reaping rewards from the community at large.

Last week's bizarre tale of a Los Angeles record producer claiming he was being chased by Nigerian scam artists is a high-profile example of the pervasiveness of the activities still evident today.
Internet News.com

Spamhaus: Yahoo major phishing site host

Spamhaus has accused Yahoo of failing in the fight against online fraud, and Microsoft has admitted there is room for improvement.

Yahoo is playing host to thousands of phishing sites and doesn't have sufficiently well-trained staff to address the problem of online fraud, according to a leading anti-spam and security organization on Tuesday.
CNET

How to avoid Katrina-related online fraud

Almost before Hurricane Katrina’s winds subsided, thousands of people nationally queued up to help ease the Gulf Coast’s misery by offering food, water or a hand with the cleanup. Some even have suggested the homeless move in with them temporarily.

Just as quickly, however, opportunists arose. They surfaced, too, following the South Asia tsunami in December and the London terror bombings in July.
St. Louis Post Dispatch

Don't get ripped off by hurricane cyberscams

Online con artists have launched at least a dozen scams preying on people donating to Hurricane Katrina relief efforts or seeking news, federal authorities and anti-spam experts say.

The FBI is looking into suspicious Web sites and phishing spam messages that attempt to filch personal data such as credit card numbers, spokesman Paul Bresson says.
USA Today