Security > SpamEssentials

One of the most notorious networks of hacked computers used for sending spam could be generating as much as US$3.5 million per year peddling drugs such as Viagra, according to new research.

How much is spam costing your company? Google unveiled a nifty little calculator Wednesday to help you add it up.

An IT manager who logged onto to his former employer's computer network five months after being fired and opened the e-mail server up to spammers has been sentenced to one year in prison.

The overseer of the Internet's addressing system said on Wednesday it will delay shutting down a dodgy Estonian domain registrar pending a review.

A woman accused of helping spam kingpin Alan Ralsky send out tens of millions of unwanted e-mail messages each day has pleaded guilty to spam charges.

As more and more spammers are arrested, prosecuted, and sued under state and federal antispam statutes, there's one thing you can count on: Someone somewhere will invariably call the targeted spammer a "spam king."

A federal judge has ordered an Arizona couple to pay more than US$236 million for sending millions of spam messages to a small Iowa ISP (Internet service provider).

Spam. It fills our in-boxes, wastes our time and spreads malware -- and it's only getting worse. According to Ferris Research, which studies messaging and content control, 40 trillion spam messages will be sent in 2008, costing businesses more than US$140 billion worldwide -- a significant increase from the 18 trillion sent in 2006 and the 30 trillion in 2007.

Spammers are abusing free Web services to make their spam links look more legitimate, according to e-mail security vendor MessageLabs.

Hackers targeting Georgia in the midst of its conflict with Russia have started sending out a new batch of malicious spam messages, apparently with the aim of building a new botnet network of remote-controlled computers.

Spam. It fills our in-boxes, wastes our time and spreads malware -- and it's only getting worse. According to Ferris Research, which studies messaging and content control, 40 trillion spam messages are expected to be sent in 2008, costing businesses more than $140 billion worldwide -- a significant increase from the 18 trillion spam messages sent in 2006 and the 30 trillion in 2007.

No one will deny the global celebrity of Angelina Jolie. She's on the cover of magazines, stars in blockbuster movies and is a ratings bonanza each time she appears on TV. Now that she's had twins, she's got triple the appeal for some fans.

Those whose names begin with common letter such as A, S, and M are more likely to receive spam that those who start with uncommon ones such as Z and Q, according to research.

Selling the tools used by spammers is easy money, at least until you get caught. Just ask Adam Sweaney, a man charged with computer fraud who took the stand at the sentencing hearing in Seattle for Robert Soloway, the so-called spam king.

Notorious spam king Robert Alan Soloway is scheduled to be sentenced Monday by the US District Court in Seattle after pleading guilty to single counts of mail fraud, e-mail fraud, and tax evasion. Judge Marsha Pechman, who is presiding over the case, has scheduled a two-day hearing starting Friday to allow prosecution and defense to get their final arguments before the court.

Tech vendors have made headway in the war on spam, yet spammers are returning volley with sheer numbers. Perhaps it's time for more drastic measures? These are the rumblings from InfoWorld Test Center analysts, who reviewed anti-spam email appliances and released their findings last week.

For Tracy Mooney, a married mother of three in the US, the decision to abandon cyber-sense and invite e-mail spam into her life for a month by participating in a McAfee experiment was a bit of a lark.

The Barracuda Spam Firewall blocked more spam before filtering than any other appliance, using IP address reputation. As a result, spam as a percentage of total messages received was the lowest in the test. However, Barracuda also had the lowest percentage of spam caught, 88 per cent, which is acceptable but not great. Lower accuracy sometimes helps reduce the number of false positives, but it didn't seem to help the Barracuda much: one critical false positive and 33 bulk false positives rank sixth and fifth, respectively, among the nine solutions tested. Nevertheless, in terms of overall filtering performance, the Barracuda is definitely usable, especially after bulk senders are whitelisted.

Spammers are using an automated method to create bogus pages on Google's Blogger service, again highlighting the diminishing effectiveness of a security system intended to stop mass account registrations, according to security vendor Websense.