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Posted on 04.06.07 by Admin @ 9:31 pm
All spam emails we receive every day in tens or hundreds are annoying and disgusting. But the worst of them are scams, hoaxes, and illegal schemes aimed at defrauding you of your money, private information, and even your life. Being aware of how the spam scams work you will be able to protect yourself against the spammers-fraudsters and not to become a victim of their fraudulent schemes. A lot of spam scams arrive in the form of a great investment offer. It usually works as a Pyramid scheme. Spammers ask you to pay money for a membership, goods, or simply to “invest” promising you much money as revenue. Your revenue will come from those people who will invest after you. Your investment is distributed to those who joined before you. At some point the pyramid ruins because there are not enough new investors to keep the money flowing. The spammer is at the top of the pyramid and he is the only one who benefits. The scan may not always look like an investment offer. The spammers can ask you to distribute some advertising letters to a list of email addresses, for remuneration. Although they will tell you that the list contains only opt-in email addresses, it’s not true, and you will be sending spam directly from your computer. Another fraudulent scheme you may meet looks like a letter coming from a company that you do business with. Usually the spammer asks you to follow a link within the message supposedly to update your account. But actually this is done to worm you out your personal and financial information. If you click on that link, you will be brought to a page that will look like a company’s web site. While you are logging in or filling the form in, the program is recording your keystrokes and all your private information – account number, user name, password, social security number – is disclosed. Never click on the links included in such emails. Just open a company’s web site in a separate window and check your account details out. Nigerian spam is one of the most dangerous email scams. The mechanism of the scam is simple. The spammer sends you a badly spelled letter on behalf of a government official, deposed ruler, or relative of a ruling family asking you for help. They have some goods, money, or jewels that they cannot access due to political reasons. They ask you to allow them transfer large sums of money into your bank account. They promise to remunerate you for your kindness, or even leave all money to you. Attractive offer, isn’t it? Don’t be a dolt, don’t believe them. They tempt you into a trap. Their object is to obtain your account number and bank transfer information. They also may ask you to send them a fee to bribe some corrupt government officials. Further you may receive additional officially looking letters where you will be asked to provide further documents, private information, and money. When they have “played” with you long enough, or believe that you may suspect to be led on, they will rob you and quite. Take care! Don’t react upon any spam message whatever tempting offer it contains. Delete it at once, or let an anti-spam filter delete all spam before you download it into your inbox. About The Author Filed under: News Comments: None |
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Posted on 04.06.07 by Admin @ 9:31 pm
Almost everyone who accesses the Internet and uses e-mail knows about spam. The common definition of spam is e-mail that is unsolicited, undesired by the recipient. Spam is sent out by automated programs to thousands or millions email addresses at a time. In most cases spam emails offer you different services, products (medicines, goods, software programs etc.), and “get rich quickly” plans. You can simply delete them if you receive several unsolicited emails per day. But if you get tens or hundreds spam messages every day, it is a real problem. In order to understand how to deal with spam in your inbox, let’s examine some core questions concerning spam: Why send spam? The right answer is to make money. If you have never opened a spam message, you should not think that others don’t do it either. Among thousands or millions people who receive spam you can always find one or several persons who actually purchase services or products the spammers advertise, or join the “get rich” schemes the spammers offer. Of course, they lose and the spammer wins. How do spammers obtain email addresses? Spammers use special software programs that search websites, forums, newsgroups and harvest posted email addresses. They can use computer viruses and spyware to steal the email addresses from personal address books. Spammers often purchase lists of email addresses from other spammers, or from some dishonest companies, which do not care about the privacy of their customers’ information. What danger lies behind spam? Never buy pharmaceutical drugs such as Valium, Viagra, Cialis, Anatrim, etc. advertised in spam emails. These medications are counterfeited for 99% and can be dangerous. Viruses - one of the most common computer security threats - can also be spread in spam emails. The worst thing is that viruses slip onto your computer without being noticed. You may think that you will download new free software when you click on a link within a spam message but actually you will get at least one virus infection - most probably a trojan virus. This type of virus can destroy data, steal your personal information such a user name, password, or just download other nasty software onto your computer that will cause more harm. A virus can hide itself in a picture, video or audio file. Certain anti-spam programs such as G-Lock SpamCombat let you preview the messages in a safe mode, i.e. they don’t allow any suspicious pictures to be downloaded nor malicious codes to be executed. A virus is a nuisance but phishing is a real danger. This type of spam is becoming very popular now. This is a method of tricking consumers with the purpose to worm them out of their personal information such as bank account numbers, passwords, user names, and credit card details. The spammers send a fraudulent email that usually appears to come from financial institutions like Ebay or Paypal saying that there is some trouble with your account and that you need to update it. There is a link within the message that you should follow to update the account details. The web site usually looks like a real company’s web site. But as soon as you start filling the presented form in, the program starts recording your keystrokes and your private details are now disclosed to the spammer. How to fight spam? It is prudent to use an anti-spam filter to block annoying, time consuming, and sometimes dangerous spam emails. Anti-spam software checks your incoming emails and immediately moves spam messages into a special trash folder. If you want a good internet security suite that includes a spam blocker, consider BitDefender Professional Plus, Kaspersky Internet Security, F-Secure Internet Security or eTrust Internet Security. For a standalone spam filtering program, look at McAfee Spam Killer, G-Lock SpamCombat, Spam Assassin, Mail Washer Pro or ZapASpam. About The Author Filed under: News Comments: None |
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Posted on 04.06.07 by Admin @ 9:30 pm
Almost everyone who used to communicate via e-mail has ever found in the Inbox the messages from people he doesn’t know proposing some services or products. All unsolicited and undesired messages you receive are SPAM. The emails of this kind usually offer pharmaceutical products, diet methods, sexual enhancements aid, and “get rich quick” plans. You can also meet bogus sales pitches, sales opportunities, and different types of scams. In addition to stock scams, in which spammers encourage you to invest money, a new spam-scam gambit called phishing is becoming very popular now. This scam is aimed to obtaining people’s private information such as user name, password, credit card details, etc. An example is an email coming from PayPal or Ebay asking you to go to the company’s web site and update your account. If you do it, the spammers will record your keystrokes and your private details will be disclosed to them. And have you ever received pitiful letters from a widow or a relative of the former ruler of Nigeria? Sure you have. It’s a famous Nigerian fraud that is still having a place on the Internet. Don’t be enticed by the millions they would promise you. All they want is your bank account details in order to rob you. How do you identify spam among legitimate messages? You usually look at the sender’s name, which may be unknown to you or contain some gibberish. You also read the subject line of the message. As a rule the subject line of spam emails concerns gambling, pornography, or an offer to make a fortune in 24 hours. But the spammers are also able to create an email identical to legitimate one coming from a respected source. In other cases, the subject lines may indicate that the message is a reply to your email. A general way to distinguish spam is to read the To and From header fields in all the messages you receive. If you see strange, anonymous or scrambled alpha-numeric email addresses (for example, gt4590xx@domain.com) then you have spam. Some anti-spam solutions provide you with the capability to preview the emails. For example, in addition to a safe message content preview, G-Lock SpamCombat allows you analyze the message header in detail: From, To, Subject, Received and other header fields. How to block spam? Remember, the point of spam is to have you open the email. Once you do it, the least trouble you may have is to let the spammer know that your email address is valid. It’s luck for a spammer. He can continue spamming you in the hope that earlier or later you will swallow the bait. Or, he can sell your email address to someone else. Also, be aware that spammers send millions emails at a time, so even a very tiny response rate is a great success for them. Let’s imagine that 100 out of 10 millions people invested 5 dollars each into a scam offered by a spammer. So, the spammer makes 500 dollars at a time. If you are really suffering from a continuous spam flow, you can consider getting a new email address and disclose it to trusted senders only. Or, you can start clearing your inbox from spam right away using anti-spam software. Although not perfect, anti-spam filters are now very sophisticated and very effective at cutting out most of spam. Anti-spam programs basically do one or more of the following things: 1. Check the senders’ email addresses and names against a blacklist of spammers they own and delete the message if the sender is on the blacklist. 2. Check the recipients’ email addresses and names and filter the messages according to certain parameters. For example, if the email is sent to a large group of recipients sorted alphabetically, the email is considered spam. 3. Analyze the message content and subject line and search for certain words or phrases, which are typically met in spam emails such as “Viagra”, “Cialis”, “Mortgage”, “Invest” and filter the spam email accordingly. There are many kinds of anti spam solutions now. Software developers offer standalone spam blockers like Mail Washer, Spam Nullifier, G-Lock SpamCombat, etc. Most of the big, free email services such as Yahoo!, Google, MSN, and Hotmail also provide effective spam filtering. You just need to choose the right anti-spam solution that will serve you in the most effective way. About The Author Filed under: News Comments: None |
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Posted on 04.06.07 by Admin @ 9:30 pm
The damage spam brings you is huge: loss of time, bandwidth and money, risk to delete a legitimate message together with junk emails. So, an anti-spam filter is not a whim but a necessity for almost all PC users who actively use email. What criteria should you follow to choose the right spam filtering program? What capabilities must an anti-spam tool have to filter and cut off spam mail in most effective way? Here are the main features a good anti-spam software must have to block spam effectively: 1) it should be a standalone spam filtering tool, which checks all incoming emails on the server, detects and deletes spam messages. 2) deletion of spam without receiving it in your inbox. This way you won’t download all the superfluous kilobytes into your inbox and you won’t see annoying spam mail. 3) powerful antispam filters built in one program that analyze the message from “outside” and “inside”: message header, message body, and message source. Flexible whitelist and blacklist easy to edit and update are also very useful as they help save much time when filtering emails. Good anti-spam software must also have the Bayesian filter in its arsenal of spam filtering tools. 4) easy and safe method to preview emails marked as spam. Inherent in antispam technology is the fact that there will be false positives and false negatives, i.e., email can be flagged as spam even though it is not actually spam and vice versa. 5) flexible spam filtering. Spam emails should be moved to a separate folder. A good spam filtering software should provide the ability to recover an email if it was accidentally marked as spam and trashed. Simply put, an anti-spam program must be a standalone, easy-to-use software supplied with powerful anti-spam filters able to be adjusted by every user for his personal needs. Now with all that said above you can choose the right anti-spam software among all spam filtering programs available on the Internet. About The Author Filed under: News Comments: None |
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Posted on 03.13.06 by Admin @ 2:16 am
Tax Season - Time for Scams by Richard A. Chapo As tax season draws irresistibly closer, the scam artists are polishing their latest techniques. This article should help you keep an eye out for these nasty individuals. Tax Season - Time for Scams In a particularly cheeky move, scam artists have started posing in on form or another as the IRS in an effort to get you to turn over social security numbers and such. Logically, this actually makes sense. Everyone is terrified by the IRS and dread be contacted by the Agency. Most of us would do anything to resolve any issue raised by an IRS Agent including sending them copies of credit card statements and providing crucial financial information over the phone. Put another way, this is the perfect scenario for a scam artists. The goal of scam artists, of course, is to get private information they can use to open credit card accounts and so on. This is loosely known as phishing for the purpose of identity theft. Phishing and identify theft can occur through practically any communication method. Here are some recent scams that were successful: 1. One group of scam artists started sending spam emails notifying taxpayers they were eligible for tax refunds. The scam worked because the emails were sent from IRS types of email accounts including the irs letters in the address. Taxpayers were then told to go to click through to a site where they could fill out a form and get their refund. Of course, the email address and web site were fakes. Nobody got a refund, but the scam artists received a bevy of social security numbers, credit card information and so on. In total, this scam occurred through 12 different web sites in 11 countries. 2. This one is a classic. Scam artists send bogus IRS letters and Form W-8BEN asking non-residents to provide personal information including bank account numbers, PINs, passport numbers and so on. Form W-8BEN is used by banks, not the IRS, to obtain information from non-residents who are opening bank accounts! Unfortunately, many non-residents fell for this scam and had their identities stolen. There are a couple of guidelines you can use when dealing with IRS communications. First, the IRS never, ever sends email to taxpayers. NEVER! If you get an email communication, it is absolutely a scam. Delete it or send it to the IRS so they can take action. If you receive mail communications from the IRS, call the agency to verify a letter was really sent to you. With phone call communications, get the persons name and call them back at the IRS. Both methods will stop scam artists in their tracks. Be skeptical of communications you receive from sources you are not expecting. Finally, the IRS never asks a taxpayer for passwords or PIN numbers. If the agency desires to seize your bank account, they can just do it. They don’t need to take out $300 a day until your tax debt is collected! Scam artists are highly creative people. If you have doubts about an communication of the IRS, pick up the phone and call the agency. Richard A. Chapo is with BusinessTaxRecovery.com - providing information on tax and taxes. Visit us to read more tax articles and our new tax credits page. Filed under: News Comments: None |
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Posted on 12.11.05 by Admin @ 8:41 pm
When Joe Mastruserio of Cincinnati got fed up with “spam” email containing unsavory offers he did not want – like adult entertainment and pyramid schemes – he clicked on the “remove me” or “unsubscribe” links in the text of the email messages. Much to his dismay, those links often led nowhere. So Mastruserio did what more than 200,000 consumers did last year: He complained to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). In response to complaints like Mastruserio’s, the FTC investigated and found that the allegations were true. In April, the FTC warned 77 online marketers to discontinue their bogus “unsubscribe” links or face possible legal action. The warnings represent the FTC’s latest effort to crack down on deceptive spam. In the past four years, the FTC has brought more than 30 law enforcement actions against marketers who used spam to promote For many consumers, any kind of spam is annoying and time-consuming. But deceptive spam is especially troublesome because it can cheat consumers out of their money, undermine consumer confidence in online commerce and harm legitimate Internet marketers. There are steps consumers can take to help reduce the amount of spam they get – from keeping their email address more private to reporting spam problems to the FTC. “Con artists have seized on email’s capacity to reach millions of consumers quickly and cheaply,” says Eileen Harrington, Associate Director for the FTC’s Division of Marketing Practices. “It’s time to wrest this tool from rip-off artists.” A Study of Spam Not all spam is fraudulent. However, spam is frequently used by scam artists because it is low cost and allows them to hide their identities, says Eric Wenger, an attorney in the FTC’s Division of Marketing Practices. “Fighting deception is often an effective way to fight spam,” he says. Spammers obtain email addresses by buying lists from brokers who have “harvested” addresses from Internet newsgroup postings, chat rooms, websites, and online services’ membership directories. The spammers then use special software to send hundreds of thousands – even millions – of email messages with just one click of the mouse. Exactly how much spam they send is unknown. But it is increasing. The FTC receives about 40,000 pieces a day in a special mailbox it set up in 1998. Three years ago, the mailbox received about 4,000 a day. “Spam is a big problem, whether it’s deceptive or not,” Harrington says. “Consumers complain about it, and Internet Service Providers say it burdens them. To many, it’s the bane of cyberspace.” Enforcement Action The FTC also has helped train 1,700 law enforcement agents throughout the U.S. and Canada on investigating deceptive spam and other Internet fraud. As an outgrowth of that training, the FTC is helping create regional “netforces” – groups of local, state and federal agencies that work together to fight deceptive spam and other Internet fraud. One group – the Northwest Netforce, comprised of eight state law enforcement agencies, four Canadian agencies and the FTC – announced in April the results of 63 Internet-related law enforcement actions and the issuing of more than 500 warning letters to spammers for promoting illegal chain letter schemes. In addition, the FTC, along with other U.S. and Canadian law enforcement agencies, investigated complaints from consumers about spammers who failed to honor their offers to remove consumers’ names from future email solicitations. Consumers indicated that they were unable to follow through on messages that said “click here to unsubscribe” or “reply for removal.” When investigators tested several of the questionable links, they found that the removal hyperlinks often did not function. As a result, the FTC sent warning letters to 77 marketers and will continue to monitor “remove me” offers to ensure that they do what they say they will. Consumer Action * Avoid displaying your email address in public spaces, including newsgroup postings or chat rooms, on websites, or in an online service’s membership directory. * Check a website’s privacy policy before submitting your email address. Make sure the website doesn’t plan to sell your address. If possible, “opt out” of any such plans. * Read and understand website forms before you transmit personal information. If possible, select the “opt-out” choice if the website plans to share your information. * Create two email addresses – one for personal messages and the other for public use, such as in newsgroups or chat rooms. Or, consider a disposable email address service; it creates a separate email address that forwards your email to your permanent address. If the disposable address begins to receive spam, you can shut if off without affecting the permanent address. * Create a unique email address. Spammers often use “dictionary attacks” to sort through possible name combinations at large Internet Service Providers (ISPs) or email services to find valid addresses. So a common name, like “jdoe,” may get more spam than a unique name, like “jd51×02oe.” * Use an email filter. Some email accounts provide a tool to filter out potential spam or channel it to a bulk email folder. You may want to ask whether this option is available when choosing an ISP. * Report the spam to the ISP – yours and the sender’s. Often the email address is “abuse@[your ISP’s name].com” or postmaster@[your ISP’s name].com. The ISP may be able to stop further spam. * Report the problem to the FTC. Send the actual spam item to spam@uce.gov. Be sure to include the full email header so that your complaint can be followed up. If your complaint has to do with “remove me” or “unsubscribe” offers not working, complete and submit the FTC’s complaint form at www.ftc.gov. For more on spam and how to avoid it, visit www.ftc.gov/spam. Says the FTC’s Harrington, “If each of us takes steps to can unwanted spam, collectively, we can do it.” Filed under: Email Spam and News Comments: None |
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Posted on 12.11.05 by Admin @ 7:15 pm
Anti-Spam Group Established In China China’s first anti-Spam organization for informtion technology administrators, the Anti-Spam of the Internet Society of China (ASISC) has launched. The ASISC includes computer networking administrative professionals who are cooperating together to build a highly efficient and safe anti-spam management system. The group also seeks to establish a good Internet society image and team up with international anti-spam initiatives. More than 100 million Chinese use e-mail services frequently. At the same time, it becomes the top receiver of junk mails. According to a survey, Chinese netizens receive over 10 junk messages every week on average. Filed under: News Comments: None |
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External News Email Spam News News on Email Spam continually updated from thousands of sources around the net. Dealing with the Age of Spam Spam has been around for an age, but most recently the word spam has been a direct relation to unwanted emails on the internet, they have been slowly increasing since the development of the internet and now ... Revival of Spamalot Spam volume has been cut by more than half because Internet providers pulled the plug on McColo Corp., a Web hosting firm that was allegedly helping some of the world's most dastardly junk e-mail gangs. Overstock.com's Latest Gambit: Email Spams to Promote Its Wacky CEO The corporate fraud poster boy Overstock.com, having just reinstated in financial results going back to the time of Copernicus , has invested its scarce cash in a new but typically slimy tactic: email spams. |
