mysecurepc.com blog

This type of email makes its round every so often.

Here is the email:

If you have a cell phone, remember to make your call with it…

Cell phone numbers go public next month:   All cell phone numbers are being released to telemarketing companies and you will start to receive sales calls.  You will be charged for these calls.  To prevent this, call 1-888-382-1222, the National Do Not Call List.  It blocks your number for 5 (five) years.  You must call from the cell phone number you want to have blocked.  You cannot call from a different number.
Help others by passing this on to all friends.  It takes about 20 seconds.

A good idea but not necessary. Read about it from the FCC.

http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/truthaboutcellphones.html

Originally, phone numbers remained on the registry for a period of five years, but are now permanent due to the Do-Not-Call Improvement Act of 2007, effective February 2008.

Doug

Just when we thought spam was under control…

Image spam is an email that looks like 100% text but in reality includes a little image. The image is varied in color and size slightly before it is sent so many similar emails can be sent. Having the image embedded, making it slightly different, makes it difficult for most spam filters to detect. Image spam is involved in about 25% of all email spam (2006 IronPort) and growing.

An image spam email is about 10 times the size of a text email – causing storage problems for ISPs, users, and hosts.

One of the big targets of image spam mail is stock “pump and dump” schemes. A penny stock is bought by scammers, millions of image spam emails are sent out touting the stock, and when the stock increases significantly in price due to people falling for the scheme, the scammers sell out. The reason this works well is no one has to click on an email link – just buy the stock.

Image spam emails are usually easy to spot visually: valid text usually surrounds the image (which in many cases touts a stock). The text is unrelated to the image but is pertinent because it confuses spam filters into letting the email seem valid.

Another byproduct of image spam is the email may contain a small invisible tracking image (usually 1px square) which triggers a server fetch when the email is open. This alerts the spammer that the email address is valid: expect more spam to follow.

Image spam filtering software is offered by the big names in antispam but it is expensive – usually meant for an email server rather than a home computer. One way to combat the problem is not allow images in emails. I use Mozilla Thunderbird (a lot like Outlook but is open source) to read my emails. Its default action is to block images in emails but provide a button to load images if the user deems the email valid. Some hosts provide filtering of spam, including image email filtering, but you must check your email on the host periodically because the emails sent to the junk folder are on the host, not locally.

Doug

Just when we thought spam was under control…

Image spam is an email that looks like 100% text but in reality includes a little image. The image is varied in color and size slightly before it is sent so many similar emails can be sent. Having the image embedded, making it slightly different, makes it difficult for most spam filters to detect. Image spam is involved in about 25% of all email spam (2006 IronPort) and growing.

An image spam email is about 10 times the size of a text email – causing storage problems for ISPs, users, and hosts.

One of the big targets of image spam mail is stock “pump and dump” schemes. A penny stock is bought by scammers, millions of image spam emails are sent out touting the stock, and when the stock increases significantly in price due to people falling for the scheme, the scammers sell out. The reason this works well is no one has to click on an email link – just buy the stock.

Image spam emails are usually easy to spot visually: valid text usually surrounds the image (which in many cases touts a stock). The text is unrelated to the image but is pertinent because it confuses spam filters into letting the email seem valid.

Another byproduct of image spam is the email may contain a small invisible tracking image (usually 1px square) which triggers a server fetch when the email is open. This alerts the spammer that the email address is valid: expect more spam to follow.

Image spam filtering software is offered by the big names in antispam but it is expensive – usually meant for an email server rather than a home computer. One way to combat the problem is not allow images in emails. I use Mozilla Thunderbird (a lot like Outlook but is open source) to read my emails. Its default action is to block images in emails but provide a button to load images if the user deems the email valid. Some hosts provide filtering of spam, including image email filtering, but you must check your email on the host periodically because the emails sent to the junk folder are on the host, not locally.

Doug

Referer spam is something a website owner should watch for.

To quote wikipedia:

The technique involves making repeated web site requests using a fake referer url that points to the site the spammer wishes to advertise. Sites that publicize their access logs, including referer statistics, will then end up linking to the spammer’s site, which will in turn be indexed by the search engines as they crawl the access logs.

Sometimes the requests are so often the website is bogged down as in a denial of service attack.

Why spam using a fake referer? Many bloggers will post their most popular URLs which in this case would be the spammer – free advertising.

If you have an apache server blocking fake URLs is easy via the .htaccess file. Ask your webmaster how to block them.

Doug

Enough cannot be said about spam prevention. Laws do not seem to help. Read about ways to deal with the spam problem.

Doug