Weblogs: Spam Links

• No Censorship! -- My friends in Germany are very upset with Flickr's latest move. The German version of Flickr forces only pictures marked as safe to be shown in their interface. This is crazy - its great to see a German language interface to Flickr, but should that be at the loss of content. That content could be seen by English-understanding Germans before this launch. What does Flickr have against non-English-speaking Germans?

• Outrageous -- Mark's story about how he was effectively pressurised against his will into applying for a patent. Mark's unsettled me because its one of my fears of working for a US company with a known patent portfolio, particularly when I've created an idea that could be patentable. I'd almost forgotten about that worry. Software patents stand in the way of real innovation.

• Victory Declared in the Battle for Wargames.Com -- MGM, producers of the 1983 movie Wargames complained to the National Arbitration Forum that Rogers Cadenhead was domain-squatting on wargames.com. Rogers has an ecommerce store set up there selling war related games. The forum, thankfully, rejected MGM's complaint. Well done, Rogers.

• Bruce Perens: The monster arrives: software patent lawsuits against open source developers -- We've warned you for a decade. Now the monster has finally arrived: attacks against Open Source developers by patent holders, big and small. One is a lawsuit against Red Hat for the use of the principle of Object Relational Mapping used in Hibernate, a popular component of enterprise Java applications everywhere. The other attack is on an individual Open Source developer for his model railroad software.

• Web inventor warns of 'dark' net -- 'The World Wide Web Consortium, of which Sir Tim is the director, believes in an open model. This is based on the concept of network neutrality, where everyone has the same level of access to the web and that all data moving around the web is treated equally.'

• Trusted Computing -- An interesting look at the misnamed Trusted Computing: 'If they [the computer industry] don't trust you, why should you trust them?' (via virtuelvis)

• BBC: BMW given Google 'death penalty' -- 'BMW's German website, which is heavily reliant on javascript code unsearchable by Google, used text-heavy pages liberally sprinkled with key words to attract the attention of Google's indexing system.'

• Spammer jailed for £1.6m net scam -- Peter Francis-Macre guilty of death threats and blackmail - I remember this guy running DotComAvenue accepting credit card numbers over a non-secure connection - he refused to believe this wasn't a good thing to do.

• FBI puts stop to spam king -- Alan Ralsky, a permanent fixture in Spamhaus' ROKSO lists, gets raided by the FBI and puts him out of business

• MSN hosting '10 percent of spammers' sites' -- SurfControl claims that 10 percent of all spam on the Internet is now linked to Microsoft's blog network.

• Three indicted in US spam crackdown -- Jennifer Clason, Jeffrey Kilbride, and James Schaffer indicted for CAN SPAM Act violations

• Minnesota spammer indicted on pharmacy charges -- Christopher William Smith - a SpamHaus ROKSO listed spammer caught for selling 70,000 prescriptions

• Europe Parliament nixes software patent law -- EU Parliament votes 648 - 14 against the Software Patent directive. Yay!!

• ACA to prosecute alleged spammer -- 'An ACA spokesperson told ZDNet Australia Mansfield had received several warnings before it raided his company premises in April.' - several times, and he still didn't take the hint?

• Patent absurdity -- A week to go before it will be impossible for individuals to write software in the European Union

• Spam blacklist targets Telewest -- Telewest Spewed. This normally happens after ISPs regularly ignore spam complaints. As I recall, Blue yonder, one of Telewest's subsidiaries received the Usenet Death Penalty because of constant spam runs. Not much change there then.

• Stanford Law Professor raps patents as barrier to innovation -- Lawrence Lessig: 'there's no clear showing of benefits over harm'

• ZDNet: Patent directive slammed at UKPO workshop -- 'The FFII definition was praised as the best of the four definitions, although a few potential problems were pointed out.'

• out-law: Scottish car dealer gets spam warning from ASA -- opt-out link that didn't work or a one pound fifty a minute phone call. Busted.

• Council Presidency Adopts Software Patent Agreement Against Council's Rules -- Large US software companies have money, European developers have ethics and common sense - money won out.

• European democracy bogus, says Open Source Consortium -- 'THE OPEN SOURCE Consortium said it considered European democracy to be a sham, following a decision by the Europresidency, which we reported earlier today, to steamroller through the software patent directive.'

• European Commission acted in collusion with Microsoft, says high-profile Austrian MEP Dr. Maria Berger -- 'the Commission adopted the position of Microsoft founder Bill Gates on the subject 'without further thought'. Gates had visited the Commission and the EP in February.' - hardly _any_ thought to independent software developers.

• Judge dismisses spam conviction -- Jessica DeGroot escapes, but the conviction of Jeremy Jaynes was upheld.

• Spamhaus accuses MCI of hosting spam gangs -- 'One of the world's largest Internet providers is hosting illegal spam operations and making an estimated $5 million a year to keep those operations running'

• CNN: Spam costing companies $22 billion a year -- 'according to the National Technology Readiness Survey produced by Rockbridge Associates, Inc., and the Center for Excellence in Service at Maryland's business school.'

• BBC: Junk e-mails on relentless rise -- 'Spam traffic is up by 40%, putting the total amount of e-mail that is junk up to an astonishing 90%.'

• nofollow, no love: Google admits they are losing to spammers -- 'I boldly predict that in one year Google will give up and ignore nofollow meta-data'

• US duo in first spam conviction -- Jurors in Virginia recommended that the man, Jeremy Jaynes, serve nine years in prison and that his sister, Jessica DeGroot, be fined $7,500.

• BBC: Call for global action on spam -- 'Almost 80% of junk mail originates outside the country where people receive it'

• Florida-based spammer to pay $25k and ordered to stop sending deceptive e-mail, AG Reilly announced today -- Successful prosecution under CAN-SPAM Act

• Register: Click here to become infected -- Yet another reason never to click on opt-out links on spam

• Spammers given boot by net host -- 'US firm Savvis was allegedly earning up to $2 million a month from 148 of the world's worst spammers'

• Anil: Optimising Search Engines -- Good content beats SEO any day - even SEO spammers

• Internet Explorer Is Dangerous -- Perpetual installation of fixes, or one install of a proper browser. Pick one.

• Internet Explorer in the News... again -- lots of references

• CERT: Microsoft Internet Explorer does not properly validate source of redirected frame -- solution offered - disable scripting or use a different browser

• BBC: Web browser flaw prompts warning -- avoid using Internet Explorer until Microsoft patches a serious security hole in it

• BBC: Spam is making computers sick -- Over half of the 2,500 people questioned ... asked their provider to do something to stop the deluge of junk e-mails they were receiving.

• Comcast takes hard line against spam -- 700 million emails a day coming from Comcast zombie PCs

• Spam gangs exploit UK legal loophole -- Britain seen as soft touch by groups from continent who can bombard the country's email inboxes with impunity

• Against Search Engine Optimisers -- Don't waste your money with search engine optimisers

• analysis of the 180 Solutions Trojan -- Fascinating dissection of a trojan - demonstrating more unfixed IE security holes

• Zombie PCs spew out 80% of spam -- I thought open mail relays were bad! (via Slashdot)

• New worm exploting Sasser route -- more zombie spamming mail servers

• Nucleus Research Second Annual Spam Report -- Cost of spam to US companies More Than Doubled in the Past Year to $1,934 annually per employee

• Spam Laws Worldwide -- Blog of spam laws and news items around the world

• Buffalo spammer sentenced to jail -- Carmack gets 3 - 7 years for identify theft

• Silicon: Alarming rise in phising attacks -- Hackers, identity thieves and virus writers collaborating

• Spammer arrests herald FTC crackdown on illegal spamming -- invisible spammers caught using compromised proxies

• Spamhaus opens operations in China -- One less place for spammers to abuse.

• Phone watchdog savages spam and scam companies -- text spammers fined half a million pounds

• BBC: Spam messages on the increase -- Spam 70% of emails worldwide - mainly healtcare and financial offerings

• Large spam attack hits BT Yahoo! email -- weekend attack

• Reformed e-mail spammer testifies he may relapse -- Scelson threatens to spam because people know he's a spammer. Bright.

• German government email crippled by spam -- half a million pieces of spam.

• Spamlinks (openrbl mirror) -- Everything you didn't want to have to know about spam

• OptInRealBig's TRO against SpamCop dissolved -- Sanity!

• Judge ties antispammer's hands -- Stand by helplessly watching Scott Richter spam. Clever!

• The Fuss About Gmail and Privacy: Nine Reasons Why It's Bogus -- credit card companies already know far more than Gmail will ever discover

• Gmail likely to clear U.K. privacy hurdles -- privacy organisations: no comment

• Trojans as spam robots: the evidence -- Spammers are involved (too stupid not to be involved)

• Register: The illicit trade in compromised PCs -- Your computing power sold off by virus circulators

• Email marketer sues anti-spam group Spamcop -- Scott Richter sues for, amongst others, breach of contract. *lol*

• BBC: Phishing arrest is first for UK -- jobless yob with too much time on his hands

• BBC: E-mail scams cost banks £1m -- Email is not an authenticated medium!

• Guardian: Incredible bulk -- The Spammer conundrum: stop or do more illegal things

• BBC: British business battered by spam -- Yeah, we know. Spamhaus has been saying this all along.

• The guy who tried and failed to scam Google -- Rule 1: Spammers are stupid. QED. (CountScubula is Michael Bradley)

• BBC: Britain sees surge in 'phishing' -- Natwest, Barclays and Lloyds TSB have been targeted

• Google pop-up 'blackmailer' arrested -- Vincent Granville PhD beware - Google will not be threatened

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