spam

This weekend has been an interesting weekend for spam, not the least of which is because such a large amount got through our first line filters: far more than usual. But they were all stopped at the second line of defence and as we trawled through the blocked messages, we came across several that were worthy of comment. One is that old chestnut, the United Nations scam; another is the latest example from a spam-house that now allows us to identify their server farm and it is particularly interesting because it appears to promote a scheme that fell under the bus when the British tax authorities began action in relation to that scheme. And then there's the special mention of the persistent finditeasy.info which is just the most blatant spam-scam that it's hard to understand how they think it will pass any filter. And there's more....

We've had enough of spam from a group of servers that is being a serious nuisance. And they all have one thing in common: they are investment related, in one form or another.

Working on the assumption that, if all victims adopt this policy spammers can be at least a little frustrated, this is what we have written to the company hosting the servers because, by reducing the business the ISP can do, there may be some pressure to be brought to bear on them to prevent their servers being used for spam.

A carefully addressed but badly worded e-mail spam has arrived and it's got the potential to suck in many users across organisations.

Remember This ("Taboola's big marketing fail") from a few days ago? Well, incredibly, they have compounded their ludicrous campaign with this...

There's a lot of dispute over exactly what constitutes "spam" with legislation influenced by the advertising and marketing industry often defining the term far more narrowly than the public at large. Whether it's legally spam or not, one thing happens far more than it should in unsolicited advertising. That thing is where the e-mail is dishonest in some respect ranging from fake senders through misleading content to out and out lies. The basic rule for recipients is simple: if a mail fails a simple test - "is it true?" - the only safe option is to bin it and block the sender.

The email is doomed to be subject to review because the idiot sender has spoofed the recipient's address and used it as the sender's address. But, otherwise, for the unwary, in the period leading up to critical gift delivery period, the scam has a high chance of success.

A new form of spam-scam has come to our attention. We understand that this has not been widely seen before. Its nature is that it is likely that many receiving the email will click on links.