|
Criminals, not tech-savvy teenagers, are responsible for the massive amount of spam hitting your inbox
14 December 2006
Chances are when you come back from the Christmas holiday your email inbox will be filled with spam messages promising pharmaceutical miracles or incredibly low stock prices. Why? Because the number of spam messages has tripled since June.
U.S. email security company, Postini, detected 7 billion spam emails worldwide during November, a huge increase from the 2.5 billion detected back in June. Email systems are overloaded or melting down trying to keep up with all the spam, as iHug and Xtra know only too well.
It's not just the amount of spam being received that's worrying; it's the type and source. Spam used to come from teenagers showing off their technical prowess. These days it's more likely to come from criminal gangs looking to hoodwink you into giving away personal information, or promoting drugs and stock tips. Most of the spam originates from the United States, Poland and China.
Botnets
The rise is partly due to the increasing use of "botnets" - networks of hijacked machines under the remote control of a malicious hacker.
Criminal gangs use the computing power of these networks to send millions of spam or phishing emails anonymously. The latest versions mutate to avoid detection and send fewer emails from each machine. Botnets can also become the seeding network for a new virus outbreak or act as a distributed data storage system for all kinds of illegal data.
Last year Dutch authorities discovered a botnet consisting of 1.5 million compromised computers.
Even the Indiana office of a public accounting and consulting firm had hijacked computers being used as part of a botnet.
Often once a machine has fallen under someone else's control, a keylogger is installed to capture information about everything the real owner does - such as login to their online bank account.
The "honeypot" trap
An investigation by the BBC News showed how serious the problem is. Using an unprotected computer acting as a so-called "honeypot" the BBC logged how many attacks hit the average Windows PC every day.
The machine was attacked every 15 minutes on average. None were solicited. Merely connecting the machine to the internet was enough to attract them. The fastest an attack struck was mere seconds and it was never longer than 15 minutes.
Blatant plug: If you'd like a website with up to 20 free email accounts with aggressive anti-spam features that reduce the amount of spam hitting your inbox, especially compared to the big ISPs, please phone Evolve on 3600-120 or email brandon@evolve.co.nz
[No spam please]
|
|
Why Most Ads Don't Work
Most ads are not written to persuade, they are written to...
Read Full article
New Spam Law
And how to prevent a $½ Million fine...
Read Full article
Snail Mail Wins
Direct mail vs email research surprise...
Read Full article
Spammers Blitz Inboxes
How criminals use 'botnets' to fill your inbox with spam...
Read Full article
New Zealand's brand experience
How well does it match the brand promise?
Read Full article
Arctic Monkeys
viral marketing
Find out why their music was free...
Read Full article
Google Gains
Google continues to dominate the...
Read Full article
Luxury Consumers on Spending Spree
But what they buy is changing...
Read Full Article
The People's Marketing
Why more marketers are daring to let customers take...
Read Full Article
One Day In USA: Service Rules
Walking off the plane we got stuck behind two large...
Read Full Article
|
