Harry Chen Thinks Aloud

Spam 2.0 is a new wave of spam technology that outsmarts the traditional antispam software techniques. Unlike the previous generation of spam messages, which were mainly text-based and sent from the spammers’ desktops, Spam 2.0 messages are image-based and sent from a network computers that have been hijacked by the spammers (aka. botnets).

Spammers have effectively foiled the first strategy — analyzing the reputation of the sender — by conscripting vast networks of computers belonging to users who unknowingly downloaded viruses and other rogue programs. The infected computers begin sending out spam without the knowledge of their owners.

… 250,000 new computers are captured and added to these spam “botnets” each day.

Read the rest of this entry »

In the next few weeks, watch out for scam emails that claimed they are sent from the Internal Revenue Service promising info about your refund. Some tips that everyone should know about:

If you have a refund due, you can find about it legitimately by going to www.irs.gov and clicking on “Where’s My Refund.”

The IRS wants you to know that the agency is still firmly rooted in snail mail and never asks for taxpayer information by e-mail: “The most important thing to know is the IRS doesn’t request credit-card and [other] personal information through unsolicited e-mails. We just don’t do that,” the spokesman says.

Source: Phishing in IRS Waters, Howard Gleckman, BusinessWeek Online, Feb. 15, 2006.

In fact, be really careful about what you say on the Internet. If not, you may end up in some unthinkable situation like the tale of lawyers William Korman and Dianna Abdala.

The story goes like this. Korman offered a job to Abdala. After two meetings, Abdala tentatively agreed to take the job. Few days later, Abdala changed her mind, and wrote an email to Korman saying that “The pay you are offering would neither fulfill me nor support the lifestyle I am living.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Big Internet companies like AOL and Yahoo! process thousands and thousands of email messages a day. In order to protect users from spam messages, these companies set up message filters to guard against unwanted email messages. In doing so, sometimes it delays the delivery of legitimate email messages.

To solve this problem and to help the respective company to increase revenue,  “AOL and Yahoo! say they intend to introduce a system that would guarantee speedier delivery to companies that pay between 0.25 and one US cent (0.15p to 0.5p) for each message”, Guardian Unlimited reports.

The Internet service providers would still accept email from senders who do not pay for preferential treatment, but the paid messages would bypass spam filters and other barriers which strip off pictures and other images to land more quickly in in-boxes.

Does this mean that in the future there will be guaranteed speedier delivery of spam messages as long as the spammers are willing to pay $0.25 per message?