US still top source of spam, says Sophos
32219
NEARLY half of all spam spread throughout the world is from the United States, making the country the top spammer of the year, according to a report released by software security firm Sophos.
296563
Bill Gates is claiming the most spammed person in the world. Microsoft Corp. Chairman receives 4 million spam messages in his email every day, according to his silent voodoo doll Steve Ballmer.
747314
AOL released its second annual top 10 spam terms yesterday, listing the subject lines of the most popular junk e-mails. The Dulles-based company said the number of spams sent to users  was down from 2.4 billion in 2003 to 1.2 billion this year. -The Washington Post
707033
A variation of spam is sliding past spam filters into inboxes, but it&#39;s not likely the new trick will be successful much longer, a security expert said Thursday.The spam messages, urging recipients to buy a stock, have an MP3 audio attachment but no subject line or text, said John Graham-Cumming, an anti-spam consultant and researcher who is based in France.&quot;I think this is the first time we&#39;ve seen this,&quot; said Graham-Cumming, who tracks new kinds of spam.The audio messages, which vary in length, contain a warbled, robotic voice with a British accent encouraging people to invest in Exit Only, a company that owns a Web site, www.Text4Cars.com, which connects vehicle buyers and sells through SMS (Short Message Service). Exit Only says it&#39;s not involved in sending the spam.Graham-Cumming said the spam falls into the category of &quot;pump and dump&quot; fraud. Scammers invest in a company with a low-priced stock and send out a round of spam, causing gullible investors to buy it and increase the stock&#39;s price.As the stock price peaks, fraudsters cash out, which causes the stock to precipitously fall, burning other investors. The practice is illegal.Exit Only was trading around $0.41 on Thursday. Not much detail is available on the company, but it issued a news release on Tuesday heralding the launch of its Text4Cars service in the Los Angeles area. The news release said the company hoped to be fully launched in the United States in early 2008.Exit Only&#39;s CEO, David Dion, said he learned of the spam around Wednesday morning. He has since notified the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and said his company has nothing to do with the spam run.&quot;I am very distraught by this,&quot; Dion said.Dion said only about 100 shares have been traded so far, so the scam hasn&#39;t been successful.The messages are more annoying than harmful. But there are a variety of defenses e-mail administrators and security companies can employ to stop it, Graham-Cumming said.Spam filters can be configured to cull messages with MP3s, since most companies don&#39;t have a business use for the file type, Graham-Cumming said. Administrators can also change their e-mail server settings to slow down the speed at which they receive messages with MP3 attachments, he said.That method has been proven to frustrate spammers, who typically shut down the connection if the spam isn&#39;t going through quickly enough since the delay consumes valuable bandwidth, Graham-Cumming said.These spam messages are also relatively large -- around 100KB -- compared to other spam, which may be another reason this kind of spam may not be around for long. Spam messages with larger file sizes require more bandwidth to send, meaning spammers can&#39;t send out high volumes of messages, Graham-Cumming said.&quot;Honestly, my prediction is this is going to be around for a while and disappear,&quot; he said.E-mail security company MessageLabs said it was catching about 10,000 spam messages with MP3s per hour since late Wednesday night.
703877
SEATTLE _ With the arrest Wednesday of a Seattle man accused of sending out tens of millions of spam e-mails, federal prosecutors say that computer users across the globe should see a significant drop in spam messages.  Robert Soloway, a 27-year-old dubbed the "Spam King" by Interim U.S.
143741
The impact of the W32/Zafi-D worm, which disguised itself as an electronic Christmas card, has reduced from its peak of 1 in every 10 emails earlier this week, to 1 in 30 in the last 24 hours according to reports from Sophos&#39;s global network of monitoring
534621
The Microsoft chairman is the world&#39;s most spammed person: about 4 million messages arrive in his mailbox on daily basis. The king of Microsoft his Excellency Williams Gates and his silent voodoo doll Steve
106913
The United States was the 800-pound spam-spewing gorilla throughout 2004, a spot it held from wire to wire throughout the year, an anti-virus firm announced Monday.
142721
Bill Gates gets 4 million emails a day according to Microsoft&#39;s CEO Steve Ballmer. `There are two people who probably are the number one spam recipients in the world,` Ballmer said at a Microsoft event in Singapore `Bill Gates because he is Bill Gates.
573432
(InfoWorld) - The European Commission has warned its member states to beef up their efforts to cut spam, spyware and malicious software, after research showed that up to 85 percent of all e-mail received in the European Union is unsolicited.The findings come four years after the EU adopted anti-spam legislation in the form of the e-privacy directive. "It is time to turn the repeated political concern about spam into concrete actions to fight spam," Viviane Reding, the commissioner for Information Society and Media, said in a statement on Monday.If there is no improvement by this time next year, Reding will consider introducing new legislative measures to fight the scourge, she said.She pointed to the Netherlands as an example of how the current legal regime can be used to cut spam. Hollandâs spam-busting unit, known by the initials OPTA, has just five full-time staff and â¬570,000 (US$747,000) worth of equipment, and has succeeded in cutting spam by 85 percent. âI'd like to see other countries achieving similar results through more efficient enforcement,â Reding said.Finland was also singled out for praise. A filtering system there has cut the amount of spam to 30 percent of all e-mail, from 80 percent two years ago, the Commission said.âWe encourage other countries in the Union to develop similar filtering means,â said Martin Selmayr, Redingâs spokesman, at a press conference Monday.The Commission is urging other countries âto lay down clear lines of responsibility to use the tools available under E.U. law effectively." Better cooperation with enforcement authorities from other countries, including countries outside the Union, is essential to defeat the spammers, the Commission said.The U.S. remains the single biggest source of spam, accounting for 22 percent of all spam received in the EU, the Commission said. China is the second largest source, accounting for 13 percent. France and South Korea rank joint third at 6 percent.The U.S. and the EU have agreed to tackle spam through joint enforcement initiatives, the Commission said.Last year, Ferris Research estimated spam to cost â¬39 billion worldwide, while fellow researcher Computer Economics calculated malicious software to cost â¬11 billion worldwide.The Commission's latest communication on spam is available here in several languages.
485639
New technology for identifying the sender of e-mail messages has not been widely adopted despite backing from software giant Microsoft Corp. and may not be effective at stopping unsolicited commercial e-mail, otherwise known as spam, according to a survey by e-mail security company CipherTrust Inc.
78870
A MAN nicknamed the King of Spam for allegedly sending out billions of junk emails has been arrested in the U.S.   Prosecutors say Robert Soloway became one of the world's biggest spammers, using computers secretly infected with orders to send out his emails.
280867
America Online says you&#39;ve got less mail thanks to its ongoing battle against spammers. Despite the recent spike in spam, the company claims to have had a banner year in its fight against the scourge, which
363751
European spam networks have pumped out more unsolicited e-mail than those in the U.S. for the third month in a row, according to security vendor Symantec.
492291
So you think you get a lot of spam, maybe a few hundred per day? Well think about the amount that bill gates gets at Microsoft, over 4 million a day apparently!
595744
Internet junkies, take heart: Microsoft chairman  Bill Gates receives four million e-mails daily, most of them spam, and is probably the most &quot;spammed&quot; person in the world.
20314
When you get frustrated with an avalanche of spams sent to your email box, spare a thought for Bill Gates. The Microsoft Corp. chairman is the world&#39;s most spammed person with