Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

Spyware bad, adware OK, says court. Adware-supported ‘online media company’ Zango has had accusations of using spyware dashed by a Chicago, Illinois court. The class action case, brought a little under a year ago, has been dismissed without chance of appeal. Zango , sued under former name 180solutions , serves up video, music, games and…

Civil action avoids spam law technicalities. Microsoft has sued and reached an out-of-court settlement with UK spammer Paul Fox, after apparently despairing of finding any success under UK spam laws. The Manchester man was accused of breaching Hotmail usage rules, after Microsoft picked up 250 spams a day from his campaigns. UK spam laws introduced…

FTC takes cash, bans from future naughtiness. Enternet Media and ConSpy & Co. , the companies behind products including Miracle Search and EliteBar , have been forced to pay out over $2 million to settle a case brought by the US Federal Trade Commission. The companies, and some other named defendants, were ordered to desist…

AV industry future revealed – must do better. Industry analyst and predictor Gartner has released its annual ‘Magic Quadrant’ study of the current state and likely future of the AV industry, focusing specifically on major players in the enterprise market. Entrants are rated on ‘completeness of vision’ (later defined as market understanding, marketing strategy, sales…

Tough sentence upheld despite free-speech claims. A US man convicted two years ago under the state of Virginia’s anti-spam laws has lost an appeal against his conviction. The case, believed the first to consider spamming a felony under US law, drew attention when the defendant argued the case infringed his right to free speech. The…

Trojan uses unpatched hole in office software. At least one trojan has been seen in the wild exploiting a newly discovered vulnerability in Microsoft ‘s Word 2000 software. The trojan is embedded in a malformed Word document, and executed when the document is opened. The trojan has been variously labelled ‘MDropper.Q’ ( Symantec ) and…

Mail campaign aims to sneak into readers’ subconscious minds. A spam campaign is using the classic ‘submliminal message’ technique in an attempt to implant thoughts in the minds of those who view it. The campaign, pushing stocks, tries to persuade more people to invest in the advertised company by including an animated gif image file,…

Cleaner tool aims to remove sophisticated attack. The shadowy blended threat known as Gromozon has slowly been gaining notoriety in recent weeks, particularly after some in-depth analysis was made public. Now anti-malware company PrevX has released a free, dedicated remover tool to combat the problem. The threat has spread from an Italian website over several…

One in three malicious emails a phish, says MessageLabs. A report on the current state of digital security has revealed that phishing scams constitute a growing danger to computer users’ privacy, and to their finances. According to MessageLabs’ August report , one in 321 emails sent in August was a phish, up from one in…

Adjustments to laws may let ‘non-commercial’ spam continue. Recommendations have been made to dilute tough new anti-spam laws currently being debated by the New Zealand government. A select committee has suggested that emails with no obvious commercial intent should be permitted under the new system. The new laws will insist on opt-out systems in all…