Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

  • China calculates cost of spam

    Lost productivity costs dear. Spam is costing China $756m (6.069 billion yuan) every year according to estimates by the Internet Society of China (ISC). The figure, published in China’s Anti-spam Report of 2006, reflects the fact that (according to the report) Chinese Internet users receive an average of 19.33 spam emails per week, and spend…

  • Largest can-spam fine to be paid

    Internet marketing firm makes $900,000 settlement. An Internet marketing firm in the US has agreed to pay $900,000 to settle a case brought against it by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The fine is the largest imposed so far for breaches of the CAN-SPAM Act. The FTC alleges that Jumpstart Technologies violated anti-spam rules during…

  • Code of practice for Australia’s ISPs

    Legislative code to come into force. The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) is poised to introduce a legislative code of practice for ISPs that could see hefty fines being dished out to service providers that fail to comply. Under the new code, ISPs must offer spam-filtering options to subscribers and provide a system of…

  • Dutch police arrest Nigerian scammers

    419 scamming ring uncovered Dutch police arrested 12 Nigerians in Amsterdam last month after they were found to be operating a 419 scamming ring. According to Dutch police, who were aided in their investigation by members of the US Postal Inspection Service, the scammers had sent more than 100,000 emails and had managed to con…

  • China to crack down on spam

    China toughens up its anti-spam regulations The Chinese Government has introduced a set of regulations aimed at reducing the amount of spam circulating in the country. The sending of advertising emails without the recipient’s prior permission is now banned, and all advertising emails are required to be labelled as such. Spammers will now face penalties…

  • Vigilant staff avert phishing scam

    Scammers halted in their tracks A web-hosting company based in New Zealand claims that, thanks to the vigilance of its staff, it has averted a potential phishing scam targeted at customers of National Bank. Staff of Auckland-based Web Drive suspected that something fishy (or phishy) was going on when they spotted an overseas user who…

  • Hotbar adware dispute settled

    Symantec settles adware case Symantec has reached an out-of-court agreement in the pre-emptive lawsuit it filed against marketing firm Hotbar.com Inc. In the unusual case, the anti-malware vendor sought a court ruling that would allow it to label certain Hotbar.com products as adware (see VB, July 2005 , p.3). Under the terms of the settlement…

  • Updating niggles

    Troublesome month for security vendors Last month proved to be troublesome for security vendors Sophos, Microsoft and Kaspersky, as niggles with updates caused problems for their customers. Sophos customers suffered an onslaught of false positives thanks to a fault in the update file which was released to add detection of the OSX-Inqtana-B worm for Mac…

  • Hong Kong proposes anti-spam bill

    Proposals for anti-spam legislation revealed. Hong Kong’s Commerce, Industry & Technology Bureau has revealed its proposals for anti-spam legislation and launched a two-month public consultation. The proposed Unsolicited Electronic Messages Bill adopts a ‘technology-neutral’ approach, in a bid to accommodate any new forms of electronic message that may appear in the future as well as…

  • Spammer to pay AOL over $5 million

    Company wins case against prolific spammer. AOL is waiting to receive $5.6 million this month after winning its case against 25-year-old Minnesota spammer Christopher William Smith. Smith, whom AOL says it has been pursuing for three years, sent billions of spam messages via the company’s email service and has now been ordered to pay $25,000…

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