Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

Venerable spam reporting outfit SpamCop has had a restraining order granted against it on behalf of alleged spammer OptInRealBig.com. Venerable spam reporting outfit SpamCop has had a restraining order granted against it on behalf of alleged spammer OptInRealBig.com. Scott Richter, the man responsible for OptInRealBig.com, is, of course, ‘not a spammer’, which makes the fairly…

Dips, increases and the cost of dealing with spam While the term ‘spam’ celebrated its tenth birthday last month, MessageLabs reported a decline in the volume of spam seen in March 2004. However, a spokesman for the company thought this was unlikely to be a continuing trend, and pointed out that, historically, similar slumps have…

Spammer extraordinaire launches own clothing line Scott Richter, spammer extraordinaire, is set to launch his own clothing line, according to Newsday . The man who brought to our inboxes such ‘unbeatable’ offers as the set of Iraq’s Most Wanted playing cards for only $5.99 (and who reportedly sold 40,000 decks in the first week), is…

Spamming set to become illegal in the Netherlands and other legislative news… Spamming is about to become illegal in The Netherlands, after the upper house of the Dutch parliament approved changes to telecoms legislation late last month. However, the legislation – which is likely to become law in May or June – only covers spam…

Network Associates Inc. (NAI) to streamline and adopt (not so) new name. In a bid to reduce costs and increase productivity, Network Associates, Inc. (NAI) has announced plans to streamline its business and to change its name to McAfee, Inc. The company intends to focus solely on providing security products and services, and in order…

AVAR calls for papers AVAR (the Association of anti-Virus Asia Researchers) has issued a call for papers for AVAR 2004 in Tokyo, which will take place 25-26 November 2004 in Tokyo, Japan. More details can be found at http://www.aavar.org/ . Posted on 02 May 2004 by Virus Bulletin

eEye reports four new Symantec vulnerabilities eEye Digital Security has reported that it has discovered four new vulnerabilities affecting Symantec products. Products affected are Norton Internet Security 2004, Norton Internet Security 2004 Professional and Norton Personal Firewall 2004. eEye rates the severity of all four vulnerabilities as ‘high’ and describes three of them as ‘remotely-exploitable…

Acquisitions and new product lines UK-based web and email filtering company SurfControl revealed plans last month to acquire California-based email security firm MessageSoft Inc. The company will pay $9.69 million for MessageSoft initially, with an additional $5 million to be paid by the end of the year, dependent on sales. In acquiring MessageSoft, SurfControl will…

Consolidation in the anti-spam industry A report released by Gartner last month predicts consolidation in the anti-spam industry and a rapid contraction of the pool of anti-spam vendors over the course of this year. The report suggests that, by the end of 2004, the current tally of about 40 vendors in the anti-spam market will…

Eset vs. BullGuard Recently it was brought to VB’s attention that affiliates of BullGuard have been cruising in the slipstream of Eset’s NOD32 product range. Visitors to the website http://www.nod-32.com/ (note the hyphen) will find a page of promotional information about the NOD32 product range — as one might expect. However the surprise comes when,…