Anti Spam - SpamUnit

GoodMail, a spam filter system from GoodMail Systems of California, has been adopted by several large American ISPs. Comcast, Cox Comunnications, Warner Cable and Verizon email spam filters will now all respond to the GoodMail seal of veracity.

The system works by fitting each legitimate email with an encrypted software token. This has the effect of acting like a spam whitelist facilitator; email recipient systems, carrying out a spam check, will read the token and that read the token know that the email sent to them is not to be touched by their spam filtering service. In return, the email sender pays 0.25 US cents to the GoodMail company - and these profits are set to be split with the ISPs who join the system.

Of course, as positive as this development is, it does not mean no more spam for everyone. As it’s targeted at businesses, and not home users, it will not be adopted by even a majority of email users, meaning that alternative spam blacklist techniques are required to be 100% safe. But for the 400+ businesses who use GoodMail, they now have important allies in the ISP world: it shows that email marketing does not have to be malicious spam. Full article

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Barracuda Networks, Inc., famed manufacturers of the Barracuda spam firewall, have hit back at the DOS (denial of service) spammers who recently hit anti-spamlist-keepers Spamhaus. Barracuda Spam Firewall users utilise spam black lists, such as those provided by Spamhaus, to power their spam hardware solutions. The spam list contains blacklisted IPs and email addresses, which the firewall then filters out before spam messages can reach your inbox. However, when Spamhaus was rendered inaccessible by DOS attacks, Barracuda retained its effectiveness: this is because it combines spam lists with 11 other defence layers, including its own profiling algorithims and the Energize Updates service, a subscription-based service that comes into play before external lists such as those provided by Spamhaus are employed. The company also pointed out that the virus worm used to carry out the DOS attacks was quickly blocked by Energize Update, which is rolled out to all subscribing Barracuda Spam Firewall users. Many botnet and DOS attacks are spread via viruses like these, and the vast majority of attempted virus attacks take place via email.

Barracuda, often used by large businesses, is thus a choice for those who need 100% guaranteed uptime on their spam list solutions, although most home users may find it excessive.

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Slashdot (http://it.slashdot.org/it/07/06/12/1328213.shtml) reports that alleged CAN SPAM violator and so-called “spam king” Adam Vitale has pled guilty to charges filed against him. He and an associate, Todd Moeller, apparently sent tens of millions of spam messages to 1.2 million AOL subscribers. They used several different servers and email headers to hide their tracks and evade AOL spam filtering, but justice seems to have eventually caught up with them. Allegedly, the spammers made at least $40,000 a month from their email marketing exploits, but, in doing so, broke the law.

While the guilty plea is encouraging from a spam-killer point of view, the sentencing is a much bigger deal. The judge’s decision, due for September, will show just how far antispam laws have come. With a maximum sentence of eleven years in jail, the spam king could potentially be away for a long time: whether this acts as a deterrent for future spamming remains to be seen. Technology has had trouble delivering a spam free reality; maybe the courts can finally make stopping spam a reality, at least in the US, is a harsh sentence is delivered. Nonetheless, some remain skeptical: apparently less than 1% of all spam messages comply with this spam law.

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A recent press release shows that, despite the prevalence of spam filtering software, spam email levels continue to remain high. 88.51% of emails scanned were shown to be junk. Spam, then, continues to grow despite the recent arrest of the Spam King and the amount of spam killer applications available. It seems that this is a part of the internet that, despite its unpopularity, just won’t die. Noted spam expert Diego d’Ambra said, “spammers are still out there and mean business.” That’s an understatement: the industry is growing, and spam levels did not drop between May and June, according to this report. Spam took numerous forms, including text and images, but use of pictures seems to be on the decline as spam filtering software catches up to the technology used by spam companies.

This report isn’t all bad news. Even if it continues to be sent, preventing spam reaching your mailbox seems to be easier than ever; the amount of spam filter software is greater than ever before. But with the industry continuing to evolve, it’s only a matter of time before the next wave of massive attacks takes to the internet.

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World Spam Law Round-up: Plenty of countries, tired of the growing problem of junk spam mails in their jurisdictions, are enacting new spam laws. In Singapore, the Spam Control Act 2007, comparable to the CAN SPAM act of the USA, comes into effect on June 15 2007. This law stipulates harsh financial penalties of up to S$1m (approx. $650,000 American dollars) for the senders of junk spam emails within their borders. They hope that this will lead to spam-free networks, at least in their own country. They also want it to discourage foreign spammers from flooding Singaporean inboxes, but this seems unlikely to work.

A similar problem exists in Hong Kong. Their law came into play on June 1 2007 but has so far had limited success. Since Hong Kong is only responsible for around 1% of the world’s spam, and prosecuting those in foreign jurisdictions has proved troublesome, internet users in the Chinese region notice little change. However, as it’s a relatively new innovation, time will tell whether or not it has a lasting effect.

Finally, China has taken a new approach to a growing problem - it has begun punishing mobile spammers. The burgeoning cellphone industry in China is not without its issues; certain companies, even large, well-known ones like Tencent - a leading internet, messaging and mobile company - have fallen foul of the administration, facing sanctions and fines for junk messaging mobile customers. In China, mobile spam is not quite as big a business as email marketing but it’s growing all the time: in a few years, asking “what is spam” may give very different results as the cell phone industry grows. Perhaps other countries will soon follow China’s lead in this regard.

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