Spam Took A Holiday But Did Anyone Notice?

Riva Richmond of the NYTimes Bits Blog declared yesterday that "Spam Is Back". It seems that a spam network of malware-infected personal computers known as Rustock, and believed to be linked to Russian based criminals, stopped sending spam on Christmas Eve. but resumed activities on January 9th at about 7:00 p.m. EST.


Symantec says that the activity is mostly of the pharmaceutical variety promoting an online service called Pharmacy Express. Monday, Rustock was estimated to have sent 19 billion messages representing about 28% of all spam on the internet.


The reason for the quiet Christmas break is a mystery but Matt Sergeant, senior anti-spam technologist for MessageLabs (Symantec) says  “My guess would simply be Christmas vacation,” and “Perhaps they went somewhere to spend some time on a beach and decided to shut things down for a while.”


I currently leave have 3 main e-mail addresses, 2 of which are gmail accounts and the 3rd I use very carefully. As a result, I rarely see any spam get through. Google does a great job of catching spam to it's gmail service and so I didn't notice any change in my inbox. You?

Quebec Man Ordered To Pay Facebook $873 - million For Spamming The Social Network

A Quebec court has upheld a 2008 California ruling ordering Adam Guerbuez to pay a fine of $100 per spam message sent and another $100 per message in damages to Facebook. Guerbuez's company Atlantis Blue Capital used Facebook to spam users with ads for erectile dysfunction cures a move that has put him and his company in the Guiness Book of World Records for the largest fine ever levied. 

“My client has already filed under the bankruptcy act, so [Facebook becomes] one of his creditors,” said Mr. Guerbuez’s lawyer, Éric Potvin.

“Facebook becomes the biggest one of his creditors,” he added.

Guerbuez had hoped that moving the appeal to his home Province would provide him with some relief from the huge fine, but the court showed no sympathy and upheld the previous ruling. Of course, Facebook doesn't expect to ever receive the full amount of the decision but it certainly has created, at least to some, a deterrent for any such future actions.

Source: The Globe and Mail

Most Spam Served From The US

ars technica has an interesting story about the origin of spam. Citing the most recent Sophos report, the article says that the US hosts 37 percent of all malware sites followed by China (27.7 percent) and Russia (9.1 percent). Also of note is the rise in frequency of infected e-mails. In 2007 the ratio of infected e-mails to non-infected was 1 in 909, in 2008 the numbers were 1 in 714. 

US Authorities Shut Down Spamming Operation

The Federal Trade Commission in the United States, with the help of security firm Marshal Software, have won over the courts in Chicago allowing the FTC to freeze the assets of HerbalKing group and promptly shut down the operations. The group is said to have ties to Australia, New Zealand, India, China and the United States and it's estimated that the group controlled 35,000 computers, in a botnet, and could send 10 billion e-mail messages a day. “This is pretty major. At one point these guys delivered up to one-third of all spam,” said Richard Cox, chief information officer at SpamHaus, a nonprofit antispam research group. HerbalKing e-mails have flooded the internet with the promise of cheap knock off watches and a variety of pharmaceuticals, including weight-loss drugs and male anatomy enhancers. According to the New York Times "The group was shipping drugs like Propecia, Lipitor, Celebrex and Zoloft out of India. The F.T.C. also said the group based its Web sites in China, processed credit cards from the former Soviet republic of Georgia and Cyprus, and transferred funds among members using ePassporte, an electronic money network."

McAfee Spam Expirement = 23,233 e-mails In One Month

In an experiment, McAfee invited 50 people from around the world to surf without spam filters. The results varied depending on where the surfer resided however I think you'll agree that even the least affected geographically still received a staggering amount of spam! Spam received by surfer by country (in one month):

US - 23,233

Brazil - 15,856

Italy - 15,610

Mexico - 12,229

UK - 11,965

Australia - 9,214

The Netherlands - 6,378

Spain - 5,419

France - 2,597

Germany - 2,331

"Many of our participants noticed that their computers were slowing down. This means that while they were surfing, unbeknownst to them, websites were installing malware," said Guy Roberts, director of McAfee's labs in Europe.

The future does not seem to hold any promise for eradicating spam either, "...it is such an immense problem and it's never going to go away. It's no longer a question of solving it but one of managing it," says Dave De Walt, chief executive of McAfee.

BBC story here.

Facebook marketing to your friends

Yesterday "Facebook began selling ads that display people’s profile photos next to commercial messages that are shown to their friends about items they purchased or registered an opinion about" according to this NY Times article. The idea is to inform your friends of your purchases via a Facebook broadcast, with your permission of course. “Nothing influences a person more than a recommendation from a trusted friend,” Mark Zuckerberg said of the program Facebook is calling "social advertising". Participation could mean "joining a fan club for a brand, recommending a product or sharing information about their purchases from external Web sites." Be fore warned, your friends will have no choice but to view the ads so you may find your friend list beginning to shrink if you are the source of a lot of spam!