Since we implemented the project honeypot blacklisting system, it’s already becoming a very effective tool for us. Their simple API enables us to quickly check whether any given visitor to our website is an email harvester, comment spammer or one of a number of malicious bots circulating the globe. More »
Here’s a scary statistic. More »
Here’s a pretty obtuse way to fish for legitimate email addresses. More »
Got this phishing scam from some knuckleheads in the USA who must have been hoping that (1) I’m a Bank of America customer and (2) that I’m even dumber than they are: From: Bank of America <onlinebanking.alerts@bank0famerica.com> To: xxx@lutrov. More »
Stumbled on this today, while investigating dodgy user agent strings: “Project Honey Pot is the first and only distributed system for identifying spammers and the spambots they use to scrape addresses from your website. More »
I received this “mainsleaze” spam a few days ago from Midas. Now this is supposed to be a reputable, mainstream company but stupid actions such as this are likely to damage their reputation for quite a while: Looking at the email headers and body reveals that apart from “dataxlt.com”, “online-replies. More »
I received this email, claiming to be from Dell, and offering to give me a free laptop, just for answering a short survey: From: “Computer Testing Program” <KelleyDominguez@shulogu.matfelon.com> To: xxx@lutrov. More »
Some knuckleheads from the other side of the world tried scamming me (along with a few million other people) a couple of weeks ago. More »
Quite a while back I outlined from personal experience one way dodgy sellers continue to scam buyers on Ebay. Well here’s another one, except even the Ebay support people can’t explain how this particular scam works. More »
Warning: This post contains concepts and phraseology which may be offensive to some of our readers. A few weeks ago I got a lovely email from an aspiring Russian bride who wanted to get to “know” me, so to speak. More »
I’ve been copping a spate of Cyrillic spam in the last few weeks, which my mailfilter has been happily dumping into the garbage, where it belongs. More »
Anyone else spotted the irony in The IT Crowd’s parody of “anti-piracy” advertisements? Yep, the bloke who ripped it and then uploaded it to Youtube was committing piracy. More »
Last weekend, I got one of those “unpaid item reminder” emails from what looked on the surface to be the automated Ebay system. Here’s how I immediately recognised it as a phishing scam: The “To” message header says “undisclosed-recipients”. More »
I got five copies of this over the weekend. It must be important if “Madam Cole” went to the trouble of sending it five times, right? From: MRS SUSAN COLE mrssusancole2002@yahoo.com.hk Subject: ATTENTION: Sir/Madam Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2007 23:08:16 +1000 (EST) Reply-To: susancolebeijin@yahoo. More »
Nate Anderson over at Ars Technica quotes an IDC report that predicts this is the year where spam will for the first time outnumber real email. More »
Just finished reading “Merchants of Deception” by Eric Scheibeler and I’d highly recommend it to anyone who has suspected that there might be dodgy goings on at Amway, one of the largest privately held companies in the world. More »
Has anyone read the Australian Government’s proposed new copyright laws? The new reforms on Philip Ruddock’s website defy logic and common sense. From their Q&A section: Does this mean I can record my favourite television or radio program to enjoy later? Yes. More »
In the online auction marketplace, shill bidding is the corrupt practise of bidding on your own items or having friends (or other corrupt associates) bid on your items, purely to artificially inflate the final price and make the legitimate buyers pay more for the item you’re selling. More »
Do you know of anyone who actually reads the license agreement when they install a piece of software? Me either. We typically just click on that “accept” button without reading the license first. Lines and lines of legalise, where we understand all the words but the sentences don’t make much sense. More »
I have to admit that I do enjoy getting stuck into Sony and their inferior software. According to US patent 7016940, Sony now own the exclusive right to make a piece of software which will: Make the recipient of electronic mail quickly and surely take actions desired by the sender. More »