Legislation

Have you "really" got consent for every email on your mailing list?

With so much talk about the Spamhaus Informational listings and the subsequent talk of cleaning up mailing lists and mailing practices, here are sound words of advice on the subject of consent from Simon McGrath.

Network Hijacking on the Rise

As we discussed in a previous article, allocations of IP addresses (IPv4 addresses) are getting hard to come by, especially for spammers. Because the IP addresses they use quickly get a bad reputation as sources of spam, spammers constantly need fresh IPs that are not yet "burned". To get around...

ICANN SSAC on DDoS, DNS and BCP 38

ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) document Advisory on DDoS Attacks Leveraging DNS Infrastructure, published this week, provides a much-needed touchstone for the Internet in its current state. DDoS attacks, such as the one directed at Spamhaus last spring, continue to grow in size. Their magnitude poses a threat...

Who's Really Paying Cybercriminals?

This week sees the arrival of LondonCyber, a conference organised by the British Government's Foreign Office and reported to have been so thoroughly stage-managed that the media have been carefully kettled away in a special media centre to ensure they are not allowed to directly interact with any of the...

UK Threat from Cybercrime is Very Real

When it became clear that the UK's National Security Strategy (published today) would highlight "Cybersecurity" as one of the most serious threats to the United Kingdom's security, the media were most querulous. Even some of the more experienced journalists seemed to pour immediate scorn on the suggestion that computer-based crime...

State of Maine AG OKs Spam List

The idea of "opt in" is central to the legitimate, non-spam use of bulk e-mail. Without "opt in" policies, any and all e-mail addresses will be spammed relentlessly until they "opt out", and likely even after that. "Opt in" means that the recipient--the e-mail address owner--knowingly and intentionally subscribes to...

Summer Spam Suits Show Some Success

Microsoft Corporation has won what could be the largest award against a spammer in Europe thus far. Paul Fox, whose e-mail messages were intended to direct people toward his pornographic websites, was forced by a court order to pay Microsoft 45,000 pounds ($84,177) for breaching the terms and conditions of...

Australian Spam Act Nails First Spammer

The Australian Communications Authority (ACA) has taken action against a spammer in the first case to be brought under Australia's Spam Act. Spammer Wayne Mansfield, listed in Spamhaus ROKSO database, is charged with sending at least 56 million commercial emails in twelve months after the Spam Act 2003 commenced in...

The Threat from the Net

During two keynote speeches at the Infosecurity Europe conference at Olympia (London UK), Lord Harris of Haringey warned the UK government of the serious threat to Critical National Infrastructure posed by groups of E-vandals and criminal gangs, and the fact that the UK has neither systematic protection nor a response...

Follow Australia!

United Nations - World Summit on the Information Society International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Geneva, Switzerland The message conveyed by the UN spam conference to the delegates from 60 countries was clear, spam in July was 76% of all email, is now costing national economies US$25 Billion a year, the problem...

Spammer Arrests herald FTC Crackdown on Illegal Spamming

For many months the Spamhaus team have been working with teams from Law Enforcement Agencies in the United States and United Kingdom helping put together cases against the known spammers. We are very pleased to see arrests of spammers by the FTC now taking place, and look forward to the...

United States set to Legalize Spamming on January 1, 2004

Against the advice of all anti-spam organizations, the U.S. House of Representatives has passed the CAN-SPAM Act, a bill backed overwhelmingly by spammers and dubbed the "YOU-CAN-SPAM" Act because it legalizes spamming instead of banning it. Spam King Alan Ralsky told reporters...

The Spam Definition and Legalization Game

The word Spam means "Unsolicited Bulk Email". Unsolicited means that the Recipient has not granted verifiable permission for the message to be sent. Bulk means that the message is sent as part of a larger collection of messages, all having substantively identical content. But ask a spammer and he'll claim...

Spamming is now a Crime in Virginia

The State of Virginia on Tuesday 29th April 2003 enacted the toughest anti-spam legislation of any US State so far, imposing harsh felony penalties for sending spam to computer users through deceptive means. Spammers who send Unsolicited Bulk Email to or from Virginia with a bogus return address, or via...

Europe Outlaws Spam

The European Parliament has decided to accept the Council's Common Position which would require senders of advertisements by "electronic mail" to have the recipient's prior consent. "Electronic mail" is defined broadly enough so as to include text messaging systems based on mobile telephony in addition to email. The 'opt-in' requirement...