Translation services used to pump out polyglot spam Spammers are making greater use of automated translation services and templates to create multiple language junk mail runs. The tactic has resulted in even greater volumes of spam in email traffic to countries in continental Europe, in particular, according to the latest monthly security report by net services firm Messagelabs …
...that there is a gang of well-meaning thugs with baseball bats roving the world looking for spammers and beating them to death.
You know the thing: BBC news website; picture of nerds on the floor in a pool of blood; sensationalist headline along the lines of INTERNET VIGILANTES TAKE MATTERS INTO THEIR OWN HANDS: Who Will Be Next?
Then let's see what effect that has on SPAM levels.......
"Dir gewinn ist bei einer sicherheitsfirma hinterlegt und in ihren namen versichert."
Oh certainly dear retarded Untermenschspammeister.
What I want to know is the return rate on missives of that type among the population of the above 6 year olds. Shouldn't these missives at least try to pretend being serious in their attempt to possibly come from a trustworthy source?
A Grenade! That would solve some problems.
For personal use. Pretty rubbish, isn't it?
It's used to be something I used to catch up with buddies more than anything else. But now my inbox just seems to be a repository for receipts, confirmation messages, and adverts that I've 'subscribed' to.
Friendly banter with mates takes place elsewhere on the web.
Email's pretty lacking as a works messaging tool, too, when you think about the possibilities.
Gmail conversation threading was a nice touch. But it just seems like a last hurrah more than anything.
"You are seeing this page because your Internet service has been temporarily suspended due to the presence of malware on one or more computers at your location. This malware is using your computer to send illegal junk email over your Internet connection. To remedy this problem, please download and install our antivirus software, available [here]. You will need to install this software on every computer that uses your Internet connection.
The antivirus software will run once to remove the malware from your computer. Once the malware has been cleared, your Internet service will be automatically restored. Once this is done, we urge you to install an antivirus package on all computers using your Internet service to prevent a recurrence of this problem. You will not be billed for the time your service is offline.
Thank you for helping to make the Internet malware-free, and we apologise for any inconvenience this issue may have caused.
Regards,
Your ISP"
Well, I can dream, can't I?
I wish! No, it's what I would really, really like to see ISPs do to the morons that let their computers get infected with botnet trojans and do nothing about it. Cutting off people's internet for harbouring botnet trojans would wake these idiots up to the problem in a big hurry. Of course the requirement to do this would have to be written into legislation to force all ISPs to do it otherwise customers would just jump ship to any ISP that doesn't. In the meantime, I can only dream...
You missed handle's point.
That email is the sort of email we're all trying to train users out of clicking on willy-nilly. Emails that ask users to download AV are to be avoided like the plague.
It's a nice idea, but there needs to be some way of ISP X authenticating itself with the user before we should even consider using it.
I fully agree with what you say about emails. When I wrote that piece I envisaged it not as an email but as a web page which is all you see when you try to surf the net - that's what I meant when I said the person gets their internet cut off. Whenever the botnetted victim types in any domain, all they get would be that page. The ISP could verify it by having it on an SSL connection so the user can clearly see the https://yourispname.net domain in the address bar, and the page would also have the ISP's logo as well. Sorry if I didn't make that clear. My bad. :)
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