Tirelessly keeping watch over the mean streets of the Internet! We\’re helping you with spam alerts, spyware warnings, spoof advisories, sleazeball sightings, security updates, system fixes - and, of course, product reviews - it\’s all part of the beat for the Net Patrol.
It’s one of those stories which one would think that only Kafka could dream up, if it weren’t for the fact that the story is true.
Charles Booher was a friendly, unassuming Silicon Valley engineer - like thousands of others in the Valley. However he gained distinction - some would even say notoriety - […]
Two men headquartered in Florida who were selling fake Viagra and other bogus prescription drugs online, and spamming on the “pharmacy’s” behalf, have copped a plea and could get as much as 20 years in prison for their actions.
It is alleged that Charles Naron and Stephen Lewis, both of Florida, netted more than $1million by […]
Internet service provider Earthlink has announced that it has reached a settlement with two high-profile and extremely prolific spammers dubbed the “Alabama Spammers” for their penchant for using dial-ups in and around Birmingham, Alabama.
Damon DeCrescenzo and David Burstyn, alledged to be part of a multi-state spam ring, were sued by Earthlink for sending more than […]
Jeffrey Lee Parsons, the teenager who unleased the MS Blaster worm variant “MS Blaster B” on the world, has plea bargained his way down to a relatively light eighteen months in jail, and ten months of community service.
Parsons was facing up to 3-10 years in prison (reports vary) for his hacking and re-releasing of the […]
You heard it here first (Aunty sure appreciates her little birdies!)
U.S.-based ISP giant Earthlink and Korean-based SK Telecom have just this morning announced that they have joined forces to form a national wireless provider here in the United States.
What does this mean to consumers?
Well, SK Telecom has for years been offering their customers in […]
Dear Gentle Readers,
This week Aunty is helping her dear friends over at the Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy with their 2nd annual national “Spam and the Law” conference, and so Aunty may not be quite so wordy as she usually is. Fear not, dear readers, Aunty will be back in full force […]
Dear Gentle Readers,
This week Aunty is helping her dear friends over at the Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy with their 2nd annual national “Spam and the Law” conference, and so Aunty may not be quite so wordy as she usually is. Fear not, dear readers, Aunty will be back in full force […]
Anti-virus firm Sophos has reported that a new virus, Crowt-A, is actually ripping off headlines from CNN, and using them as both the subject line of the spam containing the virus, as well as the file name for the virus payload itself.
Not only that, but the virus constantly changes the headlines it uses, to keep […]
Spammers have been using blogs to help boost their standings in search engines by posting massive numbers of comments that include links to their pornography sites, scams and get-rich-quick sites. If your site is linked by a top-ranked site or blog, then Google will often raise your site’s ranking…or at least that’s the thinking of spammers.
An announcement […]
It was the misfire heard around the world.
The Register earlier this week reported that a German court had ruled that blocking email by content was illegal, stating that “The Higher Regional Court now has ruled that blocking email by content is unlawful as it is considered confidential in German law. Blocking is only allowed when, […]
William R. Trowbridge, of New York, and Michael Chicoine, of Texas, will be going from file sharing to cell sharing following their guilty pleas to Federal charges of using a peer-to-peer network. Oops, Aunty means of violating copyrights on peer-to-peer networks. Because of course just using a peer-to-peer network is not illegal, so […]
This isn’t exactly double jeopardy, but somehow it ought to be.
Bad enough to receive junk mail from a spammer - but then to receive a junk lawsuit as well? Ptooey!
And it is exactly that with which Jay Stuler is dealing. Having received what he considered spam from Atriks, Inc., of New Hampshire, for […]
Georgia’s Internet citizenry got a treat yesterday as Governor Sonny Perdue introduced legislation aimed at making spamming the good citizens of Georgia (or, indeed, by the good citizens of Georgia) a criminal offense.
The proposed legislation, known as the “Georgia Slam Spam E-mail Act” (gotta work on those acronyms, Mr. Perdue), would criminalize the sending of […]
Last week Aunty told you about Internet baddies who are loading spyware, adware, and viruses (oh my!) into media files, using a loophole in Microsoft’s Digital Rights Management (DRM) process, and causing the nasties to be installed on the computers of unaware users who think that they are downloading media files.
Shortly after Aunty made that […]
Two bits of news this week should cause consternation in the peer-to-peer development and initiation worlds.
First, California now has a bill wending its way through the law-making process which would require the developers of peer-to-peer and other file-swapping software to take “reasonable care” to ensure that their software cannot be used in the exchange of […]
Internet service provider Panix.com found that their entire domain was hijacked over the weekend. The ISP, which serves the greater New York City area, found that the domain had been moved from their own registrar to one in Australia, that their DNS pointed to a site in the United Kingdom, and that all […]
Aunty is a big fan of the T-Mobile Sidekick, nee “Danger Hiptop”. She carries hers with her wherever she goes (well, almost). Once thought of as the poor man’s Blackberry, the Sidekick has really come into its own, offering all if not more of the functionality of the Blackberry, for half the price, […]
As we alluded to last month, new forms of Internet communications beget new forms of spam, and Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is no exception to the rule.
Where it had already been predicted that VoIP spam, affectionaly referred to as “SPIT” (SPam over Internet Telephony) was just around the corner, that prediction has now been […]
Some of you may recall that Aunty told you about Christopher Pierson, the British man who skulked about the tsunami disaster support boards, and wrote to those who were looking for loved ones feared lost in the disaster that, indeed, their loved ones had perished (sick b*st*ard. Oops…did Aunty say that outloud?)
Pierson may have […]
The newest spam scam to hit eBay users is a spam which is infected with what is known as a “keylogger”. When a user opens the infected email, which then has them log into their eBay account, it can record the keystrokes typed by the user, capturing the user’s account name and password, and […]