The Federal Trade Commission has requested some 223 Million Dollars in their FY 2007 budget despite their piss poor previous performance to protect the public. Luckily the President of the United States did not give them all that money, but he did provide them with sufficient monies to carry on. What some may not realize is that the Federal Trade Commission has not done so well in curbing crime, preventing monopolies or helping the consumer in fact if you look closely at their endeavors from 1999 to the present you can see they have actually hurt consumers in my opinion, helped criminals and attacked businesses which would have provided more choice to consumers, lower prices and more competition in the market place. Indeed this is one agency that should get the complete budget axe. Why you ask?

Well first let us consider their efforts to fight SPAM. SPAM saw a constant increase and rose sharply during their so-called enforcement period. In fact many Spammers were embolden by the fact that the FTC’s own PR showed that there was little if anything they could do. In one letter to Congress the FTC said a Do Not SPAM List would actually give spammers a free e-mail directory to work from. That is probably true, however it shows their weakness and inability to cope with the real problems in cyber space and also shows their complete disregard for their own strengths to curb SPAM. Only in Washington DC can you screw up so bad and get paid more the next year for it? Go figure FTC. Consider this in 2006.

"Lance Winslow" - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; http://www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/

Most recently the Federal Trade Commission has put forth their requests for further budget funding for fiscal year 2007 and in this report to Congress for more taxpayer’s monies the FTC cited their efforts to curb SPAM. Yet many critics of the agency who have called it everything from incompetent to the Blob of Bureaucracy believe that the FTC has done little since the CAN SPAM Act to enforce this unsolicited commercial email. Here is what the FTC told the US Congress:

SPAM.

“Experts have estimated that spam (unsolicited commercial email) costs businesses between $10 billion and $87 billion annually. Additionally, consumers spend countless hours each year dealing with spam. The CAN SPAM Act provides the FTC with tools to address this issue.”

Perhaps they have the tools to address the issue, yet SPAM has increased not decreased under their watch. Additionally the FTC cites another piece of information:

“In April 2005, the FTC and the California Attorney General brought an action to halt an operation that sent millions of illegal spam messages touting mortgage loans and other products and services. The FTC’s Adult Labeling Rule and the CAN.SPAM Act require commercial e-mailers of sexually-explicit material to use the phrase SEXUALLY EXPLICIT:" in the subject line of the e-mail message and to ensure that the initial viewable area of the message does not contain graphic sexual images.”

If in fact the State of California can take care of this, why are we doubling up and paying the FTC to work on it too? This duplication has to be costing the US Taxpayers millions of dollars, is it not? Meanwhile the FTC’s report goes on to state:

“In 2005, the FTC filed suit against a network of individuals and corporations that used spam to sell access to online pornography, and charged seven companies with violating the labeling requirements of the Rule and the Act. The spammers paid $691 000 to settle the charges and agreed to injunctive relief.”

But one case is not sufficient at all. There are thousands of spammers out there and this one case is not even a drop in the bucket, surely the agency with all this power and weight and self-aggrandizement can do better than this? Yet the FTC always falls back to the more safe position when asking for money from Congress and stated:

“The FTC also continued to work on the rulemaking and reporting requirements mandated by the CAN-SPAM Act. In June 2005, the FTC issued a report to Congress on the use of subject line labeling for commercial email as a means to reduce spam, concluding that such labeling would not be an effective way to curb spam. December 2005, the FTC issued a report to Congress on the effectiveness and enforcement of the CAN.SPAM Act. That report concluded that, while the Act has helped to deliver some improvements, passage of the U.S. SAFE WEB Act, continued education efforts, and improvements in anti-spam technology also are needed.”

And there you have it folks rather than telling the US Congress that the FTC is incompetent they tell them they need more of our money to finish a job that they are failing at. Meanwhile we have Yahoo and AOL planning their own way to make money sending us SPAM and the FTC is going to do nothing about it. Consider the this in 2006.

"Lance Winslow" - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; http://www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/

Due to the utter and complete failure of the Federal Trade Commission to curb SPAM after being chosen to enforce the CAN SPAM Act the FTC has determined it needs help. The FTC therefore put forth initiatives to work with other nations in international cooperation. Originally this made sense, but upon further review it appears to me to be just another FTC scam in my opinion to spend taxpayer’s money so FTC employees can jet set around the world visiting other nations.

In a recent report to the United States Congress the FTC attempted to justify the international efforts even though SPAM had increased under their watch by stating that:

“Spammers, spyware operators, fraudulent telemarketers, and other scam artists know no national boundaries, and can strike quickly on a global scale. As a result, the FTC has implemented a comprehensive program to combat cross-border consumer protection law violations. This includes a recently released report on proposed legislation to improve the FTC’s ability to combat cross- border consumer protection law violations. In October 2004 the FTC announced the "London Action Plan on International Spam Enforcement Cooperation " endorsed by 26 agencies from 20 countries and seven private sector organizations from four continents. The FTC continues to develop new bilateral and multilateral enforcement partnerships and to strengthen existing ones. In January 2005, the FTC announced that it had entered into a new consumer protection enforcement memorandum of understanding with its counterpart consumer protection agency in Mexico. The FTC also continues to work closely with Canadian agencies on cross-border telemarketing issues. The FTC’s goal is to ensure that consumer protection rules outside the United States focus on practices that distort consumer choice and raise a serious threat to the proper functioning of markets.”

Sounds great right? Indeed, yet when I reviewed this I noticed that homosexual employees at the FTC who might have HIV AIDS were traveling on these enforcement missions on the taxpayer’s dollar, yet I found few if any Spammers who were actually prosecuted or spyware operators who were stopped. Yes, to their credit there were a few, but in reality, SPAM continues to increase in my inbox. How about yours? My question in this personal opinion article is this; Is the Federal Trade Commission doing anything at all where we have empirical proof and results that they are in fact preventing fraud, SPAM or Spyware on the Internet? Show me the results; talk is cheap. Consider this in 2006.

"Lance Winslow" - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; http://www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/

Today I met a client for lunch. He runs a ticketing agency in Vienna and complained about confirmation emails not getting through to customers with an AOL or Yahoo email account.

In an article he recently stumbled upon, it referes to: "AOL and Yahoo are planning to begin charging what amounts to postage for those sending multiple email messages to their subscribers." Although they’re positioning it as an anti-spam measure, it will have the effect of hampering the distribution of free information by small and non-profit publishers.

It goes on to say: "It’s not only mass emailings that would be affected by the system. Order confirmations…that send large amounts of email would be treated as trash under the new system unless the fee was paid."

They use the future tense, whereas my client says that customers are now either complaining about not getting confirmation messages or turning up in Vienna without knowing where to collect them from, thus making his business look inefficient.

Another client recently complained that emails to partners in his weekly lottery are never received now if the email is sent from his commercial account to AOL.

It would be polite, if nothing else, if these two corporations would at least inform businesses about their dodgy business tactics which are already in operation.

What this means is that the quasi-rich guy can send a free email to another quasi-rich guy, but if he wants to communicate with a quasi-poor guy, he has to pay for it. Logical!

My client said that if he posted a letter he would have to pay the post office for its services and hence he didn’t mind paying a fraction of that online. But snail mail doesn’t have corporate advertising on it for one thing and at least he is asked to pay for the stamp, rather than the mail not being sent, which is what is happening with AOL in particluar.

Many publishers and organisations that send large amounts of legitimate email might now urge their readers to switch to Google or Microsoft email or other services that don’t levy a fee on senders. Or we can all set up AOL and Yahoo accounts and send commercial mail from those accounts.

This is possibly one of the most stupid online business plans that has ever been ill-thought-out. Does this means that, for example, a ticketing agency will have to scan their database and inform AOL and Yahoo that they plan to send a confirmation letter to a customer, micro-pay a quarter of a cent to both, before they do the mail-out?

Media Director of V9 Design & Build (http://www.v9designbuild.com), providing both local and outsourcing web and SEO services: we provide both brochureware and custom-designed websites, with tasteful design and branding, professional design and build, proven and successful SEO and e-marketing, e-commerce-driven database integration and content management systems.

Everyone who uses the internet has more than likely been targets of spam at one time or another. At first they are easy to dismiss for internet experienced persons, however for the inexperienced user of the internet, the messages contained can sometimes be intimidating and in some instances lead to trouble (I will come onto a personal example later).

Spam can take several forms; email and search engine spam are just two, but the one we will concentrate on in this article, and also the one you will, and have most likely encountered, is via email.

Spam is defined as unsolicited bulk mail, much of which is caught in your “bulk” or “trash” folder found in your email service provider control panel. You have probably often seen a mass of these types of emails in you bulk folders when checking for email that you actually have consented to receive, as many emails are caught by spam filters even though they should not. The majority of spam you may receive will be of a sexual or gambling nature, however over the past few months I have noticed an ever-increasing number of scam emails asking for sensitive information, claiming to be someone they are not.

Paypal and eBay scams are a prime example of these types of emails known as “phishing scam emails”. The email will be along the lines of:

“We have noticed an irregularity in your account details and require you to update them immediately. Failure to do so will result in the permanent closure of your account”

You can see how these emails can be pretty alarming to an inexperienced internet user who may only occasionally use the internet to sell or buy items on eBay for example. Some of the emails will look very convincing, and will use the images and symbols of the respective company, however be very cautious and take heed to the following important point:

If you are unsure of the legitimacy of the email, do not follow any link contained within the email to an external website. Instead, type the website address that you know is correct into your browser directly, so that you are safe in the knowledge that you are not using a fraudulent website.

Failure to do this may result in your account being hijacked by the scammer; it’s as easy as this. You follow the link in the email to a website claiming to be, and also looking very much like one where you have an account. The website will ask you to input your username and password to access your account and voila, you will have now sent this information to the scammer, allowing them access to your account containing sensitive information about you.

Another type of email scam that has been very popular is where you are notified to be the very lucky winner of a lottery, even though you have never entered the lottery in the location claiming your success! This is where the example of a personal experience comes in. Many people reading this will be thinking “I’ll never fall for one of these scams”, however the unfortunate reality is that many people will do so. An elderly relative of mine received one of these lottery scams from Spain, and then insisted on following up with the email scam, even though they had never even entered the lottery draw. The only stumbling block was that the bank account details required, needed to be sent by fax, which she couldn’t do, and despite the frustration that this caused I of course refused to help send it.

There are measures that you can take to help avoid being targeted by spammers; a few have been mentioned here. However, in addition never reply to a scam email as it will notify them that the email address is live and also that you have read the email, leading to further spam.

Of course there are many other threats from spam that are not discussed here, such as viruses and trojans being sent via email attachments.

Justin Brown owns and runs http://www.spam-blocker-online.com where visitors can find spam blocker information and purchase anti spam software and books. He also runs an automotive site where you can sell or buy any used cars online.

In their residential laboratories they cook industrial amounts of spam following special spam recipes and use these dangerous weapons to waste your days and living powers!

Meet it face to face: spam - unsolicited, unwanted, mass broadcast of advertisements to newsgroups and email addresses. Often used by con artists, crooks and pornographers. Steals bandwidth and clogs email boxes… convincing enough.

Their army grows day by day and soon you can easily observe a continuously increasing amount of junk mail which shows up in your email box or on your favorite news group. They are specialists in cosmic intrusions and their single concern is to get your attention a-la Machiavelli: every way fits to serve the “glorious” purpose! They hunt your precious attention ignoring all ethical rules of advertising, abusing your email and clogging your channels of stellar communication.

This kind of war is apt to raise envy of the Star Trek producers as the number of victims is larger by far: the recipients and the entire Internet commerce are irreversibly affected.

It would be fair enough to surf safely the web and enjoy its usefulness. But unfortunately safety means caution, thus you cannot freely join Internet mailing lists or Usenet groups and sometimes you might consider surfing the web anonymously. Sounds more like hiding instead of fighting…

Until you reach the information you need, you will be kindly informed about the last sensational pornographic achievement of the world known actress (really world known; as spam makes it possible), about the latest discovery in the household tools field and the lowest prices for airplane tickets of the magnificent South African airline company. This is how your life gets fulfilled with an endless flow of world events and your winter nights do not seems so empty anymore!

Whatsoever, those who not enjoy this certain kind of “entertainment” form coalitions and build a strong resistance against the impertinent intrusions of “the Others”. Not all of them are computer experts but everybody needs the Internet space and its unlimited resources. They are not powerless as long as they get help from the military center of software creators ready to serve peaceful folks in their needs for productive communication. Now serious! The simplest way to fight against the junk mail is applying for software specialized in filtering your mail and detecting the spam automatically. Such programs are able to make you partially or entirely free from “marvelous” but useless data by isolating junk mail sent to your mail box. Your freedom and productiveness depends on the powerfulness of the program you choose. So, stop victimizing and get equipped!

And if you aren’t really that good in the specific computer matters, you might try Spam Monitor 2.5, a program designed especially for you, dear non expert. Besides all, with it you’ve got the power!

Ted Peterson writes for Core Download, a software archive with over 30.000 software titles to download like Spam Monitor, PC Tools Antivirus and Spyware Doctor.

Well what happen to the War in Spam, it has been two years and the Federal Trade Commission is over budget, asking the United States Congress for more and still no end in site to all this SPAM. The casualties in the War in SPAM may soon reach some 2500% increase since it started. And there are now Spammer insurgents from neighboring nation states supporting these folks.

And You have got junk mail still! But I thought I read countless Public Relations pieces and press releases of how the FTC was going to get tough and CAN SPAM, but that was an embellishment, as there were no weapons of mass attack to beat these spammers. Now the taxpayer is footing the bill for this war. When we could be using this money to rebuild our Hurricane stricken consumers. This whole thing was not about SPAM it was about revenge to take out the evil doers of the Internet and pump monies into the war budget of the FTC.

Why can’t we trust our leadership to give us the straight goods on the War in SPAM? There is something dastardly conspiratorial in this whole thing and it seems the taxpayer is the one at risk from these International Spammers and we are paying double due to the inability for the FTC to execute the War in SPAM.

"Lance Winslow" - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; http://www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/

In the past few years we have seen new legislation against SPAM, fax marketing and telemarketing. The franchisor must ensure that the integrity of the franchise system, the image and the standing in the community, as well as the brand-name are protected. This is why these new forms of marketing must be prohibited and outlined as such in the confidential operations manual.

Indeed, in our franchise company by developed a few clauses to address these new issues so as to prevent our franchisees from inadvertently breaking the law and or causing a problem for our franchise team;

3.16.2

You may not use unsolicited telephone or out-going telemarketing sales campaigns in the operation of your franchised business.

3.16.3

Any more than fifty (50) electronic mailings of an unsolicited nature per week are prohibited unless approved by Franchisor.

3.16.4 Blast Fax

Any more than one hundred (100) faxes of an unsolicited nature per week are prohibited unless approved by Franchisor.

— — — — —

Although these may be new clauses in most franchise agreements, you should still ask your franchise attorney if it makes sense for your company to include such in your franchise agreements. Every franchisor should consider this can be thinking here to comply with law. Think on this in 2006.

"Lance Winslow" - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; http://www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/

The most prolific and path breaking innovation of last century had been the developments in the communication field. It literally changed the business working, product marketing, support services and most importantly, the advertisement campaigns.

But just like all goods things comes with a price, so was the communication. It brought in the problems of Spam Emails. Automated mailers with mass mailing capabilities, growing marketing dependencies on this tool have seen the large losses in terms of time and money.

There have been many ways of targeting spam mails like blacklisted domains, banned IPs, words in subject and many more. The spammers have always found out a way to change their identity. But here is the catch. The spammers are being paid to send the message. They can change their Domains, IPs, subject lines, but how much they can play with the contents? And that’s where content based filtering comes into focus. Now we can understand that by targeting and focusing on message body, there is a better chance of filtering spam emails.

Apart from the usual spam emails, the new menace has been created by the "phishing emails" targeting primarily eBay and PayPal accounts. These emails come as a "Last Warning", "Attention Required", "Password Change Required" or "Your account is suspended" among many more. These mails appear to have come from eBay or PayPal and provide a link to their own page.

These pages are designed just like the original pages and the unsuspecting user ends up providing his/her sensitive information like username/password or Credit Card Information to these duplicate pages. Here I would like to add one piece of advice to all users that you should always see where the link is taking you by seeing the tool tip and then if sure, follow the link.

The role of content in marking the mail spam or not spam has been achieved using the Bayesian filter. Together with the Black List of spammers and White list of trusted emails ids, is the best technique to counter the spam. The most interesting fact is that Spam Filter with Bayesian algorithm is a self learning filter. The more you use, the more secure you shall be within a matter of few days.

The spam filter integrate easily with popular emails clients such MS outlook and Outlook Express. With due course, up to 98% of the spam mails can be stopped from entering your Inbox. The Spam Filter for Outlook Express and Spam Filter for Microsoft Outlook, with the features of White List/Black List and properly used Bayesian Algorithm will help prevent spam mails, phishing mails and fraud mails from bothering you further.

There has been a considerable increase in the spam mails containing Non English Characters also. The Bayesian Algorithm based Spam Filter also must have the capability to parse non English characters and mark as spam mail.

To get rid of continuous spam mails, phishing mails, fraud mails and Non-English mails, you might like to try Official Spam Filter for Outlook Express 1.2 and Official Spam Filter for Microsoft Outlook 1.2. Official Spam Filter has the capability to seamlessly integrate with MS Outlook and Outlook Express.

For more information, visit http://www.officialspamfilter.com/spam_filter_features.htm

Author is the Admin of Official Spam Filter where you can find software to fight Spam, integrating with MS Outlook and Outlook Express.

Providing security against email related threats has become a burden for most IT professionals in 2006. According to a recent study by Postini, spam and email viruses now make up to 80% of all emails sent out as compared to 50% in 2000. As a result, IT professionals now face a tougher challenge in providing network security for this amount of spam. IT professionals also have the disadvantage of defending against new forms of email threats such as spam zombies, directory harvest attacks, mass mailing trojans, as well as the latest email virus.

In this article, I have listed the seven most effective spam fighting tips for organizations with in-house mail servers. These seven tips are proven techniques I have used for my customers, partners and associates who wish to tighten their perimeter (network) security.

1. Firewall:

A firewall is your first line of defense against hackers, crackers, and spammers. Without a firewall, your network is a disaster waiting to happen and could give any novice hacker free reign over your network. If your organization has multiple Internet users, this tool is essential for securing your network.

2. Block Port 25:

On your firewall, allow outbound traffic on TCP port 25 for all mail servers. Block traffic on outbound TCP port 25 for all other computers and servers. On the Internet, TCP port 25 is used for email traffic through SMTP (Simple Mail Transport Protocol). Blocking this port is a good security practice and prevents mass mailing worms and spam zombies from sending mail from your users’ computers.

3. Managed Email Filtering:

Consider using a managed filtering solution such as Postini, Brightmail, or SpamSoap. Managed Email Filtering services quarantine spam, viruses, and email threats before reaching the email servers on your network. In comparison to desktop filters and server appliances, managed filtering services provide superior perimeter (network) protection by preventing delivery of spam and viruses to your network and servers.

4. Check Relay Setting:

A mail server’s relay setting controls which computers and servers are able to send SMTP email on your organization’s behalf. Check your settings and limit the IP address range to email users on your local network. Some mail servers have settings to limit email relay through authentication. If authentication-based relay is available, setup and configure it too. NOTE: If the relay is not set properly, spammers will be able to send email from your mail server. This exploit is commonly known as an “Open Relay” or a “Spam Relay.” Use the Open Relay test at http://www.abuse.net/relay.htm to check if spammers can relay mail from your server.

5. Black Lists:

Setup your mail server(s) with a black list. A black list (black hole list) is a database or listing of known spam sources. Most modern email servers can be configured to query inbound email against online blacklists. Messages originating from these sources can then be blocked. I recommend configuring your email server with SpamHaus blacklist. Spamhaus.org is an excellent free service to use. Some other good blacklists are DBSL and SpamCop.

6. Reverse DNS:

Reverse DNS (rDNS) associates an IP Address with a Domain Name. Most mail servers, as an anti-spam feature, often use a reverse DNS lookup to compare an email address domain name with its IP address. If the IP address found from the rDNS lookup does not match the domain name, it is probably spam. If you haven’t done so, setup and configure reverse DNS records on your DNS server.

7. Anti-Virus Scan:

There are many tools that provide adequate anti-virus protection for desktops at the workplace. Most anti-virus software is good at detecting viral threats that proliferate email spam such as mass mailing worms, trojans, and directory harvesters. Large organizations might want to use enterprise anti-spam software with management and monitoring tools that will allow tracking of network virus outbreaks.

Recommended Links:

- http://www.spam-x.com [Postini service – managed filtering, 1 to 500 users]

- http://www.postini.com [Postini service – managed filtering, 500+ users]

- http://www.spamhaus.org [Blacklist]

- http://www.dbsl.org [Blacklist]

- http://www.spamcop.net [Blacklist]

- http://www.abuse.net/relay.htm [Open relay test]

- http://www.dnsreport.com [DNS report/open relay test]

- http://www.dnsstuff.com [Spam database lookup and open relay test]

- http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/ptech/02/17/spam.zombies.ap [Spam Zombie Article]

Email viruses and related threats delivered through spam have cost businesses billions of dollars in expenses and lost productivity. Each spam email sent or received from your domain costs your organization money and bandwidth. By implementing these seven tips, your organization can reduce spam and recover costs.

This article: © Copyright 2006 Todd Green and free for republishing.

About the author: Todd Green is a partner of a Memphis-based IT consulting firm. He has over fourteen years’ experience in the field of Information Technology and has managed security on many corporate networks over the years. He is the owner of SPAM-X, a Postini reseller (http://www.spam-x.com) and a partner for Postini’s preemptive spam and virus filtering service.