Stinkysteve
07-08-2004, 08:21 AM
Story Here:
http://www.internetweek.com/security02/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=22103880
U.S., U.K., Australia Forge Spam-Fighting Pact
By TechWeb News
The U.S., the U.K., and Australia have linked arms across the seas to more effectively combat spam, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced Friday.
By a vote of 5-0, the FTC on Friday voted to sign a memorandum of understanding with five other agencies in the U.K. and Australia to share information, exchange evidence, track spammers, and bring cross-border junk mailers to justice.
"Illegal spam does not respect national boundaries," said Timothy Muris, chairman of the FTC, in a statement. "This agreement is an important next step to help law enforcers leverage resources to combat illegal spam."
The memorandum also promotes an October confab in London where authorities from around the world will meet to discuss anti-spam enforcement efforts.
In addition to the FTC, the agencies that have signed the memorandum include the U.K. Office of Fair Trading, the U.K. Information Commissioner, Her Majesty's Secretary of State for Trade and Industry in the U.K., the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, and the Australian Communications Authority.
"It's not going to solve spam overnight but it reinforces our determination to tackle [spam]," said Stephen Timms, the U.K.'s communications minister, in an accompanying statement.
on a related note...
Story here:
http://internetweek.com/allStories/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=22103062
U.S. Sends Most Spam, China Hosts Most Spammer Sites
By TechWeb News
Driving home the point that spam is a global problem first-half 2004 stats released Wednesday finger the United States as the dominant origin of junk mail, but claim China is the overwhelming choice as the host for Web sites that spammers want users to jump to.
About 56 of all spam messages originate in the United States, said Israeli-based Commtouch, an anti-spam software vendor. The next in line on the list, South Korea, accounts for a puny 10 percent.
China, meanwhile, is the home of the majority of Web sites referenced in junk messages. Most spam includes a URL to a site, and most of those URLs point to China, said Commtouch. About 74 percent of such spam-embedded URLs are hosted in China, with South Korea and the U.S. lagging far behind at 11 and 9 percent, respectively.
Drugs remained the top product pitched by mass mailers, and the erectile dysfunction drug Viagra accounted for about one in six spams overall.
Some categories actually declined, including porn and online gambling messages, which fell to just 3.1 and 0.45 percent of all junk mail, said Commtouch.
Like every other anti-spam vendor and messaging analyst, Commtouch also noted an increase in spam over the first six months of 2004. The number of unique spam campaigns -- not the number of messages, but the unique "outbreaks" -- jumped by 43 percent from January to June.
The only sunny note in Commtouch's research -- derived from the hundreds of millions of spam messages it intercepted -- was an up tick in the percentage of messages that comply with the U.S. federal CAN-SPAM Act, which became law in January.
According to Commtouch, 9.8 percent of all spam in June met the CAN-SPAM requirements of including a functioning return address and a postal address, as well as a non-deceptive subject line, a way to opt out of the list, and clear identification that the message is an advertisement. That rate is up from 9.5 percent in May; in January, just 1 percent of mail toed the CAN-SPAM line.
But even in the bright spot, there's a cloud, said Avner Amram, a Commtouch vice president.
"[While] the first six months of 2004 saw the increase of CAN-SPAM compliant e-mail, there was [also] an increase in the sophistication of spamming methods and tricks in spam email," Amram said in a statement. "Spammers use a higher level of randomization, both visible and invisible in their e-mail."
About one in five spam messages plant random characters in the subject line, the message body, or both, said Amram, a ploy that attempts to fool anti-spam filters. And 8 percent includes some sort of personalization -- such as the user's name or e-mail address -- in the subject or message, another tactic employed to sidestep filters.
Commtouch's numbers are significantly higher than other recent surveys. According to rival message filtering firm MXlogic, for instance, CAN-SPAM compliance has stabilized at just three percent.
http://www.internetweek.com/security02/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=22103880
U.S., U.K., Australia Forge Spam-Fighting Pact
By TechWeb News
The U.S., the U.K., and Australia have linked arms across the seas to more effectively combat spam, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced Friday.
By a vote of 5-0, the FTC on Friday voted to sign a memorandum of understanding with five other agencies in the U.K. and Australia to share information, exchange evidence, track spammers, and bring cross-border junk mailers to justice.
"Illegal spam does not respect national boundaries," said Timothy Muris, chairman of the FTC, in a statement. "This agreement is an important next step to help law enforcers leverage resources to combat illegal spam."
The memorandum also promotes an October confab in London where authorities from around the world will meet to discuss anti-spam enforcement efforts.
In addition to the FTC, the agencies that have signed the memorandum include the U.K. Office of Fair Trading, the U.K. Information Commissioner, Her Majesty's Secretary of State for Trade and Industry in the U.K., the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, and the Australian Communications Authority.
"It's not going to solve spam overnight but it reinforces our determination to tackle [spam]," said Stephen Timms, the U.K.'s communications minister, in an accompanying statement.
on a related note...
Story here:
http://internetweek.com/allStories/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=22103062
U.S. Sends Most Spam, China Hosts Most Spammer Sites
By TechWeb News
Driving home the point that spam is a global problem first-half 2004 stats released Wednesday finger the United States as the dominant origin of junk mail, but claim China is the overwhelming choice as the host for Web sites that spammers want users to jump to.
About 56 of all spam messages originate in the United States, said Israeli-based Commtouch, an anti-spam software vendor. The next in line on the list, South Korea, accounts for a puny 10 percent.
China, meanwhile, is the home of the majority of Web sites referenced in junk messages. Most spam includes a URL to a site, and most of those URLs point to China, said Commtouch. About 74 percent of such spam-embedded URLs are hosted in China, with South Korea and the U.S. lagging far behind at 11 and 9 percent, respectively.
Drugs remained the top product pitched by mass mailers, and the erectile dysfunction drug Viagra accounted for about one in six spams overall.
Some categories actually declined, including porn and online gambling messages, which fell to just 3.1 and 0.45 percent of all junk mail, said Commtouch.
Like every other anti-spam vendor and messaging analyst, Commtouch also noted an increase in spam over the first six months of 2004. The number of unique spam campaigns -- not the number of messages, but the unique "outbreaks" -- jumped by 43 percent from January to June.
The only sunny note in Commtouch's research -- derived from the hundreds of millions of spam messages it intercepted -- was an up tick in the percentage of messages that comply with the U.S. federal CAN-SPAM Act, which became law in January.
According to Commtouch, 9.8 percent of all spam in June met the CAN-SPAM requirements of including a functioning return address and a postal address, as well as a non-deceptive subject line, a way to opt out of the list, and clear identification that the message is an advertisement. That rate is up from 9.5 percent in May; in January, just 1 percent of mail toed the CAN-SPAM line.
But even in the bright spot, there's a cloud, said Avner Amram, a Commtouch vice president.
"[While] the first six months of 2004 saw the increase of CAN-SPAM compliant e-mail, there was [also] an increase in the sophistication of spamming methods and tricks in spam email," Amram said in a statement. "Spammers use a higher level of randomization, both visible and invisible in their e-mail."
About one in five spam messages plant random characters in the subject line, the message body, or both, said Amram, a ploy that attempts to fool anti-spam filters. And 8 percent includes some sort of personalization -- such as the user's name or e-mail address -- in the subject or message, another tactic employed to sidestep filters.
Commtouch's numbers are significantly higher than other recent surveys. According to rival message filtering firm MXlogic, for instance, CAN-SPAM compliance has stabilized at just three percent.