E-mail spam, also known as "bulk e-mail" or "junk e-mail," is a subset of spam that involves nearly identical messages sent to numerous recipients by e-mail. Spamming is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to indiscriminately send unsolicited bulk messages Electronic mail, often abbreviated to e-mail, email, or originally eMail, is a Store-and-forward method of writing sending receiving A common synonym for spam is unsolicited bulk e-mail (UBE). Definitions of spam usually include the aspects that email is unsolicited and sent in bulk. ^{[1][2][3][4][5]} "UCE" refers specifically to "unsolicited commercial e-mail. "

E-mail spam slowly but exponentially grew for several decades to several billion messages a day. Spam has frustrated, confused, and annoyed e-mail users. Laws against spam have been sporadically implemented, with some being opt-out and others requiring opt in e-mail. The term opt-out refers to several methods by which individuals can avoid receiving unsolicited product or service information Opt in e-mail is a term used when someone is given the option to receive "bulk" e-mail that is e-mail that is sent to many people at the same time The total volume of spam (over 100 billion emails per day as of April 2008) has leveled off slightly in recent years, and is no longer growing exponentially. International holidays and other major events April 1 - April Fools' Day April 4 - Qingming Festival (Mainland The amount received by most e-mail users has decreased, mostly because of better filtering. Email filtering is the processing of E-mail to organize it according to specified criteria About 80% of all spam is sent by fewer than 200 spammers. Botnets, networks of virus-infected computers, are used to send about 80% of spam. Botnet is a Jargon term for a collection of Software robots or bots that run autonomously and automatically A computer virus is a Computer program that can copy itself and infect a computer without permission or knowledge of the user The cost of spam is borne mostly by the recipient, so it is a form of postage due advertising. Postage due is the term used for Mail sent with insufficient postage

E-mail addresses are collected from chatrooms, websites, newsgroups, and viruses which harvest users' address books, and are sold to other spammers. Much of spam is sent to invalid e-mail addresses. ISPs have attempted to recover the cost of spam through lawsuits against spammers, although they have been mostly unsuccessful in collecting damages despite winning in court. An Internet service provider ( ISP, also called Internet access provider or IAP) is a company which primarily offers their customers access to the Internet ^[6][7]

Contents 1 Overview 2 Types of spam 2.1 Spamvertised sites 2.2 Most common products advertised 2.3 419 scams 2.4 Phishing 2.5 Mainsleaze 3 Legality 4 Deception and fraud 5 Theft of service 6 Statistics and estimates 6.1 The growth of e-mail spam 6.1.1 In absolute numbers 6.1.2 As a percentage of the total volume of e-mail 6.1.3 Highest amount of spam received 6.2 Cost of spam 6.3 Origin of spam 6.4 Spam in culture 7 Anti-spam techniques 8 How bulk emailers operate 8.1 Gathering of addresses 8.2 Delivering spam messages 8.2.1 Using Webmail services 8.2.2 Using other people's computers 8.2.2.1 Open relays 8.2.2.2 Open proxies 8.2.2.3 Spammer viruses 8.3 Obfuscating message content 8.4 Spam-support services 9 Related vocabulary 10 In the news 10.1 2004 10.2 2005 10.3 2006 10.4 2007 11 Image spam 12 Blank spam 13 See also 14 References 15 External links

Overview

From the beginning of the Internet, sending of junk e-mail has been prohibited,^[8] enforced by the Terms of Service/Acceptable Use Policy (ToS/AUP) of internet service providers (ISPs) and peer pressure. Terms of service (often abbreviated as "ToS" are rules by which one must agree to abide by in order to use a service. An acceptable use policy ( AUP; also sometimes acceptable usage policy) is a set of rules applied by network and website owners Even with a thousand users junk e-mail for advertising is not tenable, and with a million users it is not only impractical^[9] but also expensive, costing businesses in the order of $100 billion in 2007. ^[10] As the scale of the spam problem has grown, ISPs and the public have turned to government for relief from spam, which has failed to materialize. ^[11]

Types of spam

Spam has several definitions, varying by the source.

• Unsolicited bulk e-mail (UBE)—unsolicited e-mail, sent in large quantities.
• Unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE)—this more restrictive definition is used by regulators whose mandate is to regulate commerce, such as the U. S. Federal Trade Commission. The Federal Trade Commission ( FTC) is an independent agency of the United States government, established in 1914 by the Federal Trade Commission Act
• Any email message that is fraudulent.
• Any email message where the sender’s identity is forged, or messages sent though unprotected SMTP servers, unauthorized proxies, or botnets (see Theft of service below). E-mail spam, also known as "bulk e-mail" or "junk e-mail" is a subset of spam that involves nearly identical messages sent to numerous recipients by

Spamvertised sites

Many spam e-mails contain URLs to a website or websites. According to a Commtouch report in June 2004, "only five countries are hosting 99. 68% of the global spammer websites", of which the foremost is China, hosting 73. 58% of all web sites referred to within spam. ^[12]

Most common products advertised

According to information compiled by Spam-Filter-Review. com, E-mail spam for 2006 can be broken down as follows. ^[13]

E-Mail Spam by Category
Products	25%
Financial	20%
Adult	19%
Scams	9%
Health	7%
Internet	7%
Leisure	6%
Spiritual	4%
Other	3%

419 scams

Main article: Advance fee fraud

Advance fee fraud spam such as the Nigerian "419" scam may be sent by a single individual from a cyber cafe in a developing country. An advance-fee fraud is a Confidence trick in which the target is persuaded to advance sums of money in the hope of realizing a very much larger gain Organized "spam gangs" operating from Russia or eastern Europe share many features in common with other forms of organized crime, including turf battles and revenge killings. ^[14] As much as 80% of spam received by Internet users in North America and Europe can be traced to fewer than 200 spammers. ^[15]

Phishing

Main article: Phishing

Spam is also a medium for fraudsters to scam users to enter personal information on fake Web sites using e-mail forged to look like it is from a bank or other organization such as PayPal. In the field of computer security phishing is the Criminally Fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames Passwords PayPal is an E-commerce business allowing payments and Money transfers to be made through the Internet. This is known as phishing.

Mainsleaze

Spam sent by well-known companies is sometimes called mainsleaze. ^[16] A widely-known instance of spamming by a large corporation was Kraft Foods' marketing of its Gevalia coffee brand. Kraft Foods Inc ( is the second-largest Food and Beverage company headquartered in North America (behind PepsiCo) and the third Gevalia, a wholly owned subsidiary of Kraft Foods, is the largest Coffee roastery in Scandinavia. ^[17] Another more recent offender was the company iDate, which used e-mail harvesting directed at subscribers to the Quechup website to spam their friends and contacts. Quechup is a Social networking website that came to prominence in 2007 when it used automatic spamming of invitations to the entire list of e-mail addresses in the ^[18]

Mainsleaze is all but non-existent, as few well-known companies wish to be associated with spam.

Legality

Sending spam violates the Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) of almost all Internet Service Providers. An acceptable use policy ( AUP; also sometimes acceptable usage policy) is a set of rules applied by network and website owners An Internet service provider ( ISP, also called Internet access provider or IAP) is a company which primarily offers their customers access to the Internet Providers vary in their willingness or ability to enforce their AUP. Some actively enforce their terms and terminate spammers' accounts without warning. Some ISPs lack adequate personnel or technical skills for enforcement, while others may be reluctant to enforce restrictive terms against profitable customers.

As the recipient directly bears the cost of delivery, storage, and processing, one could regard spam as the electronic equivalent of "postage-due" junk mail. Due to the low cost of sending unsolicited e-mail and the potential profit entailed, some believe that only strict legal enforcement can stop junk e-mail. The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE) argues "Today, much of the spam volume is sent by career criminals and malicious hackers who won't stop until they're all rounded up and put in jail. "^[19]

In the United States, most states enacted anti-spam laws, which have since been pre-empted by the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. This article is about the relationship of federal law to state law in the United States The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 ( 15 USC 7701 et seq Public Law No 108-187 was S

Spam is legally permissible according to the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 provided it follows certain criteria: a truthful subject line; no false information in the technical headers or sender address; "conspicuous" display of the postal address of the sender; and other minor requirements. The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 ( 15 USC 7701 et seq Public Law No 108-187 was S If the spam fails to comply with any of these requirements, then it is illegal. Aggravated or accelerated penalties apply if the spammer harvested the email addresses using methods described earlier.

A review of the effectiveness of CAN-SPAM in 2005 showed that the amount of sexually explicit spam had significantly decreased since 2003 and the total volume had begun to level off. ^[20] Senator Conrad Burns, a principle sponsor, noted that "Enforcement is key regarding the CAN-SPAM legislation. " In 2004 less than 1% of spam complied with the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. ^[21]

Several countries have passed laws that specifically target spam, notably Australia and all the countries of the European Union. For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Australia topics. The European Union ( EU) is a political and economic union of twenty-seven member states, located primarily in

Article 13 of the European Union Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications (2002/58/EC) provides that the EU member states shall take appropriate measures to ensure that unsolicited communications for the purposes of direct marketing are not allowed either without the consent of the subscribers concerned or in respect of subscribers who do not wish to receive these communications, the choice between these options to be determined by national legislation. The European Union ( EU) is a political and economic union of twenty-seven member states, located primarily in Directive 2002/58 on Privacy and Electronic Communications otherwise known as E-Privacy Directive, is an EU directive on data protection and privacy in the digital age The European Union ( EU) is a political and economic union of twenty-seven member states, located primarily in

In Australia, the relevant legislation is the Spam Act 2003 which covers some types of e-mail and phone spam, which took effect on 11 April 2004. For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Australia topics. Outline The key points of the act provide that Unsolicited commercial electronic messages must not be sent unless it is a designated commercial electronic message The Spam Act provides that "Unsolicited commercial electronic messages must not be sent," which is an opt-in requirement. This contrasts with the U. S. CAN-SPAM act, which is opt-out (i. e. , companies are free to send spam until the recipient directs the sender not to). Penalties are up to 10,000 penalty units, or 2,000 penalty units for a person other than a body corporate. Breaches of statute law in Australia are usually prescribed in terms of penalty units or PU s

Legislative efforts to curb spam have been ineffective or counter-productive. For example, the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 requires that each message include a means to "opt out" (i. e. , decline future e-mail from the same source). It is widely believed that responding to opt-out requests is unwise, as this merely confirms to the spammer that they have reached an active e-mail account. To the extent this is true, the CAN-SPAM Act's opt-out provisions are counter-productive in two ways: first, recipients who are aware of the potential risks of opting out will decline to do so; second, attempts to opt-out will provide spammers with useful information on their targets. A 2002 study by the Center for Democracy and Technology found that about 16% of web sites tested with opt-out requests continued to spam. ^[22]

Accessing privately owned computer resources without the owner's permission counts as illegal under computer crime statutes in most nations. Computer crime, Cybercrime, e-crime, hi-tech crime or electronic crime generally refers to criminal activity where a Computer Deliberate spreading of computer viruses is also illegal in the United States and elsewhere. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the Thus, some common behaviors of spammers are criminal regardless of the legality of spamming per se. Even before the advent of laws specifically banning or regulating spamming, spammers were successfully prosecuted under computer fraud and abuse laws for wrongfully using others' computers.

The use of botnets can be perceived as theft. The spammer consumes a zombie owner's bandwidth and resources without any cost. In addition, spam is perceived as theft of services. The receiving SMTP servers consume significant amounts of system resources dealing with this unwanted traffic. As a result, service providers have to spend large amounts of money to make their systems capable of handling these amounts of email. Such costs are inevitably passed on to the service providers' customers. ^[23]

Other laws, not only those related to spam, have been used to prosecute alleged spammers. For example, Alan Ralsky was indicted on stock fraud charges in January 2008, and Robert Soloway plead guilty to charges of mail fraud, fraud in connection with electronic mail, and failing to file a tax return in March 2008. Alan Ralsky (born c 1945 is an American convicted fraudster most well-known for his activities as a spammer. Robert Alan Soloway is the founder of the so-called "Strategic Partnership Against Microsoft Illegal Spam" or SPAMIS but is said to be one of the Internet's biggest ^[24]

Deception and fraud

Spammers may engage in deliberate fraud to send out their messages. In the broadest sense a fraud is a Deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual Spammers often use false names, addresses, phone numbers, and other contact information to set up "disposable" accounts at various Internet service providers. They also often use falsified or stolen credit card numbers to pay for these accounts. A credit card is part of a system of Payments named after the small Plastic card issued to users of the system This allows them to move quickly from one account to the next as the host ISPs discover and shut down each one.

Senders may go to great lengths to conceal the origin of their messages. Large companies may hire another firm to send their messages so that complaints or blocking of email falls on a third party. Others engage in spoofing of e-mail addresses (much easier than IP address spoofing). In the context of Network security, a spoofing attack is a situation in which one person or program successfully masquerades as another by falsifying data and thereby gaining In Computer networking, the term IP ( Internet Protocol) address spoofing refers to the creation of IP packets with a forged (spoofed source The e-mail protocol (SMTP) has no authentication by default, so the spammer can pretend to originate a message apparently from any e-mail address. Simple Mail Transfer Protocol ( SMTP) is a De facto standard for electronic mail (e-mail transmissions across the Internet. To prevent this, some ISPs and domains require the use of SMTP-AUTH, allowing positive identification of the specific account from which an e-mail originates. SMTP-AUTH is an extension of the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP to include an Authentication step through which the client effectively logs in to the mail

Senders cannot completely spoof e-mail delivery chains (the 'Received' header), since the receiving mailserver records the actual connection from the last mailserver's IP address. To counter this, some spammers forge additional delivery headers to make it appear as if the e-mail had previously traversed many legitimate servers.

Spoofing can have serious consequences for legitimate e-mail users. Not only can their e-mail inboxes get clogged up with "undeliverable" e-mails in addition to volumes of spam, they can mistakenly be identified as a spammer. Not only may they receive irate e-mail from spam victims, but (if spam victims report the e-mail address owner to the ISP, for example) a naive ISP may terminate their service for spamming.

Theft of service

Spammers frequently seek out and make use of vulnerable third-party systems such as open mail relays and open proxy servers. An open mail relay is an SMTP server configured in such a way that it allows anyone on the Internet to send E-mail through it not just mail destined In Computer networks a proxy server is a server (a computer system or an application program which services the requests of its clients by forwarding SMTP forwards mail from one server to another—mail servers that ISPs run commonly require some form of authentication to ensure that the user is a customer of that ISP. Authentication (from Greek αυθεντικός real or genuine from authentes author is the act of establishing or confirming something (or someone as Open relays, however, do not properly check who is using the mail server and pass all mail to the destination address, making it harder to track down spammers.

Increasingly, spammers use networks of malware-infected PCs (zombies) to send their spam. A zombie computer (often shortened as zombie) is a computer attached to the Internet that has been compromised by a hacker, a Computer virus Zombie networks are also known as Botnets (such zombifying malware is known as a bot, short for robot). A zombie computer (often shortened as zombie) is a computer attached to the Internet that has been compromised by a hacker, a Computer virus Botnet is a Jargon term for a collection of Software robots or bots that run autonomously and automatically A robot is a mechanical or Virtual Artificial agent In practice it is usually an electro-mechanical system which by its appearance or movements In June 2006, an estimated 80% of e-mail spam was sent by zombie PCs, an increase of 30% from the prior year. An estimated 55 billion e-mail spam were sent each day in June 2006, an increase of 25 billion per day from June 2005. ^[25]

Statistics and estimates

The growth of e-mail spam

Spam is growing, with no signs of abating. The amount of spam users see in their mailboxes is just the tip of the iceberg, since spammers' lists often contain a large percentage of invalid addresses and many spam filters simply delete or reject "obvious spam".

In absolute numbers

• 1978 - An e-mail spam advertising a DEC product presentation is sent by Gary Thuerk to 600 addresses, though software limitations meant only slightly more than half of the intended recipients actually received it. Gary Thuerk was the world's first spammer. On May 3 1978 Carl Gartley on Thuerk's behalf sent out the first spam over the network of government and university computers ^[26]
• 2005 - (June) 30 billion per day^[25]
• 2006 - (June) 55 billion per day^[25]
• 2007 - (February) 90 billion per day
• 2007 - (June) 100 billion per day^[27]

As a percentage of the total volume of e-mail

MAAWG estimates that 85% of incoming mail is "abusive email", as of the second half of 2007. The Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group started as a group of Internet service providers and Telecommunications companies brought together by OpenWave in The sample size for the MAAWG's study was over 100 million mailboxes. ^[28][29][30]

Spamhaus estimates that 90% of incoming email traffic is spam in North America, Europe or Australasia. The Spamhaus Project is a volunteer effort founded by Steve Linford in 1998 to track E-mail spammers and spam-related activity Australasia is a Region of Oceania: New Zealand, Australia, Papua New Guinea, and neighbouring Islands in the Pacific ^[31]

Highest amount of spam received

According to Steve Ballmer, Microsoft founder Bill Gates receives four million e-mails per year, most of them spam. Steve Anthony Ballmer (born March 24 1956 is an American Businessman. If you would like to experiment with Wikipedia please copy ^[32] (This was originally incorrectly reported as "per day". ^[33])

At the same time Jef Poskanzer, owner of the domain name acme.com, was receiving over one million spam emails per day. Jeffrey A Poskanzer is a computer programmer He was the first person to post a weekly FAQ to Usenet. ^[34]

Cost of spam

A 2004 survey estimated that lost productivity costs Internet users in the United States $21. 58 billion annually, while another reported the cost at $17 billion, up from $11 billion in 2003. The world-wide productivity cost of spam is estimated to be $50 billion. ^[35] On a world-wide basis, the IT cost of dealing with spam was estimated to rise from $20. 5 billion in 2003, to $198 billion by 2007. ^[36] An estimate of the percentage cost borne by the sender of marketing junk mail (snail mail) is 88%, the percent cost borne by the sender of junk e-mail is 0. 01%, with the recipient paying the rest. ^[37]

Origin of spam

Origin or source of spam refers to the geographical location of the computer from which the spam is sent; it is not the country where the spammer resides, nor the country that hosts the spamvertised site. Due to the international nature of spam, the spammer, the hijacked spam-sending computer, the spamvertised server, and the user target of the spam are all often located in different countries.

In terms of volume of spam: According to Sophos, the major sources of spam in the first quarter of 2008 (January to March) were:^{[38][39][40][41][42][43][44]}

• The United States (the origin of 15. Sophos is a developer and vendor of security software and hardware including anti-virus, Anti-spyware, Anti-spam and Network Access Control 4% of spam messages, down from 21. 3% in Q4)
• Russia (7. 4%, down from 8. 3%)
• Turkey (5. 9%, up from 3. 8%)
• China (5. 5%, up from 4. 2%)
• Brazil (4. 3%, up 4. 0%)

When grouped by continents, spam comes mostly from:

• Asia (34. 3%, up from 32. 1%)
• Europe (30. 7%, up from 27. 1%)
• North America (18. 9%, down from 26. 5%)
• South America (14. 2%, up from 12. 5%)

In terms of number of IP addresses: The Spamhaus Project (which measures spam sources in terms of number of IP addresses used for spamming, rather than volume of spam sent) ranks the top three as the United States, China, and Russia,^[45], followed by Japan, Canada, and South Korea. The Spamhaus Project is a volunteer effort founded by Steve Linford in 1998 to track E-mail spammers and spam-related activity

In terms of networks: As of 5 June 2007, the three networks hosting the most spammers are Verizon, AT&T, and VSNL International. "Verizon" redirects here this article is about the corporation see also Verizon Wireless, Verizon Online DSL and Verizon FiOS. Before proposing a merge request please see Talk and see if the merger you propose has recently been made and Tata Communications, formerly known Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited or VSNL, is India 's largest Telecommunication company in international long ^[45] Verizon inherited many of these spam sources from its acquisition of MCI, specifically through the UUNet subsidiary of MCI, which Verizon subsequently renamed Verizon Business. MCI Inc is an American Telecommunications company that is headquartered in Ashburn Virginia. UUNET is one of the largest Internet service providers and one of the nine Tier 1 networks It is based in Northern Virginia and is the first commercial

Spam in culture

The often rambling and incomprehensible nature of spam has led to an underground culture, with video tribute on the Web site You Tube, cartoons based on spam titles (Spamusement!) as well as spam blogs such as My Pet Spam, Delightful Spam and The Spam Hunter Diaries. YouTube is a video sharing website where users can upload view and share Video clips YouTube was created in February 2005 by three former PayPal employees Spamusement! is a Webcomic originally created by Software developer Steven Frank, in which Frank took subject lines from real spam

Anti-spam techniques

Main article: Anti-spam techniques (e-mail)

The U. To prevent E-mail spam, both end users and administrators of e-mail systems use various anti-spam techniques. S. Department of Energy Computer Incident Advisory Capability (CIAC) has provided specific countermeasures against electronic mail spamming. Computer Incident Advisory Capability (CIAC is a service run by the Office of Cyber Security at the Department of Energy. ^[46]

Some popular methods for filtering and refusing spam include e-mail filtering based on the content of the e-mail, DNS-based blackhole lists (DNSBL), greylisting, spamtraps, Enforcing technical requirements of e-mail (SMTP), checksumming systems to detect bulk email, and by putting some sort of cost on the sender via a Proof-of-work system or a micropayment. Email filtering is the processing of E-mail to organize it according to specified criteria A DNS Blacklist, or DNSBL ( definition below) is a means by which an Internet site may publish a list of IP addresses that some people may want to avoid Greylisting (or graylisting) is a method of defending E-mail users against spam. A spamtrap is a honeypot used to collect spam. Spamtraps are usually E-mail addresses that are created not for communication but rather to lure spam Simple Mail Transfer Protocol ( SMTP) is a De facto standard for electronic mail (e-mail transmissions across the Internet. A Proof-of-work ("POW" system (or protocol or function is an economic measure to deter Denial of service attacks and other service abuses such as spams Micropayments are means for transferring very small amounts of money in situations where collecting such small amounts of money with the usual Payment systems is impractical Each method has strengths and weaknesses and each is controversial due to its weaknesses.

How bulk emailers operate

Gathering of addresses

Main article: E-mail address harvesting

In order to send spam, spammers need to obtain the e-mail addresses of the intended recipients. E-mail harvesting is the process of obtaining lists of E-mail addresses using various methods for use in bulk e-mail or other purposes usually grouped as spam To this end, both spammers themselves and list merchants gather huge lists of potential e-mail addresses. Since spam is, by definition, unsolicited, this address harvesting is done without the consent (and sometimes against the expressed will) of the address owners. As a consequence, spammers' address lists are inaccurate. A single spam run may target tens of millions of possible addresses — many of which are invalid, malformed, or undeliverable.

Sometimes, if the sent spam is "bounced" or sent back to the sender by various programs that eliminate spam, or if the recipient clicks on an unsubscribe link, that may cause that email address to be marked as "valid", which is interpreted by the spammer as "send me more".

Delivering spam messages

Internet users and system administrators have deployed a vast array of techniques to block, filter, or otherwise banish spam from users' mailboxes. A system administrator, systems administrator, or sysadmin, is a person employed to maintain and operate a Computer system and/or network. Almost all Internet service providers forbid the use of their services to send spam or to operate spam-support services. An Internet service provider ( ISP, also called Internet access provider or IAP) is a company which primarily offers their customers access to the Internet Both commercial firms and volunteers run subscriber services dedicated to blocking or filtering spam. ^[47]

Using Webmail services

A common practice of spammers is to create accounts on free webmail services, such as Hotmail, to send spam or to receive e-mailed responses from potential customers. Windows Live Hotmail, formerly known as MSN Hotmail and commonly referred to simply as Hotmail, is a free Webmail service of the Windows Live Because of the amount of mail sent by spammers, they require several e-mail accounts, and use web bots to automate the creation of these accounts.

In an effort to cut down on this abuse, many of these services have adopted a system called the captcha: users attempting to create a new account are presented with a graphic of a word, which uses a strange font, on a difficult to read background. A CAPTCHA (ˈkæptʃə is a type of challenge-response test used in Computing to ensure that the response is not generated by a computer Humans are able to read these graphics, and are required to enter the word to complete the application for a new account, while computers are unable to get accurate readings of the words using standard OCR techniques. Optical character recognition, usually abbreviated to OCR, is the Mechanical or electronic translation of Images of handwritten typewritten Blind users of captchas typically get an audio sample.

Spammers have, however, found a means of circumventing this measure. Reportedly, they have set up sites offering free pornography: to get access to the site, a user displays a graphic from one of these webmail sites, and must enter the word. Internet pornography is Pornography that is distributed by means of various sectors of the Internet, primarily via Websites Peer-to-peer Once the bot has successfully created the account, the user gains access to the pornographic material. ^[48] Furthermore, standard image processing techniques work well against many captchas. ^[49]

Using other people's computers

Early on, spammers discovered that if they sent large quantities of spam directly from their ISP accounts, recipients would complain and ISPs would shut their accounts down. Thus, one of the basic techniques of sending spam has become to send it from someone else's computer and network connection. By doing this, spammers protect themselves in several ways: they hide their tracks, get others' systems to do most of the work of delivering messages, and direct the efforts of investigators towards the other systems rather than the spammers themselves. The increasing broadband usage gave rise to a great number of computers that are online as long as they are turned on, and whose owners do not always take steps to protect them from malware. Malware, a Portmanteau word from the words '''mal'''icious and soft'''ware''', is software designed to infiltrate or damage a computer system without A botnet consisting of several hundred compromised machines can effortlessly churn out millions of messages per day. Botnet is a Jargon term for a collection of Software robots or bots that run autonomously and automatically A zombie computer (often shortened as zombie) is a computer attached to the Internet that has been compromised by a hacker, a Computer virus This also complicates the tracing of spammers.

Open relays

In the 1990s, the most common way spammers did this was to use open mail relays. An open mail relay is an SMTP server configured in such a way that it allows anyone on the Internet to send E-mail through it not just mail destined An open relay is an MTA, or mail server, which is configured to pass along messages sent to it from any location, to any recipient. A mail transfer agent (MTA (also called a mail transport agent, message transfer agent, or smtpd (short for SMTP daemon) is a In the original SMTP mail architecture, this was the default behavior: a user could send mail to practically any mail server, which would pass it along towards the intended recipient's mail server. Simple Mail Transfer Protocol ( SMTP) is a De facto standard for electronic mail (e-mail transmissions across the Internet.

The standard was written in an era before spamming when there were few hosts on the internet, and those on the internet abided by a certain level of conduct. While this cooperative, open approach was useful in ensuring that mail was delivered, it was vulnerable to abuse by spammers. Spammers could forward batches of spam through open relays, leaving the job of delivering the messages up to the relays.

In response, mail system administrators concerned about spam began to demand that other mail operators configure MTAs to cease being open relays. The first DNSBLs, such as MAPS RBL and the now-defunct ORBS, aimed chiefly at allowing mail sites to refuse mail from known open relays. A DNS Blacklist, or DNSBL ( definition below) is a means by which an Internet site may publish a list of IP addresses that some people may want to avoid By 2003 less than 1% of corporate mail servers were available as open relays, down from 91% in 1997. ^[50]

Open proxies

Within a few years, open relays became rare and spammers resorted to other tactics, most prominently the use of open proxies. An open proxy is a Proxy server which is accessible by any Internet user A proxy is a network service for making indirect connections to other network services. In Computer networks a proxy server is a server (a computer system or an application program which services the requests of its clients by forwarding The client connects to the proxy and instructs it to connect to a server. The server perceives an incoming connection from the proxy, not the original client. Proxies have many purposes, including Web-page caching, protection of privacy, filtering of Web content, and selectively bypassing firewalls. ^[51]

An open proxy is one which will create connections for any client to any server, without authentication. Like open relays, open proxies were once relatively common, as many administrators did not see a need to restrict access to them.

A spammer can direct an open proxy to connect to a mail server, and send spam through it. The mail server logs a connection from the proxy -- not the spammer's own computer. This provides an even greater degree of concealment for the spammer than an open relay, since most relays log the client address in the headers of messages they pass. Open proxies have also been used to conceal the sources of attacks against other services besides mail, such as Web sites or IRC servers.

Besides relays and proxies, spammers have used other insecure services to send spam. One example is FormMail. pl, a CGI script to allow Web-site users to send e-mail feedback from an HTML form. The Common Gateway Interface ( CGI) is a standard protocol for interfacing external Application software with an information server ^[52] Several versions of this program, and others like it, allowed the user to redirect e-mail to arbitrary addresses. Spam sent through open FormMail scripts is frequently marked by the program's characteristic opening line: "Below is the result of your feedback form. "

As spam from proxies and other "spammable" resources grew, DNSBL operators started listing their IP addresses, as well as open relays.

Spammer viruses

In 2003, spam investigators saw a radical change in the way spammers sent spam. Rather than searching the global network for exploitable services such as open relays and proxies, spammers began creating "services" of their own. By commissioning computer viruses designed to deploy proxies and other spam-sending tools, spammers could harness hundreds of thousands of end-user computers. A computer virus is a Computer program that can copy itself and infect a computer without permission or knowledge of the user The widespread change from Windows 9x to Windows XP for many home computers, which started in early 2002 and was well under way by 2003, greatly accelerated the use of home computers to act as remotely-controlled spam proxies. Windows 9x is the family of Microsoft Windows Operating systems that comprises the hybrid 16/32-bit Windows versions Windows 95, Windows 98 Windows XP is a family of 32-bit and 64-bit Operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on Personal computers including home and The original version of Windows XP as well as XP-SP1 had several major vulnerabilities that allowed the machines to be compromised over a network connection without requiring actions on the part of the user or owner. ^[53] While Windows 2000 had similar vulnerabilities, that operating system was never widely used on home computers. Windows 2000 (also referred to as Win2K) is a preemptive, interruptible graphical and business-oriented Operating system designed to work with

Most of the major Windows e-mail viruses of 2003, including the Sobig and Mimail virus families, functioned as spammer viruses: viruses designed expressly to make infected computers available as spamming tools. Microsoft Windows is a series of Software Operating systems and Graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft. The Sobig Worm was a Computer worm that infected millions of Internet -connected Microsoft Windows computers in August 2003. Mimail is a Computer worm which first emerged in August of 2003; it is transmitted via E-mail. ^[54][55]

Besides sending spam, spammer viruses serve spammers in other ways. Beginning in July 2003, spammers started using some of these same viruses to perpetrate distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks upon DNSBLs and other anti-spam resources. ^[56] Although this was by no means the first time that illegal attacks have been used against anti-spam sites, it was perhaps the first wave of effective attacks.

In August of that year, engineering company Osirusoft ceased providing DNSBL mirrors of the SPEWS and other blocklists, after several days of unceasing attack from virus-infected hosts. The Spam Prevention Early Warning System ( SPEWS) was an anonymous service which maintained a list of IP address ranges belonging to Internet service providers ^[57] The very next month, DNSBL operator Monkeys. com succumbed to the attacks as well. ^[58] Other DNSBL operators, such as Spamhaus, have deployed global mirroring and other anti-DDoS methods to resist these attacks. The Spamhaus Project is a volunteer effort founded by Steve Linford in 1998 to track E-mail spammers and spam-related activity

Zombie networks are particularly active in North America where about half of the Internet users are on a broadband connection and many leave their computers on all the time. A zombie computer (often shortened as zombie) is a computer attached to the Internet that has been compromised by a hacker, a Computer virus Broadband Internet access, often shortened to just Broadband, is high-speed Internet access—typically contrasted with dial-up access over a Modem In January, 2008, 8% of all e-mail spam was sent by the Storm botnet, created by the Storm Worm, first released in January, 2007. The Storm botnet or Storm worm botnet is a remotely-controlled network of "zombie" computers (or " Botnet " that has been linked For information on the botnet composed of machines infected with this worm see Storm botnet. ^[59] It is estimated that as many as 1 million or more computers have been infected and their owners are unwilling and unknowing participants.

Obfuscating message content

Many spam-filtering techniques work by searching for patterns in the headers or bodies of messages. For instance, a user may decide that all e-mail they receive with the word "Viagra" in the subject line is spam, and instruct their mail program to automatically delete all such messages. Sildenafil citrate, sold as Viagra, Revatio and under various other trade names is a drug used to treat Erectile dysfunction (male impotence To defeat such filters, the spammer may intentionally misspell commonly-filtered words or insert other characters, as in the following examples:

• V1agra
• Via'gra
• Vi@graa
• vi*gra

The principle of this method is to leave the word readable to humans (who can easily recognize the intended word for such misspellings), but not likely to be recognized by a literal computer program. This is only somewhat effective, because modern filter patterns have been designed to recognize blacklisted terms in the various iterations of misspelling. Other filters target the actual obfuscation methods; such as the non-standard use of punctuation or numerals into unusual places, for example: within in a word.

(Note: Using most common variations, it is possible to spell "Viagra" in over 1. 3 * 10²¹ ways. ^[60])

HTML-based e-mail gives the spammer more tools to obfuscate text. Inserting HTML comments between letters can foil some filters, as can including text made invisible by setting the font color to white on a white background, or shrinking the font size to the smallest fine print.

Another common ploy involves presenting the text as an image, which is either sent along or loaded from a remote server. This can be foiled by not permitting an e-mail-program to load images.

As Bayesian filtering has become popular as a spam-filtering technique, spammers have started using methods to weaken it. Bayesian spam filtering (pronounced BAYS-ee-ən IPA pronunciation:, after Rev To a rough approximation, Bayesian filters rely on word probabilities. If a message contains many words which are only used in spam, and few which are never used in spam, it is likely to be spam. To weaken Bayesian filters, some spammers, alongside the sales pitch, now include lines of irrelevant, random words, in a technique known as Bayesian poisoning. Bayesian poisoning is a technique used by spammers to attempt to degrade the effectiveness of Spam filters that rely on Bayesian spam filtering. A variant on this tactic may be borrowed from the Usenet abuser known as "Hipcrime" -- to include passages from books taken from Project Gutenberg, or nonsense sentences generated with "dissociated press" algorithms. HipCrime refers both to the Screenname of a Usenet user and software application distributed by and presumably written by this individual Project Gutenberg, abbreviated as PG, is a volunteer effort to Digitize, archive and distribute Cultural works Dissociated press is an Algorithm for generating text based on another text Randomly generated phrases can create spoetry (spam poetry) or spam art. Spoetry or Spoems are poetic verses made primarily from the subject lines of spam e-mail messages

After these nonsense subject lines were recognized as spam, the next trend in spam subjects started: Biblical passages. Etymology According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word bible is from Latin biblia, traced from the same word through Medieval Latin and Late Latin A program much like Mark V Shaney is fed Bible passages and chops them up into segments. Mark V Shaney is a fake Usenet user whose postings were generated by using Markov chain techniques Etymology According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word bible is from Latin biblia, traced from the same word through Medieval Latin and Late Latin The reasoning is that this text, often very different from the writing style of today such as the King James Version, will confuse both humans and spam filters.

However, as many or most Bayesian filtering programs only use the most spam-like and least spam-like words for deciding whether an email is spam or not; injecting extra non-spam related words means that these extra words do not correlate well with spam, and so do not usually affect the result. However, they do decrease the effectiveness slightly, which, for spammers can make a significant percentage difference in the number of users actually seeing their spam.

Another method used to masquerade spam as legitimate messages is the use of autogenerated sender names in the From: field, ranging from realistic ones such as "Jackie F. Bird" to (either by mistake or intentionally) bizarre attention-grabbing names such as "Sloppiest U. Epiglottis" or "Attentively E. Behavioral". Return addresses are also routinely auto-generated, often using unsuspecting domain owners' legitimate domain names, leading some users to blame the innocent domain owners. Blocking lists use ip addresses rather than sender domain names, as these are more accurate. A mail purporting to be from example. com can be seen to be faked by looking for the originating ip address in the mails header, and Sender Policy Framework for example helps by stating that example. In Computing, Sender Policy com will only send email from xx. xx. xx. xx ip.

Spam can also be hidden inside a fake "Undelivered mail notification" which looks like the failure notices sent by a mail transfer agent (a "MAILER-DAEMON") when it encounters an error. Electronic mail, often abbreviated to e-mail, email, or originally eMail, is a Store-and-forward method of writing sending receiving A mail transfer agent (MTA (also called a mail transport agent, message transfer agent, or smtpd (short for SMTP daemon) is a

Spam-support services

A number of other online activities and business practices are considered by anti-spam activists to be connected to spamming. These are sometimes termed spam-support services: business services, other than the actual sending of spam itself, which permit the spammer to continue operating. Spam-support services can include processing orders for goods advertised in spam, hosting Web sites or DNS records referenced in spam messages, or a number of specific services as follows:

Some Internet hosting firms advertise bulk-friendly or bulletproof hosting. The Domain Name System (DNS is a hierarchical naming system for computers services or any resource participating in the Internet. This means that, unlike most ISPs, they will not terminate a customer for spamming. These hosting firms operate as clients of larger ISPs, and many have eventually been taken offline by these larger ISPs as a result of complaints regarding spam activity. Thus, while a firm may advertise bulletproof hosting, it is ultimately unable to deliver without the connivance of its upstream ISP. However, some spammers have managed to get what is called a pink contract (see below) — a contract with the ISP that allows them to spam without being disconnected. A pink contract is an agreement between an email spammer and the spammer's Internet service provider.

A few companies produce spamware, or software designed for spammers. Spamware is Software designed by or for spammers Spamware varies widely but may include the ability to import thousands of addresses to generate random addresses Spamware varies widely, but may include the ability to import thousands of addresses, to generate random addresses, to insert fraudulent headers into messages, to use dozens or hundreds of mail servers simultaneously, and to make use of open relays. The sale of spamware is illegal in eight U. S. states. ^[61][56][62]

So-called millions CDs are commonly advertised in spam. These are CD-ROMs purportedly containing lists of e-mail addresses, for use in sending spam to these addresses. CD-ROM (an initialism of "Compact Disc Read-Only Memory " is a pre-pressed Compact Disc that contains data accessible to but not writable Such lists are also sold directly online, frequently with the false claim that the owners of the listed addresses have requested (or "opted in") to be included. Such lists often contain invalid addresses. In recent years, these have fallen almost entirely out of use due to the low quality e-mail addresses available on them, and because some e-mail lists exceed 20GB in size. The amount you can fit on a CD is no longer substantial. CD-ROM (an initialism of "Compact Disc Read-Only Memory " is a pre-pressed Compact Disc that contains data accessible to but not writable

A number of DNSBLs, including the MAPS RBL, Spamhaus SBL, SORBS and SPEWS, target the providers of spam-support services as well as spammers. A DNS Blacklist, or DNSBL ( definition below) is a means by which an Internet site may publish a list of IP addresses that some people may want to avoid DNSBLs blacklist IPs or ranges of IPs to persuade ISPs to terminate services with known customers who are spammers or resell to spammers.

Related vocabulary

Unsolicited bulk e-mail (UBE)

A synonym for e-mail spam.

Unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE)

Spam promoting a commercial service or product. This is the most common type of spam, but it excludes spam which are hoaxes (e. g. virus warnings), political advocacy, religious messages and chain letters sent by a person to many other people. A typical chain letter consists of a Message that attempts to induce the recipient to make a number of copies of the letter and then pass them on to as many recipients The term UCE may be most common in the USA. ^[63]

Pink contract

A pink contract is a service contract offered by an ISP which offers bulk e-mail service to spamming clients, in violation of that ISP's publicly posted acceptable use policy. A pink contract is an agreement between an email spammer and the spammer's Internet service provider.

Spamvertising

Spamvertising is advertising through the medium of spam. Spamvertising is the practice of sending E-mail spam, advertising a website

Opt-in, confirmed opt-in, double opt-in, opt-out

Opt-in, confirmed opt-in, double opt-in, opt-out refers to whether the people on a mailing list are given the option to be put in, or taken out, of the list. Opt in e-mail is a term used when someone is given the option to receive "bulk" e-mail that is e-mail that is sent to many people at the same time

Final, Ultimate Solution for the Spam Problem (FUSSP)

An ironic reference to naïve developers who believe they have invented the perfect spam filter, which will stop all spam from reaching users' inboxes while accidentally deleting no legitimate email. Irony is a literary or Rhetorical device, in which there is an incongruity or Discordance between what one says or does and what one means or ^[64][65]

In the news

2004

In May, 2004, Howard Carmack of Buffalo, New York was sentenced to 3 1/2 to 7 years for sending 800 million messages, using stolen identities. Howard Carmack (also known as the Buffalo Spammer) was the first spammer i Buffalo (ˈbʌfəloʊ is the second largest city in New York State. In May 2003 he also lost a $16 million civil lawsuit to Earthlink. EarthLink ( is an Internet service provider headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. ^[66]

On September 27, 2004, Nicholas Tombros plead guilty to charges and became the first spammer to be convicted under the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. Events 489 - Odoacer attacks Theodoric at the Battle of Verona and is defeated again "MMIV" redirects here For the Modest Mouse album see " Baron von Bullshit Rides Again " The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 ( 15 USC 7701 et seq Public Law No 108-187 was S ^[67] He was sentenced in July of 2007 to three years probation, six months house arrest, and fined $10,000. ^[68]

On November 4, 2004, Jeremy Jaynes, rated the 8th most prolific spammer in the world according to Spamhaus, was convicted of three felony charges of using servers in Virginia to send thousands of fraudulent e-mails. Events 1333 - Flood of the Arno River, causing massive damage in Florence as recorded by the Florentine chronicler Giovanni Villani "MMIV" redirects here For the Modest Mouse album see " Baron von Bullshit Rides Again " Jeremy Jaynes (born 1974 was a prolific E-mail spammer, broadcasting junk e-mail from his home in North Carolina, United States. The Commonwealth of Virginia ( is an American state The court recommended a sentence of nine years' imprisonment, which was imposed in April 2005 although the start of the sentence was deferred pending appeals. Jaynes claimed to have an income of $750,000 a month from his spamming activities. On February 29, 2008 the Supreme Court of Virginia affirmed his conviction. Leap years Although the modern calendar counts a year as 365 days a complete revolution around the sun takes approximately 365 days and 6 hours 2008 ( MMVIII) is the current year in accordance with the Gregorian calendar, a Leap year that started on Tuesday of the Common The Supreme Court of Virginia is the highest court in the US state of Virginia. ^[69]

On November 8, 2004, Nick Marinellis of Sydney, Australia, was sentenced to 4 1/3 to 5 1/4 years for sending Nigerian 419 e-mails. Events 1519 - Hernán Cortés enters Tenochtitlán and Aztec ruler Moctezuma welcomes him with great a Celebration "MMIV" redirects here For the Modest Mouse album see " Baron von Bullshit Rides Again " Sydney (ˈsɪdniː is the most populous city in Australia, with a Metropolitan area population of approximately 4 For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Australia topics. An advance-fee fraud is a Confidence trick in which the target is persuaded to advance sums of money in the hope of realizing a very much larger gain ^[70]

On December 31, 2004, British authorities arrested Christopher Pierson in Lincolnshire, UK and charged him with malicious communication and causing a public nuisance. Events 406 – Vandals, Alans and Suebians cross the Rhine, beginning an invasion of Gallia. "MMIV" redirects here For the Modest Mouse album see " Baron von Bullshit Rides Again " Lincolnshire (abbreviated Lincs) is a county in the east of England. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain,is a Sovereign state located On January 3, 2005, he pleaded guilty to sending hoax e-mails to relatives of people missing following the Asian tsunami disaster. Events 1431 - Joan of Arc is handed over to the Bishop Pierre Cauchon. Year 2005 ( MMV) was a Common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. A tsunami ((tsuːˈnɑːmi is a series of waves created when

2005

On July 25, 2005, Russian spammer Vardan Kushnir, who is believed to have spammed every single Russian internet user, was found dead in his Moscow apartment, having suffered numerous blunt-force blows to the head. Events 285 - Diocletian appoints Maximian as Caesar, co-ruler Year 2005 ( MMV) was a Common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Vardan Vardanovich Kushnir ( November 22, 1969, to July 24, 2005) was a notorious Spammer of Armenian descent who ran the It is believed that Kushnir's murder was unrelated to his spamming activities. ^[71]

On November 1, 2005, David Levi, 29, of Lytham, England was sentenced to four years for conspiracy to defraud by sending e-mails pretending to be from eBay, his brother Guy Levi, 22, was sentenced to 21 months after pleading guilty to conspiracy to defraud, and four others were each sentenced to six months for money laundering. Events 996 - Emperor Otto III issues a deed to Gottschalk Bishop of Freising which is the oldest known document using the name Ostarrîchi Year 2005 ( MMV) was a Common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Lytham St Annes is a conurbation in the Fylde district of Lancashire, England. eBay Inc is an American Internet company that manages eBaycom an Online auction and shopping Website in which people and businesses buy and ^[72]

On November 16, 2005, Peter Francis-Macrae of Cambridgeshire, described as Britain's most prolific spammer, was sentenced to six years in prison. Events 534 - A second and final revision of the Codex Justinianus is published Year 2005 ( MMV) was a Common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Peter "Weaselboy" Francis-Macrae (born 1982 is an English Spammer found guilty of two counts of fraudulent History Cambridgeshire is noted as the site of some of the earliest known Neolithic permanent settlement in the United Kingdom, along with sites at Fengate The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain,is a Sovereign state located ^[73]

2006

In January, 2006, James McCalla was ordered to pay $11. 2 Billion to an ISP in Iowa and barred from using the Internet for 3 years for sending 280 million e-mail messages. ^[74]

On June 28, 2006, IronPort released a study which found 80% of spam emails originating from zombie computers. Events 1098 - Fighters of the First Crusade defeat Kerbogha of Mosul. Year 2006 ( MMVI) was a Common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. A zombie computer (often shortened as zombie) is a computer attached to the Internet that has been compromised by a hacker, a Computer virus The report also found 55 billion daily spam emails in June 2006, a large increase from 35 billion daily spam emails in June 2005. The study used SenderData which represents 25% of global email traffic and data from over 100,000 ISP's, universities, and corporations.

On August 8, 2006, AOL announced the intention of digging up the garden of the parents of spammer Davis Wolfgang Hawke in search of buried gold and platinum. Events 1220 - Sweden is defeated by Estonian tribes in the Battle of Lihula. Year 2006 ( MMVI) was a Common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. Davis Wolfgang Hawke (born 1979 was a spammer, who was sued by AOL in 2004 under the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. ^[75] AOL had been awarded a US$ 12. 8 million judgment in May of 2005 against Hawke, who had gone into hiding. The permission for the search was granted by a judge after AOL proved that the spammer had bought large amounts of gold and platinum. ^[76] In July, 2007 AOL decided not to proceed. ^[77]

On October 12, 2006, Brian Michael McMullen, 22, of East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania was sentenced to three years supervised release, five months home detention and ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $11,848. Events 539 BC - The army of Cyrus the Great of Persia takes Babylon. Year 2006 ( MMVI) was a Common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. East Pittsburgh is a Borough in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, about 11 miles (18 km southeast of the confluence of the Monongahela and the 55 for violating the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 ( 15 USC 7701 et seq Public Law No 108-187 was S ^[78]

On October 27, 2006, the Federal Court of Australia fined Clarity1 A$4. Events 312 - Constantine the Great is said to have received his famous Vision of the Cross. Year 2006 ( MMVI) was a Common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. The Federal Court of Australia is the Australian court in which most civil disputes and some summary criminal matters governed by federal law are decided 5 million (US$3. 4 million; euro2. 7 million) and its director Wayne Mansfield A$1 million (US$760,000; euro600,000) for sending unsolicited e-mails in the first conviction under Australia's Spam Act of 2003. ^[79]

In November, 2006 Christopher William Smith (aka Chris "Rizler" Smith) was convicted on 9 counts for offenses related to Smith's spamming. Christopher William Smith ("Rizler" (born January 28, 1980) was a prolific e-mail spammer, advertising drugs from his Xpress Pharmacy Direct

2007

On January 16, 2007, an Azusa, California man was convicted by a jury in United States District Court in Los Angeles in United States v. Events 27 BC - The title Augustus is bestowed upon Gaius Julius Caesar Octavian by the Roman Senate. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Azusa is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the District courts are a category of Courts which exists in several nations Los Angeles (lɑˈsændʒələs los ˈaŋxeles in Spanish) is the largest City in the state of California and the American West Goodin, U. S. District Court, Central District of California, 06-110, under the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (the first conviction under that Act). The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 ( 15 USC 7701 et seq Public Law No 108-187 was S ^[80] He was sentenced to and began serving a 70 month sentence on June 11, 2007. Events 1184 BC - Trojan War: Troy is sacked and burned according to the calculations of Eratosthenes. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. ^[81]

On May 30, 2007, notorious spammer Robert Soloway was arrested after having being indicted by a federal grand jury on 35 charges including mail fraud, wire fraud, e-mail fraud, identity theft, and money laundering. Events 1416 - The Council of Constance, called by the Emperor Sigismund a supporter of Antipope John XXIII burns Jerome of Prague following Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Robert Alan Soloway is the founder of the so-called "Strategic Partnership Against Microsoft Illegal Spam" or SPAMIS but is said to be one of the Internet's biggest ^[82] If convicted, he could face decades behind bars. ^[83] Bail was initially denied although he was released to a half way house in September. His trial is scheduled for March 24, 2008. ^[84]

On June 25, 2007 two men were each convicted on eight counts including conspiracy, fraud, money laundering, and transportation of obscene materials in U.S. District Court in Phoenix, Arizona. Events 524 - Battle of Vézeronce, the Franks defeat the Burgundians Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. The United States district courts are the general Trial courts of the United States federal court system. Phoenix (ˈfiːˌnɪks O'odham Skikik, Yavapai Wasinka, Western Apache Fiinigis, Navajo Hoozdo, The prosecution is the first of its kind under the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, according to a release from the Department of Justice. The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 ( 15 USC 7701 et seq Public Law No 108-187 was S For animal rights group see Justice Department (JD The United States Department of Justice ( DOJ) is a Cabinet department ^[85] One count for each under the act was for falsifying headers, the other was for using domain names registered with false information. The two had been sending millions of hard-core pornography spam e-mails. ^[86] The two men were sentenced to five years in prison and ordered to forfeit US$ 1. 3 million. ^[87]

Image spam

Image spam is an obfuscating method in which the text of the message is stored as a GIF or JPEG image and displayed in the email. This prevents text based spam filters from detecting and blocking spam messages. Image spam is currently used largely to advertise "pump and dump" stocks. Microcap stock fraud is a form of Securities fraud involving stocks of " microcap " companies generally defined in the United States as those with a market ^[88]

Often, image spam contains nonsensical, computer-generated text which simply annoys the reader. However, new technology in some programs try to read the images by attempting to find text in these images. They are not very accurate, and sometimes filter out innocent images of products like a box that has words on it.

A newer technique, however, is to use an animated GIF image that does not contain clear text in its initial frame, or to contort the shapes of letters in the image (as in CAPTCHA) to avoid detection by OCR tools. A CAPTCHA (ˈkæptʃə is a type of challenge-response test used in Computing to ensure that the response is not generated by a computer

Blank spam

Blank spam is spam lacking a payload advertisement. Often the message body is missing altogether, as well as the subject line. Still, it fits the definition of spam because of its nature as bulk and unsolicited email.

Blank spam may be originated in different ways, either intentional or unintentionally:

1. Blank spam can have been sent in a directory harvest attack, a form of dictionary attack for gathering valid addresses from an email service provider. A Directory Harvest Attack or DHA is a technique used by spammers in an attempt to find valid/existent E-mail addresses at a domain by using brute force In Cryptanalysis and Computer security, a dictionary attack is a technique for defeating a Cipher or authentication mechanism by trying to determine its Since the goal in such an attack is to use the bounces to separate invalid addresses from the valid ones, the spammer may dispense with most elements of the header and the entire message body, and still accomplish his or her goals.
2. Blank spam may also occur when a spammer forgets or otherwise fails to add the payload when he or she sets up the spam run.
3. Often blank spam headers appear truncated, suggesting that computer glitches may have contributed to this problem—from poorly-written spam software to shoddy relay servers, or any problems that may truncate header lines from the message body.
4. Some spam may appear to be blank when in fact it is not. An example of this is the VBS.Davinia.B email worm which propagates through messages that have no subject line and appears blank, when in fact it uses HTML code to download other files.

See also

• Popular Spam Subjects such as Generic Viagra and Generic Cialis
• Spamware
• Roger Ebert's Boulder Pledge
• Netiquette
• The news.admin.net-abuse.email newsgroup
• Spamhaus
• Chain e-mail
• Junk fax
• Nigerian spam
• Make money fast, the infamous Dave Rhodes chain letter that jumped to e-mail. Spamware is Software designed by or for spammers Spamware varies widely but may include the ability to import thousands of addresses to generate random addresses Roger Joseph Ebert (iːbɝt born June 18, 1942) is an American film critic and Screenwriter. Netiquette, a portmanteau of " network Etiquette " is a set of social conventions that facilitate interaction over networks ranging from newsadminnet-abuseemail (sometimes abbreviated nanae or nan-a The Spamhaus Project is a volunteer effort founded by Steve Linford in 1998 to track E-mail spammers and spam-related activity A typical chain letter consists of a Message that attempts to induce the recipient to make a number of copies of the letter and then pass them on to as many recipients Junk faxes are a form of Telemarketing where unsolicited advertisements are sent via Fax transmission An advance-fee fraud is a Confidence trick in which the target is persuaded to advance sums of money in the hope of realizing a very much larger gain "MAKEMONEYFAST" is a title of an electronically forwarded Chain letter which became so infamous that the term is now used to describe all sorts of chain letters forwarded
• Bacn
• Disposable e-mail address
• Anti-spam techniques (e-mail)
• Integration of anti-spam techniques into MTAs
• Pump and dump stock fraud
• Spam (electronic)
• SpamCop
• Category:E-mail spammers
• CAUCE
• Direct Marketing Associations
• Address munging
• Botnet
• E-mail address harvesting
• List poisoning
• Spambot
• Spamtrap
• Stopping e-mail abuse
• Spider trap

References

External links

• Spam info
  • SpamHelp.org
  • Spam.Abuse.Net
• Spam reports
  • Worldwide Email Threat Activity
• Media sites, with current news on Spam e-mail
  • What is spam Interesting animation
  • Spam Links Blacklist
  • CircleID on Spam
  • SpamHelp Spam news
• Government reports and industry white papers
  • Unsolicited Commercial E-mail Research Six Month Report by Center for Democracy & Technology
  • Email Address Harvesting and the Effectiveness of Anti-SPAM Filters by US FTC, Retrieved on 13-Oct-2007.
  • Email Address Harvesting: How Spammers Reap What You Sow by the US FTC. Retrieved on 13-Oct-2007
  • The Electronic Frontier Foundation's spam page which contains legislation, analysis and litigation histories

• from the author of Pegasus Mail & Mercury Mail Transport System - David Harris
  • Spam White Paper - Drowning in Sewage

Pegasus Mail is a Donationware (previously Freeware) proprietary, Electronic mail client that was developed and maintained by David Harris Mercury Mail Transport System (Mercury MTS is a standards compliant Donationware (was Freeware prior to January 2007 email server developed by David Harris David Harris (born in August 1961 is a Software developer from Dunedin, New Zealand.

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