Author: Damien Ramé
Damien Ramé
Damien started down the geek road when he got his first computer at age 10: an Atari 400 with a 1.8MHz 6502 CPU, 8K of RAM, no storage (only a true geek includes those stats!). And he hasn’t looked back since: this Software Engineer has administered Linux and Windows servers, developed high- and low-level software and firmware code in a variety of languages, worked in telecommunications, networking and IT, and… ended up getting an MBA while developing a passion for marketing. He’s now a tech-savvy marketer who can talk the talk and walk the walk.
Articles by this author
Stop Social Spam on Twitter
My last article was on stopping and getting rid of Comment and Registration spam on WordPress. Today, I’d like to cover another Social Spam topic: Twitter. You can bet all social networks are a target, and Twitter is no different. Here are a couple tips to minimize and get rid of the Twitter spam such as Direct Message (DM) spam. (Aug 03, 2010)
Get rid of Social Spam on WordPress (Comment & Registration Spam)
The hot topic of the past few years certainly has been Social Networking and the Web 2.0! So, you started a blog on your own domain, have spent a lot of time writing relevant quality content, performing SEO, integrating into social networks to distribute your news. Now, your site is starting to get decent exposure from Search Engines and Social Networks, traffic is building up and so is spam. This damn spam. After being spammed for years through email, now you also get it on your blog. Of course, spammers have identified this new source. It offers basically the same potential as email (and actually an even better potential), so they want to be there as well. There is spam whose purpose is SEO (improve backlinks), some others are about phishing, identity theft, or malware. Let's see how to get rid of all this noise once and for all. (Jul 16, 2010)
Share NTFS USB Hard Drive on VMware vSphere/ESX 4
The other day, I was discussing virtualization in email security (for example, anti spam virtual appliance). One of the drawbacks of ESX (and ESXi) is the lack of support for external data storage (non Data Store). Of course, you can add a multitude of data stores, local and remote, and it is THE way to go. But I needed to be able to backup my virtual appliances to an external hard drive using NTFS (so that it can be read on my Windows machines). (Jun 29, 2010)
Are Canadian spammers above the law?
I certainly hope not. Ever heard about that guy, Adam Guerbuez? Using some scripts, he sent over 4 million spams through Facebook’s Wall in 2008. After being sued by Facebook under the CAN-SPAM act, he was found guilty (Guerbez didn’t even bother showing up for the trial) and was charged a 873M$ fine. That turns out to be about a BILLION Canadian Dollars. (May 28, 2010)
My catch-rate is better than yours… nah, nah!
Have you seen how some email security vendors seem to focus almost exclusively on their catch-rate and false-positive rates? Okay. So everyone in the industry does 99%+ catch-rate and less than 0.5% false positives,we do it, they do it. Woopdeedooo, let’s do the happy dance! And that’s the only thing many vendors will push for. Features? Blah. Easy to use? Blah. Support? Double blah (many outsource it offshore anyway). (Apr 14, 2010)
Let’s Virtualize Email Security!
Virtualization. Virtual Machine. Virtual Appliance. We keep on hearing these words over and over: they’ve been a recurring topic for a few years now. And it’s growing to the point where the Microsoft vs. Google fight now has a new contender: Microsoft vs. VMware. So, what’s all the buzz about? (Mar 19, 2010)
Less Linux, more Windows
I’ve always been a pro-Linux type of guy. I started using Unix back in 1992 (SunOS) and then onto Slackware, Red Hat, Ubuntu. Linux offered so many more features, security, power to do anything and a reliability Windows couldn’t dream of at the time. Linux was a true multitasking OS, had a firewall, and all internet clients and servers one may want or need: pop3, smtp, http, ftp, ssh. All these were virtually impossible to do on MS-DOS or Windows, and I’m not even talking about the various crashes and ridiculous uptimes of the early Microsoft platforms. Since then, and up until a few months ago, it’s always been clear to me: reliability and security on Linux; office work, graphical user interface and leisure on Windows. (Feb 05, 2010)
Incompetent email security spam filters cause historic business to change name
The Beaver is, at 90 years old, Canada’s second oldest magazine. Founded in 1920 and named after Canada’s symbol and fur-trading history, the Hudson's Bay Company publication is devoted to popularizing Canadian history, aiming to make Canadians more aware and appreciative of their heritage. Two weeks ago, the venerable magazine had to change its name to Canada’s History because its newsletter and emails were being trapped by spam filters around the world. (Jan 29, 2010)
What is a Honeypot in Email Security Terms?
A Honeypot is, by definition, a decoy or a trap whose purpose is to detect and identify unauthorized use in order to prevent breaches. In Email Security, a Honeypot is a SMTP server setup to process a single domain (or multiple domains) to gather emails all day long. (Dec 18, 2009)
Anti-Spam, Hacking and Virus Security: How Will Smartphones Survive?
With a double-digit market growth rate, non-existent protection and super-fast communications based on a variety of protocols and media, Smartphones clearly are a future target of choice for hackers and spammers. How will they survive, and at what cost? (Nov 13, 2009)
