Tag: Email
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)
Would you fall for this?
If you're about to sell something online, beware! I planted a dummy advertisement and went hunting for scammers, which wasn't difficult at all. Scams are all around us, and here are 2 where I deliberately offered myself as a "victim." (Jan 25, 2010)
Blocked by RFC-IGNORANT ... Now what?
From time to time, customers wind up getting blocked by a seldom seen blacklist called "RFC-Ignorant." Unlike classical blacklists that are usually honeypot driven, this one is driven by people who have manually reported you as violating RFC. (Jan 22, 2010)
Spam: Surveying the Surveys
Another year has passed and it seems everyone is busy publishing their year-end security reviews, survey results, and fearless predictions for the upcoming year. (Jan 20, 2010)
Welcome back, dear Customer!
Email Security product and solution vendors rely heavily on customer loyalty and retention. The recipe for achieving this is different for every company. What never changes is the total joy of winning back a customer that left for some reason, tried the competition and then returned. (Jan 15, 2010)
2009 Spam Review
2009, according to the Chinese calendar, was the Year of the Ox: “People born in the Year of the Ox are patient, speak little, and inspire confidence in others.” Well that description pretty much sums up most of the spam sent in 2009: the perpetrators tended to say little in the messages, but oh did they inspire confidence – in the criminal sense! 2009 showed a remarkable increase in Phishing/Fraud content. (Jan 11, 2010)
10 Resolutions You Shouldn’t Break This Year
It's that time of the year again..time to make (and break) resolutions. Here are some things to help you keep your email and network safe from malicious attacks. Resolutions you don't want to break! (Jan 08, 2010)
How do you fix a bad reputation?
In an earlier post, I had written about the various security measures to take to prevent losing your good reputation.But what happens if you find yourself on someone’s blacklist? What do you do? (Jan 06, 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)
One phish, two phish, red phish, blue phish
Typical phishing messages purport to originate from various financial institutions, delivery services, Facebook, and so on, all with the aim of getting you to click the enclosed link and disclose some personal information that can be abused. (Dec 16, 2009)
Spoofing: are you who you say you are?
Spammers often play games with the 'From' field but there are Internet standards that can help you easily determine whether the sender is who he claims to be. (Dec 11, 2009)
Ho Ho..ohhh!
This scam is not that popular yet, but we’ll probably begin hearing more about it in 2010, thanks to Web 2.0. (Dec 07, 2009)
Help spammers create new email accounts
You are about to subscribe to a website, a newsletter, get a free email account, or try to download something. You’ve never heard of this site before but it has what you need. Before you can click Confirm, you’re asked to complete a Captcha validation. Okay, no big deal: you enter the string and press “Confirm.” (Nov 30, 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)
The Future Of Email Security: Where Do We Go From Here?
There’s no denying that anti-spam filters are imperative in the fight against junk mail and malware, but no single solution is fool-proof. Employing anti-spam and virus filters, stronger passwords, encryption, and so on, are not enough to win the battle against the ever-increasingly sophisticated attackers. (Nov 04, 2009)
Top 3 Spam Trends for October
The top 3 spots were determined by the sheer volume of messages that were tracked by our system. In third place, it was a tie between "Lose WeightInstantly" PDFs and the flood of messages that originated from Chinese (cn) domains. (Nov 02, 2009)
Country-Based Blocking
Is it good or bad? Well the answer is "it depends." If your organization only operates within North-America, for instance, blocking the more prolific spam sources by country may be a very good way to reduce the amount of traffic hitting your MTA. (Oct 30, 2009)
We need spam to sell our anti-spam
The ISP market is a jungle: it’s every man for himself and leave the wounded behind. Some time ago, I subscribed to a big ISP (that shall remain nameless) that was leading the market. When I subscribed, I gave my chosen username for the email address – although it was included with the service I never used it (I didn’t even configure it). The username is a mix of things that make it unique and pretty much unreachable through dictionary attacks, something like 667gptfoo99x@. (Oct 26, 2009)
Is Email Dead? Don’t believe the Hype!
With all the buzz around social media (and notably so), industry analysts are declaring email a thing of “the past” and that social media applications, namely sites like Twitter and Facebook, will take over as our online method of communications. As technology evolves, it drives the habits of consumers. (Oct 23, 2009)
Drive by Downloads
This is a term I’m seeing more and more frequently in security-related web posts and, frankly, I thought it was fairly new. After doing some research, however, I found an article entitled, Anatomy of a “Drive-by-Download,” that was written in 2004 (!) by Eric L. Howes. Where have I been all this time? (Oct 21, 2009)
More Recent News
Recent Spam Survey Winners
We are extremely pleased with the tremendous response that we have received to this point from our Fight Email Spam survey. As promised we have randomly selected winners of our gift card prizes. (Jan 23, 2012)
New Year's Resolution
We spend 8 to 10 (or more) hours a day at work - more time than we spend anywhere else - and our desks/workspaces are becoming our kitchen tables. But, do you realize that our desks are covered in more bacteria... (Jan 20, 2012)
Email Usage Survey
We are currently conducting a market research on email usage at work. Thank you for filling our this very short survey. (Jan 12, 2012)
