spammers

Facebook won a restraining order against notorious spam king Samford “Spamford” Wallace in US District Court, a victory that, if history is any indication, is mostly symbolic.

The moment Twitter surpassed Digg.com was the moment it became a huge target; success comes with its own perils. While marketers early on were interested in the microblogging platform’s potential, an apparent flaw in the registration process left it wide open to automated spamming.

Spammers are now taking their cue from search engines and advertisers by making their emails more personalized in attempts to steal users information, according to a new security report from Cisco.The report found there was a 90 percent growth in threats coming from legitimate domains, nearly double what was seen in 2007. While targeted spear-phishing represents about 1 percent of all phishing attacks it is on track to become more widespread as savvy criminals personalize spam and make messages appear more credible.

Well now that the Yahoo deal fell through, some are looking for their own opportunities to team up with Google. One such person is a guy named Rob. Matt Cutts shared a humorous experience on his blog about a guy who wants to "purchase advertising space".  Matt shares the initial email:     Dear Webmaster,

The SEO-friendly social media site Sphinn may have been a little too friendly with submitters, something they addressed with a recent site change.

Phishing emails occasionally make it through spam filters, and sometimes, they even look genuine.  So Yahoo is trying to protect the recipients (and its own reputation) by suing "Yahoo! Lottery Spammers" who use its name in hoaxes.

Talk about creative workarounds. Spammers have found a way to crack captchas so they can steal your email address. As if the vice of spamming isn’t bad enough, they are using a virtual stripper named Melissa to get real people to unwittingly participate in their evil craft.

It makes one wonder how convicted spammers are treated in prison. The most recent pair of spammers prosecuted saw witnesses from five states come to testify against them and co-spammers turned on them for (presumably) lighter sentences.