This week’s Loose Wire column is about spam and love: FOR 10 YEARS NOW, our in-boxes have been bombarded with spam. Sadly there’s no sign that the situation is improving, but perhaps we’re looking at it all wrong. After receiving some very dubious e-mails containing links to very long and suspicious-looking Web sites, I wondered… Read More »
No. It is a real problem, if only because there’s still plenty of sleazy people figuring out new ways to ruin your day. There’s some skepticism out there about this new spam threat: SPIM, in case you didn’t know, is spam that’s delivered, not to your inbox, but to your instant messaging chat program, like… Read More »
Is the whole pay-per-click industry swamped by fraud? WebProWorld says that Michael Bradley, recently arrested for trying to extort money from Google, is a wake up call to the PPC industry. He claimed to have developed software that would automatically click on Google ads, potentially costing both Google and their advertisers millions of dollars. (Here’s… Read More »
Not everyone thinks the big boys are on the right track by pursuing spammers in the courts. Postini, ‘the industry’s leading provider of email security and management for the enterprise’, says spam “cannot be solved by lawsuits and legislation alone”. America Online, Microsoft, Earthlink and Yahoo announced on Wednesday that they had filed numerous civil… Read More »
The big players are about to get tough on spam. Maybe. An announcement on behalf of America Online, EarthLink, Microsoft, and Yahoo!, four leading e-mail providers and founders of the anti-spam industry alliance formed a year ago, says they will “make a joint announcement regarding the results of its first industry collaboration aimed at stopping… Read More »