The article is worth the read if you have any concerns about what emails to read or not to read.

In Short

Emails that promise free games, windows security patches or updates, nude celebrity pictures, or anything that seems out of the ordinary should be deleted immediately.

A source in the Register article "recommends PC users do not open executable files attached to email messages from addresses they do not recognise or trust and to ‘refrain from opening any message that purports to feature nude celebrities’."

So what is the big deal? After all it is just spam!? NO, when anyone opens this spam and clicks a link within it a malware program may be installed into the user’s computer at which time the computer is added to a network of machines used to quietly send out even more SPAM. This type of attack is estimated to be responsible for up to 20% of the email SPAM we all receive today.

Please do your part and screen the email you open! In fact, I strongly recommend using a community-supported SPAM filtering program like Cloudmark Desktop (formerly Cloudmark SpamNet). Cloudmark costs only $3.40/mo. ($39.95/yr) and it does a great job of protecting my email from 95%+ of the 500-1000 SPAM I receive in a single day. My entire company has used Cloudmark to eliminate email SPAM for over 2 years and it has little or no error rate.

Comments

I’ve been getting loads of such spams recently, all of which have managed to get through the spam filters on my email server. When they arrives at my PC, most get trapped by the excellent Cloudmark Desktop for Outlook, a pay-for service I’ve been using for over four years.

The ones that Cloudmark doesn’t see as spam are quite clever. They’re not obvious at all and on first glance apear to be normal-type messages. A closer look, though, and every single one is pure gobbledegook, as the small screenshot suggests.

Whatever the spam is, it’s undoubtedly becoming a serious problem:

[ email security company Postini] has detected 7 billion spam e-mails worldwide in November compared to 2.5 billion in June. Spam in Britain has risen by 50 percent in the last two months alone, according to Internet security company SurfControl. The United States, China and Poland are the top sources of spam, data from security firm Marshal suggests. About 200 illegal gangs are behind 80 percent of unwanted emails, according to Spamhaus, a body that tracks the problem.

My experience reflects these trends – on any given day, I estimate that at least 70 percent of all email I receive is what Cloudmark sees as spam, plus another 10 percent or so that I regard as spam.

This deluge goes beyond just being an irritant and a consequence of being online. Now, it takes longer and longer to sift through the stuff to see if there’s something trapped that shouldn’t be. Or, reviewing what’s in your inbox for something there that should have been trapped.

Who has the time? I now tend to simply purge the spam folder in Outlook without even reviewing what’s in it. When you see the folder containing 300+ items, you just go ‘select all – delete.’ (Likewise with spam comments and trackbacks on the blog that Akismet intercepts – whatever Akismet says is spam, I’m now accepting without reviewing.)

Will this problem ever be solved? It doesn’t look like it, certainly not any time soon:

[] It will only end when people stop buying diet pills, herbal highs and sexual performance enhancers, said Dave Rand, of Internet security firm Trend Micro. “The products they are selling by spam are exactly the same products that they sold in the Middle Ages,” he said. “This really is a human problem, not a computer problem.”

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Neville Hobson is the author of the popular NevilleHobson.com blog which focuses on business communication and technology.

Neville is currentlly the VP of New Marketing at Crayon. Visit Neville Hobson’s blog: NevilleHobson.com.

And that total excludes the spam stuff my spam catcher, Cloudmark SafetyBar, intercepts.

Yes, I’d logged in to my Gmail account a couple of times while away, but I’d not been able to check email on my primary domain, which is where most email gets to.

Back at base, I no longer do what I used to do when returning from a trip – look at all the email subject lines, spend a little time on the ones that definitely need immediate attention, and just ignore the rest.

It’s always struck me as the height of total non-productivity that you think you have to spend hours and hours dealing with all email when you get back to the office. My philosophy has been to just deal with the stuff you have to. If you haven’t replied to other email, well, the sender will follow up on it when he or doesn’t hear from you. Right?

Well, not really from a social behaviour point of view. As an email piler not a filer, I’m still mindful of Jason Clarke’s admonishment on dealing with email:

You respond to your voicemail in a timely fashion, don’t you? If you can’t be bothered to adhere to a system that ensures you respond to the email you receive, you’re being rude.

That was a pretty powerful post, Jason! So I now do try and get to every email. It does take a bit of time, though.

One thing I’m currently looking at is a new service from Vodafone that launched in The Netherlands a few months ago – Vodafone Blackberry WebClient. You get a brand new Blackberry 7100v as part of the deal. While I don’t see how it would help me address all the email volume, at least I’d have a very cool gadget and can strike the right pose sitting in a Starbucks or wherever discreetly doing email.

Of course, what I should be doing right now is more of my email, instead of writing this post. Ah, but, you see, such things are an integral element of yak shaving…

Neville Hobson is the author of the popular NevilleHobson.com blog which focuses on business communication and technology.

Neville is currentlly the VP of New Marketing at Crayon. Visit Neville Hobson’s blog: NevilleHobson.com.

The SafetyBar solution is designed to empower businesses and consumers to stop online fraud.

SafetyBar is available to any PayPal customer worldwide that uses the Outlook email system. The tool is easy to install, with the new SafetyBar appearing as a toolbar in Outlook immediately after downloading the product. From installation forward, messages that are identified as phishing emails are automatically forwarded to the Spam Folder. Along with SafetyBar, PayPal users also get a free 30-day trial of Cloudmark’s anti-spam protection, the most award-winning anti-spam solution this year.

“Online security is a top priority for PayPal and we continue to fight phishing attacks in every way we can,” said Dave Nielsen, technical evangelist for PayPal. “We’re happy to work with Cloudmark to develop tools and techniques that enhance our fraud protection initiatives.”

“Cloudmark is extremely proud to be working with PayPal to promote trust in the Internet as a safe place to conduct business,” said Karl Jacob, CEO of Cloudmark. “Cloudmark’s mission has always been to protect consumers from fraud before it occurs versus raising fear or sounding warning alarms when it’s just too late. By offering both SafetyBar and our first of its kind rating system, we are confident we can re-establish trust within the world of e-commerce.”

While SafetyBar helps eliminate fraud before it reaches the Inbox, Cloudmark Rating solves the other problem created by “phishing” — namely the erosion of consumer trust in e-commerce brands. Cloudmark Rating helps ensure that the email customers receive is from the trusted brand that sent it. The reputation system helps confirm that mail sent from a company is legitimate. Cloudmark Rating displays the company’s logo in the SafetyBar, to help consumers be confident in knowing that the messages received is from the brand they trust.

“Phishing attacks are on the rise, and so is the need for e-commerce companies, financial institutions and providers to take measures to protect their customers,” said Teney Takahashi, Messaging Security Analyst with the Radicati Group. “By working with SafetyBar and the Cloudmark community, companies are able to provide their users with a more reliable method of identifying legitimate emails. Dealing with both sides of the equation has become critical, as phishing and online fraud continue to threaten the integrity of email, e-commerce and the Internet.”

“Phishing” is a technique whereby a perpetrator sends out legitimate-looking emails appearing to come from well-known banks, online retailers and credit card companies in an effort to obtain personal and financial information from the recipient. The result of these scams is that consumers suffer credit card fraud, identity theft and financial loss.

According to an April 2004 survey of 5,000 U.S. online adults, Gartner estimates that 57 million U.S. adults have received phishing attack email and more than 1.4 million users have suffered from identity theft fraud, costing banks and card issuers $1.2 billion in direct losses in the past year. Moreover, the FTC estimates that if one figures in the amount of money businesses must spend on security software to stop the phishers, the damage to brand names, and the costs of mitigating customer complaints and litigation associated with insecure websites, the total increases to over $50 billion.

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