Update 3: Twitter is now telling me that I am part of a beta test group for the retweet features, so I guess it is no longer on hold.
Those who are part of the test get the following message:
With all of the spam out there and the increasing amount of malice that comes with it, it's easy to look at the situation and think that email must be dying. Combine the overwhelming amounts of inbox spam and the ever-increasing popularity of communication tools like Twitter and Facebook, and you may ask yourself why you even need email.
Symantec has released two new reports for the month of November - the State of Spam, and the State of Phishing (both PDFs). The reports highlight a dramatic increase in spam that contains malware. On top of that, junk and malicious email now accounts for close to 9 out of 10 email messages.
Spammers may want to steer clear of Facebook in the future. Late yesterday, a representative of the social network's legal team announced that it was awarded $711 million in damages as a result of a case against Sanford "Spamford" Wallace.
Symantec's MessageLabs released its Intelligence Report for the month of October, and it reveals the that the spammers behind the biggest botnets – Cutwail, Rustock and Donbot – are using the upcoming major holidays and world events as the themes for their the latest spam runs. This is not particularly surprising news, but it is news that people should be aware of nevertheless.
Spam is something that can have a serious impact on Twitter: It annoys individual users, messes up lists of trending topics, and even makes the site look less suitable for businesses and monetization. It's a good thing, then, that Twitter's going after spammers with a new spam reporting option.
You've probably seen reports of big webmail phishing attacks over the week. A spokesperson for Symantec's Message Labs tells WebProNews, however, that most reports have glossed over a key point to consider. That is that the potential impact on other aspects of victims' online lives are in jeopardy as well.
Symantec's MessageLabs revealed a list of the most spammed states in the US today, with some somewhat surprising results. And the award for state that receives the most spam is...Idaho.
Spam is rising as we get closer to the Christmas holiday season according to Symantec, although they do say that phishing is down. The company has shared some findings from its September State of Phishing report.
According to the report, there was a 45% reduction in phishing attacks between July and August. Symantec says this will likely be a short-term lull, however, reflecting the end of a particular toolkit attack on social networking sites.
Google's Matt Cutts answered a user question about how the company handles spam complaints in the most recent video upload to the Google Webmaster Central YouTube Channel. More specifically, the question was:
Is there a minimum number of spam complaints about a domain and/or SERP before Google reviews the complaint? Presumably you get thousands of spam complaints daily, are these sorted into any order to be reviewed? The most popular first?
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