Unfortunately for any computer user viruses and Spyware are a common problem. The worst part is that most people are not aware of some things that may install Spyware or other malicious items onto their computers. Most people wrongly assume that they have to download something or open themselves up to a vulnerability manually. This is not always true.

How Do I Keep Getting Spyware?

Actually, one of the main ways that hackers have found is the easiest to use to get PC users to execute their malicious software is through emails. All of those inspirational or chain emails can be the biggest source of problems for some users who do not even frequent sites that may contain Spyware or viruses.
All of those nice inspirational emails can have malicious coding embedded that may cause security vulnerabilities within your computer. Clicking links that you are unsure of inside emails is also a great way to install Spyware on your system.

For new users this may be the biggest problems. Most people who regularly use computers for personal or business related activities are aware of the dangers of the internet and the possibility of getting Spyware of viruses. However, most think that in order to get them, you have to execute a program. This is entirely untrue.

Delete Those Emails Before You Open Them!

Whatever the title and whomever it has come from does not matter. Always keep in mind that others may not know the dangers of simple emails or links as well. The best way to deal with emails from unfamiliar sources or emails that contain inspirational or chain letter type messages is to delete them as soon as possible. Do not open them ever!

Six Apart is launching a new free open source product into beta called TypePad AntiSpam. While the product is new, the technology behind it has been used by Six Apart since May 2007 on millions of hosted TypePad blogs.

What’s TypePad AntiSpam?

• A free, open source system powered by TypePad for blocking comment spam on any site, free no matter how many comments you get.
• A service for all bloggers, built into TypePad blogs already and implemented as a free plugin for users of platforms like Movable Type and WordPress.
• An open source engine which developers can use to create new antispam services, with customizable rules and logic.
• In beta! We’re hearing great results from testers so far, but wanted to open up TypePad AntiSpam to a larger audience so we can make sure the system is getting as smart as possible.

Like Akismet, TypePad AntiSpam takes a multi-headed heuristic approach to detecting and blocking comment spam on blogs. If you are a blogger, you’ll want to use Akismet or TypePad AntiSpam.

source: www.sixapart.com/blog/2008/05/typepad-antispam-whats-good-fo.html

Spam king Sanford Wallace and phishing buddy Walter Rines hijacked some 300,000 MySpace accounts and sent hundreds of thousands of spam messages and comments across the service. They got their punishment: a whopping $225 million judgment in favor of MySpace, Information Week reports.

MySpace decided to sue when it discovered the duo had lured MySpace users into revealing their login information through phishing sites. After obtaining user IDs and passwords, the pair distributed messages to the users’ friends list with links to various Web sites involving gambling, pornography and ringtones. According to court documents, Wallace and Rines distributed 735,925 messages during the scam and earned over $500,000 in the process.

A blog purporting to be from Sanford Wallace (The site registration address matches the address on the court docuuments.) Says:

I am amazed whenever I read an article written about the latest crimes I’ve committed and the latest court orders I’ve broken.

I don’t even learn about most of these claims until I read about them somewhere on the Internet. I live a low profile life. In the meantime, the world around me apparently still blames me for every spam and phish page on the Internet.

Please, move on to the real spammers.

..I am still waiting to be served. And I haven’t been hiding either. The whole case was one big PR move..

source:

www.crn.com/security/207800154

government.zdnet.com/?p=3813

blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/006956.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanford_Wallace

A new type of spam focuses on consumers’ frustrations with high gas prices, according to McAfee Avert Labs.

The emails begin by complaining about the rising cost of gas and then direct the reader to a website, with the promise the “product” will save the user 70 cents per gallon. The spam also mentions this gas saver was highlighted on news channels and online videos.

Gasoline-related spam is still relatively new, however. McAfee stated that so far it makes up only 0.2 percent of all spam being circulated.

How many e-mails do you get every day that offers to sell you medicine without prescription, and at a fraction of their real cost? How many offers do you get to buy pirate software at one-tenth of their catalog prices? Do you find your inbox so full of unwanted, unsolicited e-mail that you can’t find the useful mail? Do you spend several minutes or hours everyday downloading mail that ultimately turns out to be useless? If you answer ‘yes’ to any of the above, then you are the victim of e-mail abuse, commonly known as ‘spam’.

Spam mail is a booming business on the internet, and it is growing every day. Thousand of millions of unwanted e-mail are released every day, though only a fraction of that ever reaches actual addresses. Who does it, and why? And what can you do about it?

Spammers are clever technicians who have found out a way of sending mail in great bulks to thousand of addresses at once. They sometimes set up their own mail servers, but they can also use the service of other people’s servers without their knowledge. The dominant method of sending e-mail is known as SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol), and by default this service doesn’t have a way to authenticate the sender of an e-mail. So free mail servers on the internet often accept mail from anyone, and relay it to other servers. This type of freely accessible SMTP server is known as an ‘open relay’ an is one of the greatest nuisances on the internet. They are a free ball for spammers.

But that’s only how they send mail. But how did they get your address in the first place? You sure didn’t write to any of them!
There are two answers to that. First, they own certain software that acts like scavengers, scouring the web looking for anything that looks like an e-mail address. Whatever they can gather, they save in a central database. Then these are auctioned off to bidders, who want to send you unwanted advertisements. Sending e-mail barely entails any recurring cost, so if even 1% of all victims of spam click on the links provided, the spammers stand to make huge profits.
The second answer is, they don’t have any idea that you exist. They are just using a random string-generating program that churns out billions of possible e-mail addresses. Only a fraction of that number actually represents valid e-mails, but as has been said above, sending e-mail is cheap. They can afford to send ten thousand e-mails even if only one of them is real.
What can you do to avoid spam? First, get a really good e-mail program, for instance the freely downloadable Thunderbird. Good e-mail programs have an inherent ability to recognize spam and delete them before they ever reach your inbox. Secondly, report spams to your Internet Service Provider, so that they can set up appropriate filters to differentiate the good from the bad.
These simple steps can go a long way to help you tackle e-mail abuse.