It’s always frustrating when you receive a phone call from a strange number only to find out that it’s a robocall trying to sell you on the fact that you just won a cruise to the Caribbean. Even more problematic are the rash of even more egregious spam and fraud calls which now seem more …
One of the harsh realities of the web is that many sites profile their customers, and then sell that data to third parties. It’s not just Google, Facebook, or Amazon, which probably do it better than anyone else. For better or worse, it’s the way the web works, and there’s no fixing it anytime soon. …
An incredibly sinister new form of spam has infiltrated countless iPhones and iPads in recent weeks: fake iCloud calendar invites. Personally, I’ve been bombarded with fake invites for weeks, but many iOS users were confronted with the unfamiliar notifications for the first time over the holiday weekend.
Have you ever gotten a piece of spam that made it past your filter and thought to yourself, “I wonder what would happen if I actually replied to this?” British comedian James Veitch has made a routine out of replying to spammers and scammers in recent years and late last year he gave a TED Talk that …
Spam emails are something Internet users just have to deal with. No matter how much companies spend to prevent spam, it doesn’t seem to make it any less prevalent. According to a report from Justin Rao of Microsoft (MSFT) and David Reiley of Google (GOOG), spammers and spam-advertised merchants cost society a whopping $20 billion …
Social networks like Facebook and Twitter are become focal points of our digital lives, and just as they did with email and other popular digital technologies, spammers are looking to capitalize. According to Mark Risher, chief executive officer of anti-spam software company Impermium, spammers are responsible for creating as much as 40% of the accounts on …
A new study suggests that more than half of all Internet traffic is generated by non-human sources such as hacking software, scrapers and automated spam mechanisms. The majority of this non-human traffic, according to cloud service provider Incapsula, is potentially malicious. The study is based on data collected from 1,000 websites that utilize Incapsula’s services, and …
In what can only be described as yet another set back for Google’s privacy battle, Gmail users are accusing the search giant of accessing their contact lists and sending spam emails to contacts with non-Gmail email addresses. “STOP IT!,” an irate user wrote on Google’s support forums. “At no point did I say it was …
The Australian Communications and Media Authority has fined Nokia for sending spam-filled text messages to its customers. Nokia had been sending messages with tips on how customers could take advantage of their phones’ features, Reuters said Tuesday, but the government agreed Nokia should allow its customers to opt out of receiving the messages. “Some businesses are still not …
Twitter finally appears to be preparing a new wave of attacks on the malicious spammers that have overrun the popular social network during the past year. Web security firm Dasient on Monday announced that it has been acquired by Twitter. “Since its inception, Dasient has been focused on solving web-scale security problems involving malware and other types of …
