Nov
11
Estonian spammer Urmo Mark whining
Took me almost a year to notice
http://urmomark.com/2013/12/25/atro-tossavainen-soome-emaili-turundajate-ristiruutel-suomen-sahkoposti-markkinoijat-crusader/
Nov
01
Regarding responsibilities in affiliate marketing
Quite some time back, the Data Protection Ombudsman in Finland has issued a position paper on affiliate marketing and the division of responsibilities therein. The document is naturally in Finnish only. The core message is following the money; holding the owners of the advertised products and services responsible for the processing of personal data in such situations. This is nice when (as so often happens) the affiliate marketers violate all laws on the books, remaining anonymous, not including anything on the file of personal data they use, spamming, etc.
Oct
12
The Democratic Governors Assocation: Spamming
The Democratic Governors Association (DGA), an arm of the U.S. Democratic political party whose goal is to elect Democrats as governors of U.S. States, is spamming heavily on behalf of political campaigns across the country. Their ESP is Silverpop, currently owned by IBM.
Oct
12
Paragon Software: Suddenly Emailing Spamtraps
Paragon Software Group, which sells a superb set of hard disk management utilities that I have used for many years, has unfortunately hired an email marketer, presumably in hopes of improving sales. The email marketer is currently emailing email addresses that have not been live in more than ten years. There is no ESP involved; Paragon is sending this email from their own IPs at Demos Internet in the Russian Federation.
Oct
11
Shellshock Restrictions Lifted: Comments Allowed
It looks like WordPress and our security software have done whatever testing and updates are necessary to prevent shellshock compromises to WordPress, so comments are again enabled on this site.
Sep
27
Temporary Shellshock Restrictions
I have turned off comments on this blog for the present till the new Shellshock vulnerability is completely assessed and thoroughly patched. WordPress is based on PHP, and uses shell calls. I don’t know that WordPress comments are vulnerable to exploitation of this bug, but until I’m sure we won’t take that chance. Thank you for your patience!
Sep
22
Regus Finland still spamming
Regus still spamming, still through Edatis, still using purchased lists.
Spamming IP: 83.136.212.5
Read more…
Sep
18
How to hijack social media accounts without any hacking required
Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and any number of smaller social networks we don’t even know all seem to suffer from the same problem: ignoring the fact that domains cease to exist.
Only just today, I’ve spotted mail from LinkedIn to many accounts in over a dozen spamtrap domains. Twitter likewise, and Facebook, even more. I imagine that having control of these email addresses, I could “reset password” in all of those accounts if I wanted to, and therefore gain control over most of them (if they aren’t using two-factor authentication, such as that LinkedIn offers). How is this in the interest of the social networks or the account owners?
Sep
17
eBay: Emailing “You Won!” to a Spamtrap
eBay, the world’s garage sale, just sent email to a spamtrap notifying it that it had won an auction. eBay has no ESP to blame for its failure to notice that a user’s email address died at least three years ago, and the domain itself at least eighteen months ago. eBay sent this email from its own IPs.
Sep
08
EmailVision: Continuing the Payday Loan Spam Tirade
As mentioned on this site earlier, EmailVision now seems to be one of the ESPs of choice for the payday loan spam industry.