If you hate spam, you'll love this!

Man Described As Top Spammer Arrested

A 27-year-old man described as one of the world's top spammers was arrested Wednesday, a development that federal authorities said could lead to an immediate, perceptible decrease in the amount of junk e-mail winging its way across the Web.

He's one of the top 10 spammers in the world," said Tim Cranton, a Microsoft Corp. lawyer who is senior director of the company's Worldwide Internet Safety Programs. "He's a huge problem for our customers. This is a very good day."

Robert Alan Soloway's arrest came a week after a federal grand jury returned a 35-count indictment charging him with mail fraud, wire fraud, e-mail fraud, aggravated identity theft and money laundering. He's accused of using networks of compromised computers to send out millions upon millions of junk e-mails since 2003. He continued his activities even after Microsoft won a $7 million civil judgment against him in 2005 and Robert Brauer, the operator of a small Internet service provider in western Oklahoma, won a $10 million judgment, prosecutors said.

U.S. Attorney Jeff Sullivan said Wednesday the case is the first in the country in which federal prosecutors have used identity theft statutes to prosecute a spammer for taking over someone else's Internet domain name, and it would mean at least an extra two years on Soloway's sentence if he is convicted. He could face decades in prison, though prosecutors said they have not calculated what guideline sentencing range he might face.

You can read the rest of the article at Forbes.com.

I think the key here is the identity theft charge. That's exactly what spoofing is. And it's incredibly damaging to the businesses who have had their domain names compromised.

We'll see where this goes and how long it takes to get there. But for now. . . chalk one up for the good guys.

By the way, let me know if you notice "an immediate, perceptible decrease in the amount of junk e-mail" you receive.

Brainstorm: Has your email been spoofed?

The May issue of Brainstorm! is out.

• Email spoofing: A spammer's best friend
• More Smart Tools: Our favorites for your business
• Recommended book & blog: Duct Tape Marketing
• Kayda the Newshound: Updates, news & announcements

Are you signing it right?

My friend Reg Gupton reminds us to "Sign it right" in this post on his blog, Reg Gupton's Success Tips.

Every day I receive emails from folks without email signatures nor following accepted email etiquette. Look here for a post I wrote some time ago on the "rules of the email road"

That said, one of the biggest mistakes I see is not having a proper and complete email signature.

See below for a sample of one that meets CAN-SPAM and provides all your prospects and others the information they need to contact you.

This is especially true if you have an AOL, juno or yahoo acct which does not display your name in the "from" line of most email programs.

Reg Gupton, MBA
Coach, consultant, trainer
Creative Growth Seminars
1900 13th Suite 302
Boulder, CO 80302

A couple of years ago, I wrote an article outlining the rules of the CAN-SPAM Act that still apply today. It's good to be reminded of what information every business email should include.

Image spam - example 2

I have a really good spam filter on my email, but this one still got through with the subject: "Re: a question" from Dr. William Clark.It included some random nonsense words in text at the bottom, but that was about it. Notice the instructions not to click on a link. That's because there's no link to click on. That's pretty much how it was able to get through the filters.

Just what I needed -- more crap!

Spam 2.0 - The rise in "image spam"

As if we didn't get enough junk in our email boxes already, now another form of spam jumps into the frying pan. If you haven't seen it already, you will. It's image spam where images are used in place of text.
As anti-spam tools that use content filters to weed out unsolicited e-mails proliferate, those people responsible for creating the messages continue to increasingly adopt image spam. By sending e-mails that contain no text, only pictures, scammers have found that they can evade many security systems, according to San Carlos, Calif.-based messaging management vendor Postini Inc. The messages often include image files that have a screen shot offering the same types of information advertised in more traditional text-based spam.

Depending on what stats you read, image-based spam accounts for 15% to 25% of all spam, compared with just 1% in late 2005.

Unsavory marketers are deploying image-based spam because it is harder to detect than text-based spam, and consumers are more likely to read an e-mail with a picture or graphic, says Craig Sprosts of anti-spam vendor IronPort Systems. Remember, most search engines or other software can't "read" or comprehend images the way the human brain can.

The newest spam uses technology that varies the content of individual messages — through colors, backgrounds, picture sizes or font types — so they appear to be distinct to spam filters. The spam is delivered to consumers and companies through millions of compromised PCs, called bots.

As software gets better at identifying and blocking spam, spammers get smarter at outfoxing software. "It is a never-ending cat-and-mouse game," says Dmitri Alperovitch of e-mail security company CipherTrust.

Why should you care?

Well, for one thing, image spam uses up more resources like bandwidth and storage space than traditional text-based spam. Your email box could fill up more quickly, bouncing messages you want to receive.

More importantly, this type of spam makes it more difficult for legitimate commercial emails using images to get through. It's already challenging to get quality emails through spam filters. As software is developed to filter out image spam, how well will it differentiate legitimate html emails with pictures from crap?

I mean really -- I put a lot of thought and time into my email blasts. They're not spam!

Apologizing for something I didn't do

This domain spoofing is really getting out of hand! Things seemed to be quieting down a bit and I was getting less and less bounces for emails I didn't send.

But today things are heating up again. I've gotten nearly 300 bounces and it's only 11:00 a.m. MST. No, I don't have a virus. I have triple virus protection on all my computers and run a full scan at least once a week. No, I didn't really send out all that f***ing spam!

I feel like screaming, "I DIDN'T DO IT! IT'S NOT ME! I'M SORRY!"

There's gotta be a way to stop this. It's making me crazy! And my ISP says there's nothing I can do.

So, I'm apologizing to the world for something I didn't do. Anyone out in cyberland who's gotten some stupid spam from someone @wholebraintech.com... It wasn't me!

Email Spoofing - I Hate It!!!

My domain name has been spoofed for email and it's driving me crazy! I get tons of bounces every day to email addresses like tuvabc@wholebrain..., email addresses that don't really exist - just random letters at my domain.

Someone in cyber world has hijacked my domain for the purpose of spamming and it really pisses me off! People all over the world are getting spam with my domain on it - my company name! I can tell by the addresses the bounces come from. I imagine millions of emails with my domain as the return address going out everyday with this crap. I feel violated! How dare someone do this to me -- or to anyone!

The worst thing about it is that there's not much I can do about it. It's so frustrating!! Especially for someone who's supposed to be tech-savvy. I can try to find out who is posing as someone from my company and sending this garbage, but then what? Ask them to stop? Yeah sure. Hire a lawyer and sue? An expensive proposition. Cross my fingers and hope my domain doesn't get blacklisted? For now, that's my only option. No matter how you look at it, the alternatives suck.

I've talked with several people about the issue, researched online, and these are the best explanations I've found. Not much help.

Spoofing: Identity Crisis

About Email Hijack, Spoofing and Phishing

Spoofed by Spammers - below article is a reprint from
Doctor Ebiz
Helping Small Business Succeed Online
Dr. Ralph F. Wilson, Editor, Wilson Internet Services
A Free Wilson Info E-zine ISSN 1529-3203
http://www.doctorebiz.com

Spoofed by the Spammers
"What can a company do when its domain name has been spoofed? In the past three days, we have received over 1,200 bounced emails that appear to have come from us.

"The e-mails are for a refinancing company. I have tried to trace the e-mails through the headers, but they are masked. I even tried submitting a phony refinance request to see if I can get them to call me.

"How can I get this to stop? How can I report these people? And how can I avoid our domain getting blacklisted as a spammer for something someone did to us? If this can happen to a little company like ours, it is happening to others as well." -- Angie Keating, Reclamere, Inc.

You're not alone; this has happened to me, also. To research your question, I consulted with Laura Atkins of Word to the Wise, LLC, an expert on e-mail abuse and deliverability issues. She said that most public blacklists don't list the spammer's domain name but his IP address instead, that spammers sometimes use open proxies overseas that hide their true IP address

It's possible that your domain might be listed in some blacklist somewhere, but if no one is actually bouncing your mail as a result, you don't need worry too much about it. When your mail is being blocked, however, you must take action.

Unfortunately, there's not much recourse for people with this problem. To nab the spammers doing this to you, you must "follow the money," determine who is benefiting monetarily from the spam. Then get yourself an Internet-savvy lawyer and take the spammer to court.

In California and some other states, there is a specific law that makes it illegal to spoof the return address, making it easier to go after such spammers. Otherwise your court case would have to be based on case law rather than existing statutes, an even more expensive proposition.

I encourage you to lobby your legislators for effective federal laws against spamming that (1) aren't watered down so much by the direct marketing industry that they don't do any good, but at the same time (2) are not so restrictive that they make it impossible to conduct legitimate, opt-in e-mail marketing.