Fri, 06 Feb 2004

Stop the Cash Flow, Kill the Spam

I've had questions about using this (obvious) enforcement mechanism: doesn't this open the door for a new kind of attack? For example: rather than crafting a virus to attack SCO or Microsoft, couldn't a hacker just start sending mass quantities of SPAM on their behalf?

Of course the companies would disclaim any knowledge of this, but how would they prove it legally? Larger companies in more mainstream businesses would be less effected, but I could see where an attacker could hold a small vitamin supplement company hostage with a threat to start spamming.

Although spammers are using ever-more-sophisticated methods to flood your inbox, tracking the miscreants down isn't all that complicated. Just follow the money. By Kari L. Dean.

(link) [Wired News]

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Notes: If you put a <mailto:> link in the URL field your address will not be mangled: this could be a bad idea as your email address could be easily harvested by bots designed for SPAM. The comments field should now format correctly for line feeds and carriage returns: when you hit the 'Enter' or 'Return' keys in your comment it should break to a new line. The text should wrap cleanly. Please let me know if it doesn't. No HTML tags will pass through - entering links seems to be the main cause of comment SPAM. Also, please be sure that Javascript is enabled in your browser before attempting to post a writeback. Sorry for any inconvenience, but this really helps cut down on the amount of comment SPAM I have to deal with.
 
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