National Spam News

There's a new phishing scheme making the rounds that employs voip. In this version, you receive an email that asks you to call a phone number. The marks call the number, and find themselves in a voicemail system that seems like a legitimate bank, but in fact belongs to the phishers. Voip is used because voip services are easier to anonymize, making it harder to track down the phishers. See Phishing Attacks Use VoIP Systems To Dupe Users, for one story.

Amusing column in USA Today: Don't be that person helping keep spam alive. Columnist Andrew Kantor points out the obvious: there wouldn't be a spam problem if stupid people didn't buy things from spammers.

Gambling industry organization International Gaming Affiliate Marketing Initiative has blacklisted online casino 888.com for what it calls "unethical marketing techniques" — namely messageboard spamming. Full story in Silicon.com article Web casino blacklisted for 'messageboard spam'. It's nice to see someone taking web spamming seriously.

Silicon.com reports that Jeanson James Ancheta, who pled guilty in January to operating a network of hundreds of thousands of zombie computers, has been sentenced to nearly five years in prison. According to the article, Ancheta even infected military computers at China Lake*. Ancheta was ordered to pay the US Navy $15,000 in damages. Also covered by the L.A. Times.