FREE Outlook Express Spam Filter

They are able to broaden online listings exposure, do more thorough traffic analysis, and benefit from more robust e-mail solution

RISMEDIA, May 22, 2006—iHOUSE Web Solutions, a division of CIS Data Systems™, Inc., and a leader in real estate web site design, hosting, and online marketing services, announced an expansion of the features and functionality of its iHOUSE template-based websites for real estate professionals. Dozens of new, customizable designs are now possible with the new layouts and graphic elements that have been added to the image library. Expanded business functionality includes email enhancements, more online listings options, and advanced website traffic tracking capabilities.

“To strengthen our position as the premier online marketing solution for real estate professionals, we have greatly expanded the iHOUSE website design choices as well as the practical business functionality, at no additional cost to our customers” says Paul Sheng, CEO. “We are especially pleased to offer our new webmail service, iMail, because this vital communications tool has a major impact on their daily business operations. And its functionality now rivals Google’s gMail.”

The iHOUSE iMail service now provides 1GB of capacity for each webmail account and also includes a new spam-blocker that allows a user to mark certain mail as “spam” or “not spam,” which trains the filters for that particular mailbox. The spam blocker service uses best-in-class technology, effectively blocking over a 1 million spam messages each day. Additional iMail features include HTML-enabled editing capabilities, receiving notifications on computer desktops when email is received, the ability to check other email accounts from iMail, and the ability to have messages automatically highlighted when received from certain individuals.

In addition to its basic traffic reports, iHOUSE has also recently launched a new Traffic Analyzer report that offers more advanced traffic tracking capabilities. Key features enable customers to review daily and monthly traffic statistics for the entire website, define the reporting period to be viewed, and track page-specific traffic. Users can also see the online origin of their web site visitors—direct entry, bookmarks, search engines and links from other sites—as well as which search engines have recently indexed their sites. Updated every eight hours, this data will assist iHOUSE customers with their online marketing initiatives.

“Adding these features, along with the ability to easily post listings on Yahoo!, Oodle, and Trulia real estate search engines…

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Which words and phrases should be avoided?

Madeline Bennett, IT Week 22 May 2006

Electronic marketing specialist Email Reaction has launched a spam vocabulary guide, to help firms prevent legitimate emails from being consigned to trash folders.

According to Email Reaction’s research, seemingly innocent words that could count against firms in the eyes of mail filters include acceptance, degrees, dollars, presently and trademarks.

Spam filters score words based on how likely messages including them are junk. The filters then combine word scores along with factors such as the sender’s details, to judge whether the message is legitimate.

The research found that certain common business terms increase the chance of emails being blocked, such as organisation, percent, statements and transaction. Hotmail, Paypal, Amazon and eBay were identified as companies most often mentioned in junk mail, while Nigeria was the most common country.

Vicky Carne, Email Reaction’s managing director, advised firms to run keyword checks to identify ways messages might be edited to improve their chances of being delivered to…

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Partners will deliver revamped Spam Cube 2.0 with anti-phishing technology

Robert Jaques, vnunet.com 23 May 2006

Anti-spam gadget vendor Spam Cube has joined forces with internet services company Netcraft to boost the efficiency of its hardware.

Spam Cube 2.0, which will debut in November, has integrated Netcraft’s anti-phishing technology into its firmware, giving “added punch” to its existing offerings.

The technology from Netcraft will form part of Spam Cube’s optional Security OnDemand service, which will remain at the same annual price of $52.

Existing subscribers to Security OnDemand will be able automatically to update to the new technology at no extra cost.

Joseph P. Marino, chief executive at Spam Cube, said that the rate of phishing for passwords and other personal information via fake emails has increased dramatically in the past year.

Mandy Davis, operations manager at Netcraft, added: “It is becoming more and more difficult for the average person to detect a phishing attack.

“Phishers are constantly refining their emails and fake banking sites, which can now fool all but the most careful and experienced surfers. Netcraft’s database provides real-time protection from phishing…

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Russia’s best antivirus weapon, Kaspersky Internet Security 6, adds firewall, antispam, and antispyware capabilities

Neil J. Rubenking - PC Magazine

May 15

Quick—think of three antivirus programs. Are they all from American companies? If so, you may want to broaden your horizons. This full-scale security suite from Moscow adds spyware protection, a spam filter, and a powerful firewall to the well-respected Kaspersky Anti-Virus (KAV)—a household name in Russia and Europe but less well known in the U.S.

Independent antivirus testing labs give KAV high marks. West Coast Labs awarded it Checkmark certification for virus detection and removal as well as for Trojan and spyware detection. ICSA Labs certifies it for virus detection, and Virus Bulletin has given it the VB100% award. You won’t find the protection for private data or the parental control that many other suites offer, but all the essentials are there.

KAV includes features designed to block as yet unknown threats, commonly called zero-day attacks. Real-world tests by AVtest.org show that the antivirus really is effective against such assaults (and the company is quicker than most to boil a new threat down into an identifying signature).

KAV saves time by scanning only new files and those that have changed since the last scan. With previous versions, that could cause problems. The method used to mark files as having been scanned, Alternate Data Streams, caused some other detection tools to report that a malicious rootkit might be present. Though Kaspersky maintains there’s no way that malware could have taken advantage of the technology, the company now uses a different approach. The speedup in scanning is impressive; I haven’t seen anything quite like it in other security products.—Continue reading

Scanning For Spies

Whereas ZoneAlarm scans for viruses and spyware separately—which annoys me—the Kaspersky AV module checks for viruses, spyware, Trojans, and other types of rogue code simultaneously. You can scan the entire system, critical areas only, or just start-up objects—either on demand or on a schedule ranging from once every 5 minutes to once a month. And—Zone Labs, are you listening?—the scanner throttles back when the system gets busy.

You certainly want to perform regular scans, but the real-time protection should catch any malware before it can do harm. KAV examines every file you access, whether on local, removable, or network drives. It also scans incoming and outgoing POP3/SMTP or IMAP e-mail so that viruses never reach your inbox, and it can optionally delete or rename potentially hazardous attachment types. A Web antivirus tool strips malware out of incoming HTML streams.

A full scan on my clean standard test system took about 24 minutes, but a repeat scan finished in under half a minute because it didn’t have to recheck unchanged files. I went on to challenge the antivirus with 15 spyware samples and half a dozen commercial keyloggers.

The suite kept all but one spyware sample from installing on the clean system, wiping out several installers before they could even launch. On already infested systems it missed one threat and failed to remove another but handled the other 13. It did leave behind some nonexecutable files and Registry keys. An annoying number of warnings popped up during scanning—I would have preferred to handle all threats after the scan completed. Several test systems rebooted spontaneously during the scanning and removal procedure. That was slightly alarming, but after restarting the scan, the process picked up where it left off—nice!

The utility didn’t handle the commercial keyloggers nearly as well, nor did it do as well as its competition. On the already infected machine it completely missed three keyloggers and failed to remove the other three. But because it successfully prevented two from logging keystrokes or performing any other activities, I gave it credit for removing the pair. On a clean system it prevented the installation of two keyloggers, tried but failed to block three others, and missed the last.

Still, against actual spyware, its performance was on a par with that of Editors’ Choice products Spyware Doctor and Spy Sweeper. Overall, Kaspersky blocked malware installations better than McAfee (the best blocker in our last suite roundup) and removed nearly as many threats as Norton (the best suite for removal).—Continue reading

Opening Fire on the Firewall

Next I torture-tested the firewall, which is part of the Anti-Hacker and Proactive Defense modules. As expected, it put all of my test system’s ports in stealth mode, making them invisible to outside attack. On installation it identified over three dozen essential applications and preconfigured their permissions, but I still had to deal with plenty of confirmation pop-ups. Once those quieted down I probed the firewall’s response to a dozen leak test programs—and it failed utterly, because Proactive Defense is off by default!

With the feature turned on, it blocked all but one of the leak tests—impressive. But with this level of protection it also cried wolf quite a bit, posting dire warnings about completely innocuous programs. That’s not surprising—ZoneAlarm Pro’s OS Firewall protects against leak tests in a similar fashion and it, too, tends to hand-wave about innocent events.

I tried to disable the firewall as a malicious program might do, but I couldn’t terminate its process with Task Manager, couldn’t stop its low-level service, and couldn’t fool it by tweaking the Registry. Sending fake mouse events to open the main console and turn off the firewall was the only trick that worked—not a likely scenario in the real world.—Continue reading

You Can’t Have Any Pudding If You Don’t Eat Your Spam

Like many security suites, this one is weakest in spam analysis. The antispam feature processes POP3 or IMAP mail accounts for any e-mail client, but integrates specifically with Outlook, Outlook Express, or The Bat!. You start off by training the filter—either giving it a folder of valid messages or marking messages as Spam or Not Spam. The main window lets you know when you’ve trained enough. The antispam engine can read your Address Book into a whitelist and also automatically add addresses that you send to or mark as Not Spam. Additionally, you can blacklist specific addresses or domains. It assigns each message a spam score by analyzing content, images, and header data; you can optionally enable scoring on other criteria such as the presence of scripts, very small fonts, or invisible characters. Based on the score, it flags messages as spam or probable spam.

I trained the antispam module with several hundred spam and valid messages from two real-world accounts, then let it process over a thousand incoming messages. I examined the Inbox and spam folders, tallying up definite valid messages and blatant spam, discarding any that didn’t clearly fit either category. Fooey! One valid message in eight got tossed into the spam box—including an important HMO notification—and one in six spam messages weaseled its way into the Inbox. These figures don’t even count the dozens of valid newsletters and other commercial messages that were marked as spam, since these would normally be rescued by whitelisting.
—Continue reading

And the Winner Is…

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By JOHN TORRO
Published May 15, 2006

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I have a 3-year-old Compaq Presario 900 laptop. The keyboard became incredibly hot recently. I investigated what could be wrong on the Net, and it came up with a thermal pad/heat sink possible problem. On the bottom of my laptop, I have a cracked black sticky pad, which is the thermal pad. Not wanting to fool around with this, I called Compaq and was told to remove all my info on a disc and download a new BIOS system, which I did not do, as I could not understand how this related to overheating. I took the laptop to a tech, who could not duplicate the problem. It was okay for about a week, but again the keyboard got hot. Can you give me an idea of what I need to do?

I would follow the advice of Compaq support. Perhaps it knows about some problem with the BIOS that could be affecting how it controls the cooling system. I also recommend calling Compaq again and having it explain exactly what is dictating this strategy. It could be a faulty exhaust fan that is starting to fail intermittently. Try to observe if it is functioning it does not run all the time. It should be visible from the bottom of the laptop. In any event, it is a good idea to back up whatever files you cannot replace ASAP, as it sounds as if there is a problem with the laptop.

‘Bad sector’ report indicates defective disc

I ran a Scandisk on my C drive, and it reported a large number of bad sectors. What does this mean? It seems to run fine.

The bad sector reporting from Scandisk indicates a real problem with your hard drive. Sometimes this can be caused by configuration problems, firmware problems or even a bad power supply. But mostly it is a sign of a disc drive that is at least partly defective. If future runs of Scandisk report a growing number of bad sectors, it is a bad sign and your drive’s days are numbered. I’d recommend backing up your personal data (data that can not be reproduced from some other media) and plan on replacing the drive. On the other hand, if the number of bad sectors does not increase, you may have some life remaining on the drive. But back up your data either way and be prepared.

Cable connection will enable tape-to-PC transfer

You answered in your column (Dec. 19) how to do a vinyl-to-PC transfer. I need to transfer tape to PC. What do I need to do?

Very simply, you’ll need a cable to connect your cassette’s audio-out connector to your computer sound card’s line-in connector. This will most likely be an RCA to 1/8-inch patch cable (you can buy it at any electronics store such as Radio Shack).

You will need software on your PC that will record the input to disc. They are many such programs, and I recommend doing some online research first to help determine your specific needs. A good place to start is www.homerecording.com. There are some businesses that will do this for you, saving you the time and trouble, but probably at greater expense.

System restore is solution for Hacktool virus

I have a virus that defies extinction. The name is Hacktool, and Norton cannot defeat this virus. Neither can many other virus eliminators.

You must be speaking of Hacktool. rootkit. If you’re infected, the recommended recovery is a system restore. Symantec recovery information on this virus can be found at www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc /data/hacktool.rootkit.html. It is important to keep your system’s antivirus protection active and up to date.

Spam filter might be flagging new mail

At times when I check my mail, at the bottom right corner a message says “checking mail.” Then a message states that I have mail but it doesn’t get to my inbox (Outlook Express, Windows XP Home).

Check your Deleted or Junk Mail folder (if you have one). Perhaps you have spam detection enabled at some point, through built-in rules within Outlook Express…

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Symantec’s latest package to protect your data and web experience

By Don Lee

As long as your computer is hooked up to the internet, your system will be vulnerable to viruses, spyware and other unwanted files and programs. You have to be vigilant towards keeping your computer system clean but it also helps when you have a program that can assist you in protecting your important files.

Hackers and virus writers will never stop creating new ways to get into your computer, so you need the stop them before they attack. This is why Symantec released the Norton Internet Security package. This collection of programs is targeted towards the everyday user looking to secure and maintain their system’s integrity.

A Closer Look

The package contains Norton AntiVirus, Norton Personal Firewall, Norton Privacy Control, Norton AntiSpam and Norton Parental Control. These five programs are designed to work together towards creating maximum protection of your data. Let’s take a closer look into each program.

Norton AntiVirus has been a staple of computer usage for years. Norton AntiVirus has been protecting millions of computer users daily. Using its LiveUpdate feature, Norton AntiVirus can protect your system from the latest viruses, spyware and it can even look inside of compressed files. The program also protects you from instant messaging file attachments (although you should never accept file attachments from anyone you don’t know). This is the program most associate with the Symantec/Norton name and for good reason…it works.

Norton Firewall helps keep those prying eyes away from your data by hiding your PC and helps prevent outsiders from accessing your system. You may be prompted at times to allow access by some of your installed programs to register products or to log onto numerous websites. When you are prompted, you have the choice of allowing access, preventing access or permitting certain access. You should be wary of the activity you are performing on the internet and that you don’t permit access to unknown sources.

Norton Privacy Control works to provide a more secure way to control cookies as well as other personal information that you would want to protect. When you attempt to send certain types of data such as credit card information or social security number, the program will inform you that this specific data is being requested. You will then be given the opportunity to allow the data to be transferred or you can choose to block the information from going through.

Norton AntiSpam is a new program to my experience with Norton products. I use the latest version of MS Outlook Express and if you’ve ever used it, you’re probably aware that the mail program doesn’t come with any mail filters to help combat spam. You need to create custom mail filters based on a variety of factors such as sender, subject line, body content and more.

The last program in the suite is called Norton Parental Control. This program was designed to help control access for your children. You can let the program set the types of offensive websites you wish to block as well add websites to the blocked list as you surf the web. Parental Control offers control over access to internet programs and even newsgroups. You can add websites and newsgroups to your blocked list from Internet Explorer’s toolbar. Norton installs two quick access panels to the web browser’s address bar during installation…

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When President Bush signed the federal anti-spam bill (the CAN-SPAM Act) in December, the White House hailed the law as providing “a well-balanced approach” that will help curb spam. But if a previous federal ban on junk faxes, included in the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) of 1991, is any guide, e-mail spammers are unlikely to relent soon and may well prosper by staving off enforcement through lengthy legal battles.

Our investigation found that even though TCPA is stricter than CAN-SPAM, consumers are still suffering a junk-fax plague. Since 1999, the FCC has issued roughly 200 citations to companies for sending unwanted faxes. One such company, Fax.com–which one of its lawyers, David B. Felsenthal, says is based in Southern California–was fined $5.4 million by the FCC in January for 489 violations. The FCC called the company’s primary business activity “a massive ongoing violation” of the TCPA. Yet Fax.com is still in business.

“You don’t have to give out your number,” said Robert H. Braver, of Norman, Okla., who owns an Internet service provider and runs Junkfaxes.org, a consumer-advocacy Web site. “Plug in your fax machine and they will find you.”

Doug McKenna, a software developer in Boulder, Colo., has sued fax advertisers whose local businesses were being promoted. He says that the industry is profitable enough for mass faxers to assume the risk of lawsuits. “These guys play the odds, and they win for the most part,” McKenna said.

As with spam, faxing to thousands of people costs very little. Even with a minuscule response, it can be profitable, since recipients supply the paper and ink.

Fax.com, which says that its database includes 16 million fax numbers, has been not only pursued by the FCC but also sued by state attorneys general, lawyers filing class-action cases, and individuals. The firm fought back by arguing that TCPA is unconstitutional. Mr. Felsenthal, who defended Fax.com against a suit filed by the state of Missouri, said that TCPA is so restrictive that it impedes free speech. “It eliminates an entire field of advertising,” he said.

Many junk faxes promote services from companies whose brands aren’t household names. But as we found when we investigated e-mail spammers last year, even a well-known company with policies against the practice may unwittingly participate in the junk-fax blitz. Safe & Secure Protection, a home security shop in Pomona, N.Y., recently faxed an ad via a company called Impact Marketing Solutions containing a seal that read, “Authorized Dealer, ADT Security Services.” (Impact Marketing Solutions is an offshoot of Fax.com, says Steve Kirsch, founder of Junkfax.org, a consumer-advocacy site.) We forwarded the fax to ADT, which said it prohibits mass faxing and would take disciplinary action against Safe & Secure.

Larry Silberman, one of Safe & Secure’s owners, said that he has stopped sending mass faxes since talking to our reporter. Mr. Silberman also said that Impact Marketing Solutions told him that many people are misinterpreting TCPA and that the company had never lost a lawsuit. The record shows otherwise.

In May 2003, the law firm of Covington & Burling was awarded a $2.3 million judgment against Fax.com. In March 2003, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis shot down the company’s free-speech argument in the Missouri case. Fax.com asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case. As we went to press, the Court denied the request…

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It is way past time for the internet community to do something serious about spam and phishing attacks. The problem has gone way beyond spam now. Spam itself was quite annoying. We’ve all waded through hundreds, if not thousands, of emails in our inboxes, trying to find the legitimate emails that we wanted. Even all the anti-spam software, spam filters and schemes for authenticating inbound email and making senders click links to verify real people didn’t really stop spam, because the spammers got creative. They said, “We can send emails with keywords that aren’t spelled in a way filters will recognize, or we can send a message that looks like a lot of text, but it’s really just a graphic, so there are no keywords to filter out.” They can come up with any number of other tricks to keep sending spam to honest internet users all over the world. And they do.

For a long time, I was a proponent of the puzzle solution to ending spam, and to some extent I still am, but let me explain why the puzzle solution is not enough. The puzzle solution is designed to add friction to the sending of email by placing a processing burden on outbound mail servers. Essentially, it would slow mail servers so that spammers could never send 10 million emails in one day. It changes the economics of sending spam. Let’s face it: Spam is really an economic question. The only reason spammers are sending spam is because it pays off. If you can change the economics so that it no longer pays off, then they will stop sending spam. They will go off and do something else to con people out of money, but they won’t be sending spam.

Right now, spam is profitable, and that’s why it persists. It’s profitable because it’s cheap to send and because some foolish people still click on spam and buy products from spammers. They are just as much to blame for this problem as the spammers themselves. It only takes one idiot out of 1,000 people clicking a spam email and buying a product to make it financially justifiable for that spammer to send 10 million more emails. In effect, one person can bankroll spam that will affect millions of other people. This is what’s happening today all across the internet.

Phishing is identity theft via spam

Then, something new and horrifying came on the scene. Of course, I’m talking about “phishing.” Phishing is really identity theft, and it’s where spammers got even more creative. They said, “Hey, why make money selling products when we can just send emails to people and act like we’re from their bank?” They get people to log in and type in their username, password and identity information. Then phishers use that information to log in to people’s bank accounts and transfer money to offshore accounts.

This is phishing, and it’s a huge problem. I must get two or three phishing emails from con artists every day. Of course, I ignore them. Most of them are from banks that I don’t bank with. But every once in a while, something comes in from a bank that I do bank with. It’s pretty convincing stuff. If I were a new user to the internet, or if I wasn’t covering this kind of topic, I might click on it and I think it was legitimate. It all looks legitimate. The logo is there, and the domain name looks right. It all looks very official. These scammers are very good and creating these official-looking “phishing” websites. In fact, they’re making a living doing it, and I’m sure they’re making a very good living, because many people log in. They’ll give their usernames, passwords and social security numbers right to the con artists.

Then, it’s over. The con artists have got you. They’ve got everything they need to make your life miserable from that day forward in terms of your finances and your credit rating. Once your identity is stolen, it is very difficult to get your finances back in order.

By the way, if you want to know how to beat identity theft, credit fraud, phishing scams and other threats to your finances and personal safety, definitely check out our downloadable Real Safety Guides…

(more info…)

Softomate, leading software development services company, has launched new service in custom software products line — custom Outlook Express add-ons development. The service aims at providing Outlook Express users with custom software that will add unique functionality to OE and make it more productive and suitable for specific user needs.

Lynden, USA, May 2, 2006 — Softomate, leading software development services provider, announced Custom Outlook Express addons development service launched to design custom software products for Outlook Express mail client users. Those products will add more functions to Outlook Express and let customize it the way user needs. Outlook Express gives great possibility of customization through third-party addons. Outlook Express addons blend seamlessly to OE user interface and add new specific productive features, increasing Outlook Express work process effectiveness. Addons let automate some routine operations or develop unusual unique solution with custom additional functions.

Websites can offer their customers Outlook Express toolbar with custom functions that will help to use website services or get information from the website directly from OE toolbar. Companies can customize and improve their corporate Outlook Express software for corporate intranet or extranet: create custom user interface, add custom company logo, custom buttons and menus; automate information transfer and management. Outlook Express addons are helpful software for companies that provide services by e-mail. The custom addons can automatically sort and manage incoming and outgoing messages to make communication process quick and convenient.

The announced service let add custom logo, custom toolbar buttons and menus that give quick access to necessary information (news, subscriptions and etc.), Google or Yahoo search feature, news, weather, yellow pages or other information search, RSS reader; add features that let organize and manage messages sending and receiving process by adding e-mail spam filter, bulk responder, mail notification function, contacts and attachment management addons, messages grouping, and other unique features; create addons that allow importing or exporting address book data; integrate Outlook Express with another software to combine their functions in one user…

(more info…)

BY STEVE JOHNSON
Chicago Tribune
A simple “hey” is often effective. Hey, this sounds like a friend e-mailing, even if I don’t know any Gerard Correa.

A tantalizing ellipsis can do the trick, as in “Why didn’t you … ” Why didn’t I what? I’ll bite.

And the appeal to prurient interests, even if it’s ridiculous, can work: “FW: Pam Anderson is in your neighborhood!” Well, I guess I’d kick myself if it happened to be true …

The art of sending spam, assuming you can bob and weave your way through spam filters, lies in getting your target to at least open your message. He’ll never help restore you to the Nigerian monarchy if he doesn’t first see a subject heading that causes him to hit Enter, rather than Delete.

Over the last few months, I’ve been keeping a close watch on the spam that does ooze into my inbox, and the headings that work most often contain mystery, flattery or the illusion of familiarity.

“You’re great.” “Fan.” “Mr. Jerry Williams” - the name of a Boston AM radio host I listened to many nights as a kid. I opened them all, only to find the usual assortment of stock tips, digital sex come-ons and Canadian online pharmacies. As for Jerry Williams, different guy: This one’s an erudite Liberian millionaire who just needed to borrow my bank account for a bit.

Curiously, “Stupid moron” also worked on me, because some version of these words is a favored greeting of many readers. This particular message, though, wasn’t about something I’d written.

It wanted to sell me avian flu remedies, apparently on the truth-in-advertising proposition that I’d be what the heading called me if I actually sent in some cash.

COMEDY OF INEPTITUDE

The headings that don’t work often do in a different sense: as a comedy of ineptitude.

For instance: I assume that the bulk e-mail field is not stealing top candidates from the nation’s medical schools, but “Free Gasoline!”?

Then there was “Pro-forma Invoice attached,” which just might sound official to those folks who don’t know what “pro-forma” means.

A certain Kendall Burton Jennings asked “Did you call me today?” Even conventional advertisers should never ask a question to which the reader can respond with a quick negative. They certainly shouldn’t do it in the skepticism-drenched world of e-mail, using a name more appropriate to a Southern courtroom.

And what of “Your paypall account has been suppended”? It’s possible, I suppose, that the security team for the online payment service gets so caught up in catching bad guys that it makes a typo now and again, or forgets to use spellcheck. It’s also possible that “suppend” is one of those terms coined in the Internet era, meaning, perhaps, “topped up with extra cash from a dot-com billionaire.” But it’s not likely.

Spam is the price we pay for the convenience and ease of e-mail. While spam-filtering software keeps getting better (Consumer Reports liked SpamCatcher 4), none of it does the job automatically.

And spam senders keep getting cannier and more menacing. They clutter our inboxes not only with pitches for purported Xanax but with explicit pornography and genuine scams.

GO PHISH

When spam turns to what’s known as phishing - trying to hoodwink you into providing personal information so you can be defrauded, as in the “PayPal” e-mail I quoted above - that’s when it stops being cute or merely annoying.

“Spamming, yes, it can be criminal, but it’s like jaywalking, practically,” said William Yerazunis, chairman of the recent fourth MIT Spam Conference. “Phishing is practically like armed robbery, and this form of robbery is on the increase.”

At the MIT conference, anti-spam tools were catching 99 percent and up of attempted spam in controlled tests, he said.

But phishing is a more dangerous category because all it takes is one, and the e-mails can mimic the look of, say, your bank’s Web site and possibly even seem to know something personal about you to set the hook.

“The game is not $39.95 for fake Viagra. The game is your savings account,” said Yerazunis, a scientist for Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs in Cambridge, Mass.

And it’s not just little old ladies with their first Dell who get scammed. He knows a “high-level systems analyst” who, during a bad day at work, got a purported e-mail from a bank he had been having an issue with and got sucked into the fraud vortex.

My particular moron moment came when I got an e-mail offering low mortgage rates at a time when I was looking to refinance. I clicked the link and filled out a form, and although I didn’t give away any credit-card information, many years later, I continue to get e-mails citing my actual address and mortgage amount.

(As for my habit of keeping passwords in a file labeled “passwords,” Yerazunis said, “Slap, slap, slap, slap. Just mail `em out. Save some time.”)

AVOID LINKS

To avoid phishing, he said, simply never click on a link in an e-mail. If you think something might be from your credit card company, call them, or go directly to their site, which you can find the real version of with a simple Google search.

Use a shredder for all documents, and check your credit report regularly. Yerazunis goes so far as to avoid Windows, with its security vulnerabilities, altogether.

Yet he still tallies anywhere from 10 percent to 40 percent…

(more info…)