But once a year
Christmas comes but once a year,... and the spammers make the most of it. This month there has been a significant surge in spam pushing "genuine fake Rolex watches" as the ideal Christmas present, but that isn't the only thing you have to watch out for.
Last week, almost immediately after the draw for next year's World Cup had been completed, the scammers rolled into operation sending out a flood of mails supposedly offering tickets for the matches and online HDTV viewing services. The scam involving online sports coverage is particularly nasty as not only do you get charged for something which will never materialise, but you are sent "viewing" software to install which converts your machine into a remote-controlled zombie which the scammers can add to their spam-generating network.
However, there is some good news in the battles against spammers in the shape of actions by Trading Standards officers. In Rainham, Essex, a woman who had bought some golf clubs off eBay complained to trading standards when the goods were faulty and she was unable to obtain the refund she was entitled to. Trading Standards officers identified the shoddy goods as counterfeits of a famous brand and its investigation uncovered the biggest ever counterfeiting operation yet discovered on eBay, identifying 96,000 transactions which had been carried out by the rogue trader over a five year period, netting millions of pounds for the crooks. Nearly every major golf brand was being counterfeited. Four people have been found guilty of masterminding this operation and will be sentenced in January.
Scotland Yard also became involved in scam-fighting last month when it worked with Nominet, the UK's domain registration body, to shut down 1,219 UK domains which were being used as a front by Asian counterfeit gangs offering a range of fake goods including copies of Ugg boots and designer jewellery. Using a UK domain name gives UK customers a false sense of security. However, whilst this shut-down operation caught the headlines, it will be little more than a minor inconvenience to the scammers and no arrests were made by the police. Unfortunately, it is still all too easy to register a UK domain name and attach it to a foreign-hosted website, beyond the reach of UK and EU law.
The levels of spam, and the resourcefulness of spammers continues. MessageLabs' latest intelligence report reveals that 88% of all email messages in 2009 were spam, with a high of 90.4% in May and a low of 73.3% in February. That is 107 billion junk mail messages sent out every day and MessageLabs detected and blocked at least 21 million spam campaigns during the last 12 months. The vast majority of spam is sent using compromised machines or "zombies" owned by people who are unwittingly providing the computer resources needed for spammers to flourish.
There is really no excuse for not having some sort of up-to-date anti-virus anti-malware software on your PC. Microsoft has now included a basic security suite in Windows and it can be downloaded for free, and regular updates are both free and automated. I've used it for a couple of months now and have to say it is very good, and quite painless and unobtrusive. For more information, please see:
www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/
17th December 2009
This article comes from the SKILLZONE email newsletter, published monthly since January 2008, and covering topics related to technology and the internet. All articles and artwork in the SKILLZONE newsletter are orignal content.