No, they're not getting $16.4M for being purveyors of fine spam. Instead, they have received a judgment in that amount from Howard Carmack (no relation to the games developer) from Buffalo, NY who reportedly sent (with his "ring" of spammers) some 825 million pieces of spam using EarthLink's …

CNet has an article online about a meeting of bulk mailers and email abuse advocates with the FTC to discuss anti-spam techniques. The article spends most of its time (and apparently the discussion spent much of its time) discussing the legal basis for blacklists (lists of IP addresses on the …

The Washington Post reports in this article[1] that the new Department of Homeland Security has announced their choice for Privacy Czar as Nuala O'Connor Kelly, former Double-Click Privacy Officer. Original link (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39211-2003Apr16.html) no longer available as of 2025-12-22. No reliable archive snapshot …

Finnish cellular telephone manufacturer Nokia is planning on releasing a camera in the US this summer that will send its output directly to cellular telephones. Using the GSM (Global System for Mobile) system, the camera will respond to text messages by sending camera pictures to the sender's phone. An article …

At the RSA conference this week, leading network and computer security participants are meeting to discuss issues of importance from privacy to security. Among the discussions is a proposal to create the Generally Accepted Information Security Principles (GAISP) which would be the computer security equivalent of the Generally Accepted Accounting …

A great article from MacObserver tells the tale of Alan Ralsky, a purveyor of not-so-fine Spam who received a real-world dose of his own medicine. It appears that after a recent article about Alan, people started signing him up for physical junk mail and the post office has been delivering …

Infoworld is reporting that the US Senate is going to be introducing a new bill to combat spam, possibly bringing a $10/email fine (up to $500,000) for sending unsolicited email for marketing purposes.

An anti-spam activist, Francis Uy, appears to have won a victory for tracking down and complaining to purveyor of spam. Uy created a web site that claims to have a list of "Maryland's most wanted spammers". Unfortunately, I couldn't find the site (it also wasn't in Google's cache), but appears …

So far, so good, for the new Department of Homeland Security (despite the fact that I, personally, still hate the name). According to an article[1] on CNet, they have been credited with doing a good job responding to the recent Sendmail vulnerability, including detection and coordination with private organizations …

Apple Computer has released the March 2003 security update for MacOS X. As usual, it fixes a number of security issues, including the recently discussed SSL man-in-the-middle and the Sendmail bug discussed by the new Homeland Security department.

According to an article[1] on SFGate.com, California is selling off items confiscated at airports on eBay. You can look for their auctions by querying the handle CaliforniaGold2000 on eBay. According to the article, they've made over $16k selling a collection of mostly pen-knives. Article no longer available at …

An article in Wired reports that Symantec knew about this month's slammer worm before most security organizations did and didn't share the information for hours (except with their own customers). The article details complaints from a number of other security groups and ISPs who complained that Symantec should have raised …

According to an article on StarTribune, the US House and Senate have agreed to limit the TIA in a manner similar to the proposed Senate amendment already discussed last week. It appears that there are few people in either chamber that like the idea of Mr. Poindexter (convicted of lying …

According to an article[1] reported today in the Washington Post, President Bush has signed National Security Presidential Directive 16, calling for the creation of a national strategy for when and how to deploy cyber-warfare. The directive was apparently signed in July, but was only disclosed recently. Perhaps it is …

According to the BBC, some recent political debate over Sexual Offences laws in the UK have been censored because of new anti- spam software that has been installed in systems at the Parliament there. The article raises concern over whether the new system is diverting otherwise-appropriate email because it may …

Not surprisingly, after last week's worm, security experts are faulting Microsoft for not providing enough active security measures and quality in their software. Over the past few years, Microsoft has increased their public statements about security, but most of them have focused on how users can cope with security problems …

Due to overwhelming negative feedback about their new security technology, Microsoft has decided to relabel their much- discussed Palladium technology to the much-more-difficult-to-remember "next- generation secure computing base". It appears that due to the bad press that the Palladium technology has been getting for its privacy problems, the software giant …

The Register has an article about the RIAA using a group of hackers to create a "monitoring hydra" to report to the RIAA what music you may have on your PC. Ed. Note: CNET now reports that an spokesperson from RIAA is calling this a HOAX. I'm leaving the rest …