FREE Outlook Express Spam Filter

Wired News Report 09:30 AM May, 09, 2006

Microsoft’s new Vista operating system has put the European Commission in a quandary on whether to open a new front against the software giant before a court clarifies the EU antitrust watchdog’s authority.

Rivals such as Google and Adobe are wary of the new version of Windows, set for release early next year.

They could formally ask the Commission to act and it could order changes in Vista, following on its landmark 2004 antitrust decision that found Microsoft muscled out other companies.

But if the Court of First Instance (CFI) were to annul that decision, as Microsoft has asked, that would pull the legal rug out from under the Commission.

The problem is that the ruling by the European Union’s second-highest court may not arrive until after Vista is on the market next year.

The Commission fined Microsoft nearly half a billion euros in its 2004 decision and ordered sanctions, including the sale of a modified version of Windows. Microsoft appealed to the CFI, which heard arguments last month.

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ITunes gets foxy: Apple’s iTunes has started to sell episodes of shows from the Fox television network, the latest major U.S. TV network to reach a deal with Apple’s internet download service.

Shows including 24 and Prison Break, as well as FX Network shows such as The Shield, were available on the download service on Tuesday morning, at $2 per episode.

ITunes has also started to sell episodes of older series, such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lost in Space.

ABC, NBC and CBS, the three other major networks, already sell shows on iTunes. They also redistribute some programming by other means over the internet, including their own websites.

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Computer hijacker gets five years: A 20-year old who prosecutors say highjacked computers to damage computer networks and send waves of spam across the internet was sentenced on Monday to nearly five years in prison.

Jeanson James Ancheta, a well-known member of the Botmaster Underground who pleaded guilty in January to federal charges of conspiracy, fraud and damaging U.S. government computers, was given the longest sentence for spreading computer viruses, federal prosecutors said.

He was sentenced to 57 months in prison and three years of supervised release by U.S. District Judge Gary Klausner, who also ordered him to pay $15,000 in restitution to the U.S. Naval Air Warfare Center in China Lake, California, and forfeit to the government some $60,000 in illicit gains.

“Your worst enemy is your own intellectual arrogance that somehow the world cannot touch you on this,” Klausner said in sentencing Ancheta…

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Chief executive John W Thompson promises improved protection for firms

Martin Courtney, IT Week 09 May 2006

The ninth annual Symantec Vision customer and strategy event in San Francisco saw the security specialist commit to protecting enterprise data and online transactions through a combination of client software and service provider network tools.

The company is also looking at ways to expand its enterprise security and email management offerings, and deliver enterprise software though web services. It additionally plans to pour money into its marketing in anticipation of a fight with Microsoft to deliver security utilities to PCs, laptops, PDAs and smartphones.

Symantec chief executive John W Thompson stressed that security should not be limited to the perimeters of the LAN, but should be moved closer to the data itself to protect it as it moves across enterprise infrastructure.

Thompson said this trusted environment could be made up of many different platforms and devices, spanning business partner networks, supply chains, and even customer links, with authorisation measures to ensure that the right people get access to the right information.

But Thompson refused to elaborate on any plans to integrate data encryption or identity management in Symantec products, which most experts agree would be necessary for this scheme…

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by The Associated Press (AP)

April 5, 2006

Verizon Communications Inc. is proposing refunds to Internet customers who found legitimate e-mail from friends and businesses blocked by the company’s spam filters, according to a proposed class-action lawsuit settlement.

The company has refined its junk e-mail blockers since the suit was filed last year, both parties said.

Verizon had blocked e-mail altogether from certain overseas Internet service providers — mostly from Europe and Asia — and failed to properly handle complaints, said Philadelphia attorney Michael Boni.

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Karen Dearne
APRIL 04, 2006

case study | Amnesty International Australia
INBOXES overflowing with spam were only half the problem for Amnesty International Australia - the filters were also blocking legitimate email.

“As a human rights organisation, our email addresses are very public, and that tends to makes us vulnerable to spam,” Amnesty information systems manager Steven Douek says.
“As well, most of our staff take part in a large number of email lists all over the world. Changing email addresses or trying to remove ourselves from those lists wasn’t really an option.”

So the IT team began looking at spam filtering products.

It wasn’t as easy as it seemed.

“We tried five or six spam filtering products and with all of them we experienced a very high false positive rate,” he says.

“At the same time, we were still getting a large amount of spam hitting our mailboxes.”

Douek says this was because filters based on policy rules “pick out emails that we send or receive and block them because of the language being used in relation to human rights abuses”…

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The next generation of spam-sending zombies would scan E-mail in the user’s inbox, mine it for information and writing patterns, then crank out realistic-looking replies to real messages, researchers warn.

By Gregg Keizer
TechWeb.com

May 1, 2006 01:05 PM

The next generation of spam and phishing e-mails could fool both software filters and the most cautious people, Canadian researchers said Sunday, by mimicking the way friends and real companies write messages.

John Aycock, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Calgary, and his student, Nathan Friess, presented a paper Sunday at a security conference in Hamburg, Germany that outlined how junk mailers and phishers, even spyware criminals, could create slicker spam…

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DamienMcKenna asks: “At work our license for Symantec Brightmail is coming up for renewal and I’m looking for alternatives that will cooperate with Microsoft Exchange 2003. Brightmail hasn’t worked consistently since we installed it last year, has a low success rate, the client plugin has been very unstable, and it takes up far too much server resources for what it does. Given that many of the appropriate software is not available for trial (you have to base decisions off their marketing materials), does anyone have recommendations on what to use instead? It must be Windows-based (UNIX/Linux/BSD is out of the question right now), and should have an easy to use administrative interface since not all of the IT staff are very technically minded. A working plugin for Outlook for client-level configuration would also be appreciated.”

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Security gateways claim to stop threats before they reach your network.

Andrew Brandt
From the June 2006 issue of PC World magazine
Posted Thursday, April 27, 2006

Keeping a PC secure is a hassle. You need to run antivirus and antispyware software, a firewall, and perhaps an antiphishing toolbar, all of which have to be updated and managed. But manufacturers of a new class of security appliances are promising simpler security through hardware that stops threats before they reach your network.

These smart gateways run security software that is managed automatically. New virus definitions and application updates are pushed to the devices from the companies that sell and manage them.

But can a security-focused gateway truly replace the desktop antivirus and firewall software you run on your PC? Our tests indicate the answer is no, as security appliances can’t remove infections that are already on computers or stop all new infections. But security appliances offer more substantial protection than a typical hardware gateway, and they can prevent unwary users from downloading certain types of malicious software.

Three New Options

We looked at three security appliances: Netgear’s $150 WGT624SC Super G Wireless Router, the $150 Spam Cube, and TrustEli’s $200 Eli Security Appliance. The Netgear and TrustEli devices both include software to protect against viruses, spyware, phishing attacks, and spam–plus a firewall and software to filter objectionable Web content. The Netgear unit also includes a one-PC license for Trend Micro Home Network Security software. The Spam Cube is more limited in function: The device filters spam and scans your e-mail for viruses…

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Green Bay, WI — (SBWIRE) — 04/5/2006 — MailFoundry, the world’s leading provider of Human Intelligence powered anti-spam solutions, announced today that it will now offer small businesses free anti-spam for up to ten email addresses with its MailFoundry Hosted Anti-Spam service.

“Small business owners need to focus on growing their business”, said David C. Troup, CEO and founder of MailFoundry. “They don’t have time to manage email coming into their company. MailFoundry eliminates email threats automatically and without capturing legitimate emails that can cost the business money.”

To use MailFoundry’s hosted anti-spam solution, businesses must have their own domain name used for email and have the ability to make changes to their mail records for email routing. No software or hardware is needed for this service.

“Small businesses tend to see more unique types of spam than larger customers and we want to increase MailFoundry’s effectiveness by adding those spam messages to our system.” remarked Troup. “By working with MailFoundry, they get an easy to use, high impact solution and reduce their out of pocket cost.”

MailFoundry utilizes the MessageIQ email scanning engine that delivers industry leading spam and virus protection while insuring that legitimate emails are delivered without delay. By combining a unique blend of human knowledge and superior technology, MailFoundry blocks up to 99% of spam with a less than one in one million false positive detection rate…

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In the ongoing challenge to deliver a safer, more secure computing experience for PC users, Microsoft and its industry partners in 2005 made considerable progress on the security front with achievements such as greater customer awareness of the existence of spam, viruses, spyware and other security threats, as well as the availability of more effective and powerful software protections against software attacks and security breaches, which has resulted in improved security for Microsoft customers.

Microsoft’s security efforts are focused on three areas: technology investments; prescriptive guidance and education; and industry partnerships.

Technology Investments Progress

Microsoft is making investments to achieve the highest level of quality in Microsoft software, and to deliver security technology innovations in the platform, security products and hosted security services. Over the past 12 months, Microsoft has made significant progress in delivering technologies across three key areas: fundamentals, threat and vulnerability mitigation, and identity and…

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Cable & Wireless (C&W) has introduced a new free spam and virus blocker to reduce the number of unwanted emails that customers receive, the company said today.

C&W says the new service is in response to an increasing number of concerns from its internet users regarding unsolicited emails they?ve been receiving through their candw.ky email address. Examples of such emails range from marketing emails to emails requesting bank details and even some suspected viruses.

In a statement released by the company today, the company explained that its license as an internet service provider does not allow it to block such emails on a uniform basis. In turn, users now have the opportunity to use the free service. Reynaldo Ysaguirrie, Broadband Program Manager at Cable & Wireless says the beauty of the service is that customers can…

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