Email

Project Explosion in the Email Industry Today…

Funny as it may seem, today there's big news in the email industry -- 2 large internet bodies, 2 projects... Projects Phoenix and Titan, by AOL and Facebook respectively. What are key things to note about each project? Let's look at each in brief detail... more

Searching for Truth in DKIM: Part 5 of 5

Throughout this series of articles we've been talking about DKIM, and what a valid DKIM signature actually means. .. What this means for senders (of any type) is that with DKIM, you’re protected. On the internet, your domain name is a statement of your brand identity – so by signing messages with DKIM, you can finally, irrevocably tie those messages to your brand. more

Review Your Email Forwarding Practices

As unusual as it may be for a lawyer to speak at a IETF meeting, Ian Walden gave a lecture on Data Protection Directives and updates thereof. He said they affect some 90 jurisdictions. A difference between email addresses and cookies - the latter are the main subject of the January 2012 update of the directives - is that after more than a decade of enforcement, specific browser extensions may allow users to browse what cookies they have, while no record states whom they conferred their email addresses to. more

Spam Bouncing Back to Original Levels Despite Major Shutdowns

Average level of spam in the second quarter of 2009 has risen by 53 percent, as compared to the first quarter of this year, according to latest report from Google's email security and archiving services group, Postini. The report foresees unpredictable pattern of drops and spikes for the rest of the year... more

Ailing ETO-2002 and the Demise of PKI

The only Cyber law passed in Pakistan till date is the famous ETO-2002 (Electronic Transaction Ordinance - 2002). It required Ministry of IT&T to set up a Central Repository for all digital certificates and in addition to set up a body to be named as Electronic Certification Accreditation Council (ECAC) to accredit Electronic Certification Authorities to be established in the country... In this regard, government has not only closed its eyes and has blindly trusted the only certificate authority (CA) in the country operated by a private business group, it has also mandated the citizens and business to trust it. Case in point is Central Board of Revenue (CBR) that has told all taxpayers to digitally sign the emails using the certificates issued by this private party... more

Spam Peaked at 200 Billion per Day in 2008, Botnets Nexus of Criminal Activity, Says Cisco

In a 52 page security report released by Cisco, the company has confirmed what has been consistently been observed through out this year: "the Internet-based attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated and specialized as profit-driven criminals continue to hone their approach to stealing data from businesses, employees and consumers." The 2008 edition of the report has specified the year's top security threats and offers recommendations for protecting networks against attacks that are propagating more rapidly, becoming increasingly difficult to detect, and exploiting technological and human vulnerabilities. more

A Flurry of CAN-SPAM Activity: Is It Meaningful?

Our four-year old oft maligned anti-spam legislation in this country, the CAN-SPAM act, has seen an uptick of activity this past week. Melinda Krueger sums up the sentiments of many in the anti-spam community in her Email Insider column today when she says, "there is no provision in the act against sending unsolicited email as long as you comply with the rest of the act. The motivation of the act was more to make voters feel politicians were doing something about this annoying problem." more

Coronavirus Online Threats Going Viral, Part 4: Phishing

In part four of this series of posts looking at emerging internet content relating to coronavirus, we explore phishing. In times of crisis, cyber criminals invariably take advantage of the growing concerns of the public. In the case of the coronavirus, they have done so by sending phishing emails that play on the fears surrounding the spread of the illness. A number of reports have emerged of emails purporting to provide advice or assistance relating to COVID-19... more

Abuse Reporting: Names vs Numbers

For email usage, abuse reporting requires cooperation between senders and receivers. That's why RFC 5965 specified a standard format for it. However, Wikipedia lists only 18 feedback providers today. It is often said that the number of legitimate mailbox providers in the world is rather small, possibly some hundreds of thousands, but certainly more than that. more

Largest Spam Gang Operation in the World Shutdown by U.S. and New Zealand Authorities

U.S. authorities announced today that they have shut down one of the largest spam operations in the world, an extensive network with ties to Australia, New Zealand, India, China and the United States. The group, dubbed 'HerbalKing' by spam fighting organizations, had been active as far back as 2005 and became notorious as the number one worst spam gang on the Internet for much of 2007 and 2008 according to Spamhaus, a non-profit anti-spam research group. more

Interoperability Testing Event for DMARC Email Anti-Spoofing Specification

At the end of January, the DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance) specification was publicly announced and resulted in widespread media coverage, blog posts and discussion. Since that time various individuals and organizations have been working on writing code for DMARC validators and report parsers. The dmarc-discuss list has been fairly active as various questions and issues have been raised and clarified. Now it is time to see how well the various implementations play together in live testing. more

Spam: You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby

According to the majority of the testimony at this month's "Spam Summit," held by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the state of the fight against spam is pretty much the same as it has been for the last several years. The two days of presentations can largely be boiled down to the following bullets: Spam volumes continue to increase, being driven by the growth of "botnets"... Oh, and the spam wars are a lot less exciting than they used to be. Case in point: unlike last time, there were no fist-fights at this year's shindig. more

Leveraging DNS for Subscriber Loyalty

There has been a lot of talk about how the DNS can provide network-based security, and how DNS is in the best position to detect malware traffic before it does any harm. But what does this mean for end users? How does it make their online lives easier and more secure? DNS servers that are aware of sites that host malware, perform phishing activities (harvesting bank details, for instance) and other nefarious misbehaviors, can prevent end users from ever going to those sites. more

Study on Improving Internet Usability: A Framework for Domain Name Policy Evaluation

A domain name is a unique alphanumeric designation that facilitates reference to sets of numbers which actually locate a particular computer on the Internet. Domain names are a fundamental part of the Internet's user interface. Improving the usability of the Internet depends upon effective domain name policy. This study is intended to contribute to improvement in Internet usability for the end users of domain names. Benefits of more usable domain names include: higher sales, customer satisfaction and productivity, and reduced support costs. more

Trust, but Verify

We are at an inflection point in our lifetimes. The Internet is broken, seriously broken... Almost all of the systems currently in use on the Internet are based on implicit trust. This has to change. The problem is that these systems are so embedded in our everyday lives that it would be, sort of like, changing gravity, very difficult. more