Global Email Network Statistics 10 out of 12 In Bound Messages are SPAM. 1 in 39 messages is virus infected. An average of 30% of a mail server's capacity is hijacked by spammers trying to harvest names from the server. Source: Postini Email Stat Track

W/32 Mydoom January 27 Read about this particularly vile trojan horse delivered via email. Cost estimates according to CNN are $250M from lost productivity. Patriot Act Used To Entrap Read the full CNN article about this latest scam to prey upon your fear of the new US Patriot act. W32/Beagle aka Bagle January 20 Learn about this threat at www.cert.org. It is delivered via email and then compromises the host by opening a port.

Black Mail Scam

Petty and organized criminals from the USA, Russia, Korea, and elsewhere have taken to the Internet to relieve you of your cash by threatening you. This is illegal everywhere. The message will cause anxiety to the innocent. The naive end up writing a check.

Suggested Action: Forward email to your national criminal authority.

Citi Bank Account Holder?

A really good hacker creates an email making it look like you are going to the real Citi Bank web site. This kind of link forgery is now rampant making forged links look real.

Problem is that when you click on the link, a clever pop-up overlays the real site. At this point, you believe the forgery and provide account information. The crook in near real time relieves your account of cash via the nearest ATM.

Suggested Action: Avoid disclosing personal information via an email link unless certain of authenticity.
View The Actual Message

What's in a password?

At Open Doors, we surmise a terrorist is collecting valid router and server passwords which can be ascertained through snooping and dictionary attacks.

The attack would be a massive and synchronized deletion of router and host table entries, often not backed up by overworked network administrators. The consequence: large chunks of the Internet would be blacked out for days.

Suggested Action: Keep three kinds of passwords. The third is your most secure and is kept only in your head and does not contain a word. If you manage core network devices, make sure the admin password is long and free of words. Assure route tables are backed up.
Visit one of the many password cracking sites.

Taking Care of Business

Luckily, for software engineers, SPAM, well, looks a lot different than a normal mail message. Therefore, an industry has emerged to identify SPAM. Bayesian filters discriminate between two users allowing one to classify identical messages as either SPAM or not. At Open Doors Software, we offer a service used by top corporations to catch SPAM and Virus near the point of origin. We offer a personal service for your ISP-based POP mail account. Our services are remote, data center-based. For a low cost per user per year, you use a data center for filtering your email. No in-house hardware, software, and maintenance costs are incurred. Proprietary and open source solutions like Brightmail and SpamAssassin incur significant up-front costs and resources to implement.

The Cost of SPAM

SPAM and Virus from email is a big cost to pay if you try to solve the problem with in-house IT staff. Worse, some just avoid SPAM. It chews up a person's time parsing out junk from their in-box. SPAM eats away at the capacity of the net and the servers processing the traffic. Disasters from opening attachments consume billions every year in IT resources.

Idea: Authorize and fund 1,250 global outbound mail servers which charge $.001 for each outgoing message sent. Mail sent any other way would be detectable and assumed to be SPAM.
Fortune Magazine: 'Taking Back The Net'