They are called phisher sites, and they look legitimate. So does the e-mail, which claims to come from a company you do business with and tells you to click on a link to go to the site and update your personal information.

It’s all a scam, aimed at draining your bank account or stealing your identity.

The Federal Trade Commission said it has just brought a case against the 17-year-old creator of one of the sites, which claimed to be for the AOL Billing Center. Officials said he has agreed to give up ,500 in ill-gotten gains and is now barred from sending e-mail spam for life.

Dear Client,

We’d like to provide you with an update on recent spam attacks.

Our message security vendor has advised us on high volumes of bogus CNN and MSNBC messages that contain links to download malware. Spammers have copied the contents of CNN and MSNBC alerts and substituted a link that prompts users to upgrade to a new version of a fake Adobe Flash player.

The security service has detected and blocked the vast majority of these attacks, and continues to release protections to stop the new mutations. Their capture rate is over 99%; however, the attack volumes are so large (in the hundreds of millions of messages) that a 1% passthrough rate means that a few messages may end up in your inbox.

For best security practices, if you see any CNN, MSNBC, or suspicious news alert messages:

• Do not deliver these messages from your Message Center or Quarantine Summary.
• Delete these messages from your inbox.
• Do not click on any links in the messages.

If you need to access CNN or MSNBC content, visit the website directly.

Please be assured that our security service considers virus and spam protection as their highest priority, and continues to be on the cutting edge against new spam attacks and tactics.

These faxes are scams! The invoice format is designed to capture attention from the recipient, who in turn thinks they must submit payment for the service. The fine print on the “invoice” reads “This is not a bill, invoice or statement of account due. You are under no obligation to make a
payment, unless you accept this offer.”

If you receive a fax from ICLS.net, you SHOULD report it to the FTC. We have reported the scam to the Federal Trade Commission through this website, it is easy, and you should do the same!

—– Original Message —–
From: Lori Butler
To: Sharron Kelly
Cc: Karla Anderson; Megan_Jim_Davis@hotmail.com; EdWaldon@lycos.com;
Andrea Manning; Bill Barnes; Mark and Karen Whyte-Iowa; danrogers3@alaska.net;
alex.urban@gci.net; stephens_03@attbi.net; Laura Clark-Glacial
Sent: Wednesday, July 02, 2003 10:19 AM
Subject: Concerned Parent
Hello,

I am very concerned about all the spam and adult related material that I have been receiving in my email box. Since my children also use the same email, it is even more of a problem. I have tried to get my name and the kids off these lists, but it seems as if that has just made the problem worse.

I complained to my Internet provider, but they said that there was nothing they could do because there is no law against sending spam. They recommended several software programs for filtering out the spam and pornography, which I did try. Unfortunately, it didn’t stop the majority of the inappropriate material that we were being exposed to.

I brought up this subject at a recent PTA meeting and was informed by a fellow parent of a non-profit organization called Remove.org. They are dedicated to stopping spam and pornography in email. They actually shut down irresponsible marketers who send adult related material and spam.

I have registered my email address with Remove.org and have been very pleased with the results. I would encourage you to do so as well, especially if your child has his own email account.

You can find their website at www.remove.org

Please forward this letter to everyone you know so that we can stop this problem.

Sincerely,

Lori Butler

———————————————————————–
>
>
>To have your email address added to the national opt-out directory
>please click on the following link: http://www.remove.org.
>
>
———————————————————————–

unsubscribe from this mailing list: click here
or send a blank to: r.ngm.0-1c3efbb-39a5.kleininternet.com.-tom@s.ew01.com
pkwl5

They’ve been around for a while but appear to be growing more sophisticated and more convincing of late, Vancouver’s Derek K. Miller writes in TidBITS. But you can still spot them easily, he says, if you know what you’re looking for. Among the handy giveaways:

Every one I have seen has errors in design or language that are unlikely in correspondence from a legitimate company. The writers might misspell words or use them sloppily (such as writing “e-mail” in one place and “email” in another), use slightly inconsistent font sizes, or have spaces missing between words. Often the phrasing that isn’t stolen directly from PayPal’s own pages is off-kilter and strange, obviously not written by professionals. Another giveaway is URLs that point at IP numbers or other domains rather than the paypal.com domain.

We received a couple of these messages at the office a few weeks back. Frankly, we were impressed by how convincing the scam site looked at first. But two things gave it away: 1) the scam site used an IP address instead of a recognizable domain name; 2) the recipients didn’t have PayPal accounts.

Businesses are being warned about a spate of rogue firms spamming domain name holders with fake renewal notices asking for money.

The spammers are targeting owners of .biz and .info names with emails warning that their domain name is about to expire and asking for a fee to renew it.

Cambridgeshire Trading Standards and Cambridgeshire Police are now investigating a company calling itself Dot Biz Domain Renewal that was spamming thousands of .biz registrants asking for renewal fees.

Ken Sorrie, director of domain name reseller Internetters, is calling for a crackdown on the spammers and said they are taking advantage of the first .biz and .info renewal dates in October and November to try and cash in on people’s uncertainty about the process.

He said: “This kind of foul play is bringing the industry into disrepute. Because some companies are unable to get business through respected methods, they resort to spamming. There is now enormous pressure for ICANN to introduce a code of practice and enforce registrar contracts.”

Internetters is also warning that some domain name registrars are withholding or making it difficult for people to get hold of authorisation codes needed to move the registration of their web address to another company.

He said: “What also concerns us is that some registrants are not aware that if they want to move away from their registration company they need to obtain their authorisation code from that company to pass onto to the new registration company. Many unscrupulous resellers are either not giving the authorisation codes to their customers, or are imposing ‘release fees’ to move away.”