Spam: June 2005 Archives
Spamroll blogged earlier this week about a Maryland Public Television webmaster busted for signing his supervisor on internet sites to genenrate annoying emails and telephone calls.
I found a Baltimore Sun article covering this story that gives more detail and attributes its quotes correctly.
I was shaking my head because spamroll left me with the impression someone thought this sort of thing was new. The Baltimore Sun article cleared that up. The AGs office said this is the first time they've prosecuted someone. The EFF said this sort of thing goes on all the time. The article concludes saying that most reputable sites offer a double opt in making this sort of thing harder to do. The problem is that the disreputable sites still dont do that.
So as always, cover your tracks. :) Use a public kiosk to sign your enemies up for spam. Or better yet go to the house of another co-worker and use their insecure wireless connection to sign up the CEO for spam.
Spamroll blogs that phishers are increasingly targeting smaller banks and credit unions.
This is a principle true of the protection of online banking as well. The smaller banks and credit unions do not have the fraud detection departments that larger organizations will have.
While the phish will not be detected as early or persued as vigorously, there just isn't the same bang for the buck on the email distribution. Think of it. If I email one million people the likelyhood of finding Bank of America customer is much better than the odds of hitting members of the Red Apple Credit Union.
A better idea would be for the phisher to attempt to obtain the banks email list somehow. Or better yet, for credit unions, you know the member companies so concentrate the phishing email on domains belonging to that company. This is inline with the theory that the criminals will be attacking smaller groupsso they aren't detected as quickly.
Customers of even small banks must watch out for phishing. Altough i dont see phishing being the fault of the bank, it is imperative for other reasons to make sure that they are on top of the security concerns associated with online banking.
