AOL buys Mailblocks in spam-fighting effort

Grok Headline matches for AOL buys Mailblocks in spam-fighting effort

AOL buys Mailblocks to fight spam

AOL buys Mailblocks to fight spam 08/05/2004 05:36 AM
In brief Challenge response

AOL Buys Anti-Spam Company Mailblocks
(washingtonpost.com)

AOL Buys Anti-Spam Company Mailblocks
(washingtonpost.com) 08/04/2004 09:54 PM
washingtonpost.com - America Online Inc. said yesterday it has bought a small Silicon Valley e-mail company in a move that could boost the use of an anti-spam technology that many experts regard as the most effective in blocking unwanted messages.

Community Spam Fighting Effort Faces
Heat

Community Spam Fighting Effort Faces
Heat 12/19/2004 03:37 PM

Symantec Buys Brightmail - A Step
Towards Hybrid Spam Fighting

Symantec Buys Brightmail - A Step
Towards Hybrid Spam Fighting 05/19/2004 05:48 PM
We've talked in the past about how the ways to fight all that ails your computer are converging. Symantec is realizing this, and has decided to to buy anti-spam firm Brightmail for $370 million. Symantec was already an investor in the company and owned approximately 11%. However, it does demonstrate that a single approach to fighting things like spam no longer makes sense. You can't just have a network level protection system or a desktop level protection. Increasingly, computer security requires something of a hybrid model - and this acquisition supports that idea.

America Online to buy anti-spam firm
Mailblocks

America Online to buy anti-spam firm
Mailblocks 08/04/2004 01:34 PM
Boston Globe Aug 4 2004 5:27PM GMT

Symantec Brightmail Anti-Spam v6.0
delivers next-generation spam-fighting
power, control to enterprises

Symantec Brightmail Anti-Spam v6.0
delivers next-generation spam-fighting
power, control to enterprises 07/01/2004 10:20 PM
Sunday Times South Africa Jul 2 2004 2:42AM GMT

Fighting spam with insults?

Fighting spam with insults? 06/01/2004 03:50 AM
One of my many domains have been used by spammers for a while. Unfortunately its not much I can do about it, without spending a...

Fighting spam: Opting out is in

Fighting spam: Opting out is in 06/23/2004 01:13 AM
Straits Times Jun 23 2004 5:26AM GMT

Fighting spam on Linux

Fighting spam on Linux 07/15/2004 03:08 AM

New Google Spam Fighting

New Google Spam Fighting 03/11/2003 01:22 AM
WebmasterWorld: Good news about expired domains. ``We've also put more of a focus on algorithmic improvements for spam issues. One resulting improvement with this index is better handling of expired domains--the authority for a domain will be reset when a domain expires, even though dangling links to the expired domain are still out on the web. We'll be rolling this change in over the next few months starting with this index. [...] I think you'll see more emphasis at Google on scalable algorithms rather than responding to individual spam reports.'' Basically, when you buy a domain that previously expired, you won't get the PageRank the old domain's owner accrued. Neat idea....

Fighting Spam with Digital IDs

Fighting Spam with Digital IDs 12/05/2002 07:49 PM
Jon Udell on the pitfalls of permission-based spam filters: If we rule out spontaneous association then we will not have...

Fighting comment spam

Fighting comment spam 02/01/2005 08:40 PM
Jay Allen has written a very nice document on how to fight comment spam Jay Allen should know a thing or two about comment spam. Before joing Six Apart he wrote the now famous MT-Blacklist plugin for Movable Type. If...

Step one in comment spam fighting

Step one in comment spam fighting 11/14/2003 10:54 PM
One of the drawbacks to rolling your own weblog software is that any time you want to add a feature you have to do it yourself.

For instance, I’ve wished a few times that I could use Jay Allen’s MT-Blacklist plugin. It would make it easier to fight comment spam.

(I have very good reasons for sticking with my own weblog software. I’m not going to change; please don’t suggest it.)

However, my software has a feature that would be cool to see in other weblog software, so I wanted to mention it: there’s an RSS feed that shows the last n comments, no matter which post they’re in reply to.

This means that no comment spam appears, even in very old posts, that I don’t see. I still have to go to the trouble of deleting it—but it’s much better than not knowing about it.

It may be that some other weblog software packages already have this feature. If so—cool. If yours doesn’t have this feature, you might want to consider it. I totally rely on it myself (and not just for fighting comment spam).

You might say—well, my weblog software does email notifications of comments, so an RSS feed of recent comments isn’t needed.

And I’d reply—well, my software has email notifications too. I found that I hardly ever looked at them. In amongst all the other email noise, comments notifications don’t work that well.

But an RSS feed for recent comments works wonderfully.

Think Spam Is Tough? Try Fighting Spim

Think Spam Is Tough? Try Fighting Spim 06/08/2004 06:58 PM
Internet.com Jun 8 2004 9:51PM GMT

Guide for Fighting Comment Spam

Guide for Fighting Comment Spam 01/04/2005 08:15 PM
Call it a late holiday gift or a great way to start the new year. In either case, we are...

Fighting Spam with DNA Sequencing
Algorithms

Fighting Spam with DNA Sequencing
Algorithms 08/22/2004 08:18 AM

Microsoft spam-fighting proposal
rejected

Microsoft spam-fighting proposal
rejected 09/19/2004 09:40 AM
CNEWS Sep 19 2004 2:14PM GMT

Messenger Spam Senders Fighting Back
Against FTC

Messenger Spam Senders Fighting Back
Against FTC 12/09/2003 05:03 PM
Last month the FTC decided that it was time to crack down on the issue of Windows Messenger spam - which had been getting some attention lately. Messenger spam has nothing to do with instant messaging, but with the Windows Messenger product that is used by network admins and such to alert computer users of important things ("our network is going down for five minutes" or something like that). Most home computers (and many work computers) have no need to have this feature turned on - but many still do and spammers were exploiting that. When the FTC decided to crack down they took action against one company that had been known to send the messages every ten minutes in some cases. It turns out the company is run by two college kids who are now (surprisingly) fight ing back against the FTC. Part of the claim against them was that their spam messages were touting software that could block these messages. As someone points out, it's a bit like "vandals throwing bricks through windows to sell home-security systems." The defense from the kids is that (a) they weren't doing anything illegal by sending out these spam messages (b) the messages did no damage and (c) the software they were selling actually did block those messages. Thus, they say that using messenger spam was actually a good way of targeting customers who needed their software. Of course, they leave out is that you don't actually need any software to turn off the Messenger feature. Their lawyer is also painting them as "good kids" who would never do anything harmful. They might have a case. As much as I believe they knew exactly what they were doing in annoying the hell out of a lot of people, it is questionable whether or not it was illegal.

Spam fighting hurts legitimate business?

Spam fighting hurts legitimate business? 04/09/2004 04:10 PM

Latest ideas for fighting spam not the
greatest

Latest ideas for fighting spam not the
greatest 03/06/2004 01:55 AM
SiliconValley.com Feb 25 2004 11:47AM GMT

Do We Need A Hybrid Approach To Fighting
Spam And Viruses?

Do We Need A Hybrid Approach To Fighting
Spam And Viruses? 05/07/2004 12:11 PM
There's an ongoing battle about how to best fight threats like spam and viruses (and spyware and trojans and worms, etc...). Some think that it should be at the network level, where an ISP or a company can set up filters, while others believe it needs to be at the desktop. In an interview with the CTO for MessageLabs (makers of "managed email security products" - so you know where his bias is) he makes the compelling case for moving the protection up to the network level (of course, he means using MessageLabs' solution). His argument is that you can keep filters much more up-to-date at the network level, even to the point of updating them multiple times per day. It also removes the hassle of end-users getting anywhere near some of these malicious files - some of which use social engineering tricks to get users to do things they shouldn't. Of course, he's only telling half the story. Blocking at the network level is increasingly becoming a necessity, but it assumes that users always access the internet in the same way. These days, with laptops and things like WiFi, people access the internet from many different places, and you don't always know who's managing the network protection. You also don't know who might be connecting to your local network - and what sort of nasty stuff they've already been exposed to. It seems that a hybrid approach is going to become increasingly important. Some have said the trend needs to move from "scan and block" to "comply and connect" - which may represent the hybrid approach that things are heading towards. You allow most of the filtering to still occur on the network, but you don't allow an individual machine to connect to a network unless it's been shown to "comply" with whatever security policies have been established. While more corporate users are moving in this direction, it may be time for residential broadband service providers to look at providing similar solutions themselves. The issue, as always, is how much control people are willing to give their service providers. No one wants to be denied a connection because suddenly their ISP says they haven't complied with some weird security aspect that the user knows they have complied with. However, as these malicious attacks get worse, it's likely that we're going to move closer to a world where getting on the network is going to mean proving you're clean, while network level machines will be required to block out the nastiest attacks.

Fractured Realities: Fighting Against
Comment Spam

Fractured Realities: Fighting Against
Comment Spam 02/01/2005 09:14 PM
In a new posting over on Fractured Realities (Davey Shafik's weblog) today, he talks more about the eternal struggle these days with that menace of weblogs everywhere - comment spam.

Microsoft Details Spam Fighting Plans

Microsoft Details Spam Fighting Plans 05/05/2004 03:35 PM

Industry Alliance Touts Authentication
in Fighting Spam

Industry Alliance Touts Authentication
in Fighting Spam 06/22/2004 03:46 PM
AOL, Earthlink, Microsoft and Yahoo publish a plan for making the Internet more hostile to unsolicited e-mail through authentication based on IP domains and content signing.

Have People Lost A Fighting Spirit
Against Spam Or Is Pew Faking The Data
Again?

Have People Lost A Fighting Spirit
Against Spam Or Is Pew Faking The Data
Again? 04/11/2005 05:58 AM
According to the folks at Pew (who are suffering from a credi bility hit these days), people are growing accustomed to spam. It still annoys people to no end, but it's just become so common that people have given up thinking about it or fighting against it, and just think of it as an annoying fact of life, like traffic. Of course, it's not really clear that the data actually says this. Basically, this conclusion appears to be driven by two stats: (1) people trust email less but (2) they're not reading less email -- sort of. The study actually says 22% of people say they are spending less time on email because of spam, which is down from 29% the year before. However, it's a bit of a stretch to conclude from this one data point that people are resigned to spam. It could mean that email simply has become more important in other aspects. Or, it could mean that most of the people who were really annoyed by spam decreased their email usage last year instead of this year. The problem with the data is that you can't really compare the rate of change this year to last year, because (obviously) they're starting from a different position. Most importantly, this could just be an indication that spam filters have become more effective. It wouldn't be surprising to find out that many people have become resigned to spam -- but the data shown here doesn't actually seem to prove that at all.

Microsoft Scores Points Against
Competitors With Spam Fighting
Initiative

Microsoft Scores Points Against
Competitors With Spam Fighting
Initiative 04/27/2004 01:15 PM
ZDNet Apr 27 2004 5:20PM GMT

Fighting comment spam, linking without
google juice and other reasons to use
the new href attribute

Fighting comment spam, linking without
google juice and other reasons to use
the new href attribute 02/01/2005 08:40 PM
Fighting blog spam, allowing linking to people you don't like without giving them Googlejuice. The new link attribute has many applications. Most like it, but some think its a bad idea.

University of Delaware Chooses Roaring
Penguin Software’s CanIt-PRO, Gives
End-Users Control Over Fighting E-Mail
Spam

University of Delaware Chooses Roaring
Penguin Software’s CanIt-PRO, Gives
End-Users Control Over Fighting E-Mail
Spam 07/06/2004 03:36 AM
Positive experience using robust MIMEDefang software leads networking and systems group to upgrade to commercial product. [PRWEB Jul 6, 2004]

Symantec buys anti-spam router maker
TurnTide

Symantec buys anti-spam router maker
TurnTide 07/13/2004 07:07 AM
Symantec Corp. has snatched up six-month-old router vendor TurnTide Inc. for an undisclosed sum.

MSFT buys spam company, sues the
competition, silences political
activists

MSFT buys spam company, sues the
competition, silences political
activists 07/30/2004 12:12 PM
My cow-orker Annalee Newitz has posted a great editorial on the latest court battles over spam, pointing out the weird, anticompetitive and anti-speech aspects of the spam fight.

Microsoft is developing what it calls Bonded Sender, a program that would supposedly separate "legitimate" Internet marketers and bulk mailers from spammers. Working with a California company called IronPort, Microsoft will create a white list of Internet marketers who have paid a fee and demonstrated that they have no record of spamming. Companies participating in the Bonded Sender program will be allowed to send their email ads to HotMail and MSN users.

Given Microsoft's investment in the Bonded Sender program, it seems they may soon be in the business of serving as middlemen between emailer marketers and their webmail users. In other words, it sounds like the software megacorp is about to start competing with Richter. Of course, Microsoft could always call off its suit if Richter claims to have been rehabilitated -- and he pays his Bonded Sender fees!

In the spam wars, sometimes it's hard to tell the spammers from the antispammers.

The situation gets even more complicated when you consider the fact that Microsoft will do more than pick and choose winners in the junk email business. Bonded Sender will punish most the people who aren't even sending advertisements -- groups like Internet activists MoveOn.org, who send out millions of emails to alert their members to upcoming political events and issues. If these groups don't pay their Bonded Sender fees, HotMail simply won't deliver their email -- regardless of whether users have specifically opted in to receive it.

Link

Mailblocks down again

Mailblocks down again 03/08/2004 11:13 PM

Mailblocks was working well for me ever since it it failed on my in January. At the time, I told them that they should have an outages page so that users could find out why mail wasn't working and when it might be back up.

This time, I can access the mailbox, but I haven't been able to receive any new mail for about 8.5 hrs. So if you're trying to reach me urgently, please email me or leave a comment here.

They don't have any information on their page or replied to the email I've sent. hmm...

I am joi_ito at mac.com on AIM.

Mailblocks CEO dead at 39

Mailblocks CEO dead at 39 12/30/2003 12:06 PM
globetechnology.com Dec 30 2003 11:02AM ET

Mailblocks.com is hosed

Mailblocks.com is hosed 01/08/2004 08:07 PM

I don't know if it is just me or the entire service, but Mailblocks.com, my mail host/spam filter was down for about 11 hours yesterday and has been down most of today. (Still down.) It appears that it is bouncing my mail with a error 500. If you have sent me any important mail in the last day or two, please send it to jito(at)eccosys.com or IM me at joi_ito(at)mac.com.

This is the first time I haven't had access to my mail server directly and BOY IS IT FRUSTRATING. I'm going to take a look at moving my mail back under my own control. This really sucks. Does anyone know someone at Mailblocks.com? All I have is a silly support email for them. I wish they had IM support like Earthlink. Ugh.

UPDATE: I'm starting to get really upset now... Why don't they even have an outage statement on their web page or their support page. Hello!?!

UPDATE 2: First of all. Thanks to everyone for their constructive comments. I DO have backup routes to divert my email, but the problem is that the server kept going up and coming down so I never knew when to "throw the switch". I don't like to keep backups spooling my mail because I travel a lot and I can't afford to download redundant mail or allow mailboxes to overflow. (I guess I could auto-delete old backup mail... hmm...)

Also, in the comments people pointed out that their CEO, Phil Goldman, recently passed away and might have something to do with this. I feel very bad about this and didn't realize it at the time. For this reason I have decided to cut them some slack.

Anyway, although my email to support@mailblocks didn't get a response and a call at night didn't reach anyone, I just called and stayed on the line past all of the messages about entering the extension number of the person you want to reach (of course I know no one there) and that I should email support messages (I did several times), I reached a human being. She was nice and when I told her that I was having problems she said that she had heard people were having problems and agreed to pass me over to tech support. The tech support guy was a pleasant guy and he told me that app1, my server, was having hardware problems and that although they didn't know when it would be fixed, that they were working on it. I suggested to him that they have an "outages" page with ETA's of when things might be fixed so they could calm people like me down and help us figure out whether we should be waiting or diverting our email. He said he had received this suggestion from several people they were considering it.

So, my position right now is that I still like the service very much and will continue using it. I will put better backups in place. They seem to be nice people, but they need to provide better support and I hope they figure this out.

FINAL (I HOPE) UPDATE: Seems to be working now. Switching back...

Mailblocks Sells Out To AOL

Mailblocks Sells Out To AOL 08/04/2004 01:34 PM
When Mailblocks launched a year and a half ago, it seemed really strange. Here was a company that was doing exactly what a number of other companies were already doing (challenge-response email), but somehow Mailblocks got a ridiculous amount of press for their "me too" offering. They also suddenly trotted out a bunch of pointless patents and started suing everyone until a judge told them to give it up as the patents didn't seem particularly valid. Since then, the company has been fairly quiet. There have been reports of semi-frequent outages of the service, and unlike the predictions, it appears that challenge-response hasn't really taken off like people planned. So, the company with a big patent plan and good press contacts ended up quietly selling out to AOL, so that AOL can now offer an option that Earthlink gave its customers quite some time ago.

mailblocks flips to AOL

mailblocks flips to AOL 08/04/2004 03:21 PM
another smart team that deserves its success, especially after a tough loss

Founder of WebTV, Mailblocks Dies

Founder of WebTV, Mailblocks Dies 12/30/2003 05:12 PM
SiliconValley.Internet.com Dec 30 2003 4:19PM ET

Briefly: Mailblocks CEO and WebTV
founder dies

Briefly: Mailblocks CEO and WebTV
founder dies 12/29/2003 09:16 PM
CNET Dec 29 2003 7:45PM ET

Spam, spam, spam, spam ... Canada
targets unwanted email (AFP)

Spam, spam, spam, spam ... Canada
targets unwanted email (AFP) 05/12/2004 04:17 AM
AFP - Canada unveiled a new action plan to combat unsolicited commercial e-mail, nicknamed spam, which jams inboxes and clogs Internet traffic worldwide.

Finance Spam Passing Drug Spam While
Porn Spam Is Washed Up

Finance Spam Passing Drug Spam While
Porn Spam Is Washed Up 05/24/2004 05:37 PM
The latest study on spam trends appears to show that financial spam is outpacing pharmaceutical spam - though, honestly, so much of both is coming out that it's really hard to imagine that this matters at all. Meanwhile, it seems that porn spam is increasingly less interesting to spammers as the numbers have been on a noticeable decline for quite some time. No matter what, though, it appears that CAN-SPAM has done absolutely nothing to slow down the amount of spam sent.
Grok Description matches for AOL buys Mailblocks in spam-fighting effort
GrokA matches for AOL buys Mailblocks in spam-fighting effort

AOL buys Mailblocks in spam-fighting effort

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