On the 30th anniversary of junk mails, Sophos, a security firm, introduced a Spam Pledge, requesting the Internet users to help in crushing the curse of spam.
On May 3, 1978, an employee of DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation), the computer giant of that time, mailed a message, which is considered as the first spam mass mail.
The message, mailed to about 393 Arpanet users, a provider of the Internet service, invited users to see the future and listen about the DECSYSTEM-20 FAMILY at the presentation of their two products in California during the same month.
An increase can be witnessed in the problem caused by spam to a great extent. Currently, about 120 Billion spam mails are sent everyday, which means it is a multi-billion dollar business and it exerts huge burden on e-mail servers as well as on other parts of the Internet infrastructure. According to an evaluation, about 80 to 90% of e-mail traffic is caused by spam.
Moreover, spam filtering technology has developed very much in last three to four years, but eradicating the spam problem seems more difficult than actually imagined.
Sophos' Senior Technology Consultant, Graham Cluley, said that 30 years back when Gary Thuerk mailed the mass mail, he never thought of what he is initiating. Presently, across the globe, almost every Internet user faces spam problem blocking their mail inbox, as per the reports published on May 1, 2008 by vnunet.
Many spam mails are malicious and try to install spyware or get financial information, which is the worst. The Internet users, who purchase goods through spam, prolong the spam problem and it should be stopped.
The Spam Pledge is launched due to a request from Web users to oppose clicking on links or answering to the spam mails.
For promotion of the pledge, Sophos created a Facebook group named 'The Sophos Spam Pledge' and a You Tube video, depicting people taking oath to not to open or click on links attached to unsolicited e-mails.
Meanwhile, apart from computers, spams are also appearing on other platforms, like cell phones. ITU's (International Telecommunication Union) research revealed that about 80% of mobile phone users across the world receive spam on their cell phones.
CSUN Students & Faculty Receive Phishing E-Mail
A phishing e-mail purporting to be from the networking services of California State University, Northridge (CSUN) was recently sent to at least 400 e-mail accounts that belonged to faculty, students and staff, as reported by DAILY SUNDIAL on May 1, 2008.
The fraudulent e-mail requested users to supply their complete name alongwith address and login details of their accounts. The message informed that the network was encountering problems, so users needed to set their accounts afresh by furnishing their account details.
This type of a fraudulent e-mail also referred as a "phishing" message involves culprits, who send bulk of e-mails to a large number of users with the aim to get the personal information. People who found the e-mail in their inboxes, became suspicious and reported it to the CSUN's IT department.
The e-mail further asked recipients to open a link provided in it to reach its login page. This link, however, didn't appear to match the URL of the login page of the University's e-mail account.
Officials of CSUN's IT helpdesk reported that no sooner did the account holders contact them, they were able to know the affected accounts. They also said that the message likely to originated from outside the campus.
Helpdesk officials warned users via e-mail not to reply to the e-mail, but those who did respond should immediately reset their password alongwith the security question and answer on their university account.
While most of the previous phishing e-mails arrived from oversea, and thus had spelling mistakes, this particular e-mail didn't show any spelling error, making it harder to detect as fake. Meanwhile, e-mail scams referred as phishing have been hitting a number of universities over the recent weeks, targeting numerous computer users, especially those at Washington University.
Similarly, a minimum of 75 students of Temple University became victims of a phishing scam that put their identities at risk. On the whole, however, 5,000 students got the e-mail directing them to verify their personal details, so that their e-mail account would not be terminated. The intention of the message was clearly to steal information from as many people associated with Temple University as possible.
