Today, we have had some delayed emails today to some members due to yesterday’s system maintenance. This blog was also temporarily unavailable, so we were unable to post another update until now. These issues should all be fixed now. We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience and patronage. Thank you!
The Emailias service will likely be unavailable for less than an hour on Monday, January 11. During this outage, the website will be unavailable and the emails will not be forwarded. Any emails sent to Emailias during this period should simply be delayed and delivered once the service is restored (this is the normal behavior of any temporary email outage).
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you, and thank you while we make improvements to one of your favorite Internet services!
For those of you keeping tracking, the scheduled maintenance last Thursday didn’t take place. This is being done in its place. Thank you!
The Emailias service will likely be unavailable for less than an hour on Thusday, January 7. During this outage, the website will be unavailable and the emails will not be forwarded. Any emails sent to Emailias during this period should simply be delayed and delivered once the service is restored (this is the normal behavior of any temporary email outage).
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you, and thank you while we make improvements to one of your favorite Internet services!
The holiday season is historically a hot one for online shopping, online activity and most of all, online phishing and spamming. In fact, the span between Thanksgiving in the U.S. and New Year’s Eve around the globe is said to be one of the biggest times of the year for cyber criminals. They tuck malicious activity and fraudulent efforts in email messages, launch phishing attacks and try to take over browsers — all in the name of spoofing internet users into giving up emails, passwords and other sensitive personal information. It drives the business to swell to epic numbers every year, leading to spikes in fraudulent activity and worse, unsuspecting consumers and businesses who fall for it. It certainly didn’t come as a surprise to learn that the volume of illegal activity increased again this year. In fact, some studies show that phishing levels were up to 57% percent, an increase from roughly 28 percent in November. That’s quite a leap!
While legislative and prosecution efforts against spammers appears to the be on the rise, with many high profile cases criss-crossing the globe this past year, legal action is still limited in denting spam’s business. Even jail time and high fines haven’t seemed to do much in stopping spam. It may help to make it more difficult for cyber criminals to attack in some ways, but overall, spam seems to be going as strong as ever. User awareness has increased, particularly in the wake of several spam and phishing attacks on major sites like Twitter and Facebook. But, many still fall for malicious spam emails every year, perpetuating the problem for everyone and ultimately keeping a multi-million dollar market in business. It’s bringing back a close eye and new demand for technology solutions, from ISPs with better spam and phishing email protection to more sophisticated anti-spam and anti-virus desktop technologies, to email alias solutions like Emailias, particularly among small and mid-sized businesses. Live free online!
One of President Obama’s promises on the campaign trail is one that is certainly seeing a lot of attention in the technology industry as he continues to make moves regarding issues like cyber security and net neutrality. Various new appointments have been discussed in the press, and it seems that there is more than enough multimedia efforts on behalf of the administration — from YouTube addresses to a Twitter page, to whether the White House would allow a Blackberry. But, the hot topic at the moment is one and one thing: Cyber security. Recent studies and reports have suggested phishing attacks, cyber spying and other questionable behavior targeted at all types of government and global agencies — including cyber warfare. In the coming years many anticipate new legislation, technologies and innovations of all types driven by the newfound focus. It’ll be interesting to see what happens with regards to spam, phishing and other malicious activity online.
As spam volumes continue to increase and there seems to be more unwanted email than ever before, the idea of a spam tax is coming back again. Once a concept hatched more than a decade ago, the concept is bottom line basic: Charge everybody a tax to send out massive numbers of email. In return, spammers — who send the majority of emails in the world — would pay. Supporters of the idea say its a means to potentially reduce spam volumes and enable countries to gain revenue off large volume email. Those who are against it claim it won’t do much — after all, like fines stemming from various legislation, nothing matters unless spammers ultimately ante up to pay them. What will the end outcome be? It’ll remain to be seen. We’ll keep posting on the issue as it continues to evolve here. Live free online!
This past week saw two back-to-back phishing attacks that created turmoil for two different organizations. The first was University of California San Francisco, potentially exposing the personal data of more than 600 people. The attack slipped past a UC doctor, who feel for the trap. The email had looked and appeared as if it came from the campus, which was apparently working on updating its web security. Patients were notified of the problem in September. A few states north, in Idaho, another attack spoofed at least a 100 customers of a well known bank. Users handed over personal details, which prompted the hackers to siphon funds via ATMs in California and Romania. Dollar amounts in the attack weren’t released, but its said that the elaborate scheme included setting up a fraudulent website and other common tactics. It just shows that phishers are becoming more sophisticated and talented at fooling users. It also has banks and other organizations stepping up to guard against new strategies and tactics in attacks.
A consortium working to track online fraud and cyber crime that spans over 170 countries reached its 1 billionth spam message this past week after just four years of since launching. The group was created in 2004 by people in various technology business to identify spammers and the bots they use to scrape information from websites. It has created a distributed system that can be installed on a site and can nearly immediately tell when messages are spam, the exact moment when addresses were harvested and the IP address that did the work. It then collects, processes and shares the data generated with site owners, as well as shares it with law enforcement to track down and catch cyber criminals. The data is also provided to anti-spam developers, researchers and technology companies to further help the evolution of anti-spam technologies and solutions. It’s hard to believe that it took just four years to reach one billion spam messages — that’s a lot of spam each year.
Its said that this has been a “banner” year for cyber criminals, one of the largest yet. It certainly shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, more people are using the internet than ever. Studies have said that there are 5,000 spam emails for each person on the planet — that’s an astonishing number when you think about it. 2% of that is laced with malware, up an astonishing 900% from last year. Spoofing users has become more sophisticated along with this, in part thanks to social networks which provide plenty of personal information about prospective victims to better a scammer’s odds in an attack. It has at least some in business suggesting that there will be a real fear among consumers in the not too distant future, to the point where we’ll use the internet less, be more guarded, etc. Certainly, users have become more aware of prospective cyber criminals on the internet, and in some ways moved to guard themselves against it — either through use of security technologies or requiring certain authentication from those they do internet business with. Will internet users give up the free and ease of working and playing online? It remains to be seen. But without question, now more than ever a good offense is the best defense.