TOPIC: Spam!
We all know that spam email is a problem. Yet, many folks don't know the real statistics. They don't know how it affects their Internet usage nor the bandwidth absorbed by criminals and fraudsters using spam. Here are some real-time stats from my company's domain:

Monthly Statistics

Month of Valid Ct Valid Size Spam Ct Spam Size Virus Ct Virus Size Total Mail Spam Pct Virus Pct 10/1/2005 806 58.85 MB 2728 13.85 MB 56 1.87 MB 3590 75.99 1.56 11/1/2005 10988 633.59 MB 27048 173.12 MB 853 54.73 MB 38889 69.55 2.19 12/1/2005 10848 679.98 MB 29111 185.76 MB 1546 96.24 MB 41505 70.14 3.72 1/1/2006 12790 870.16 MB 32560 204.87 MB 474 22.23 MB 45824 71.05 1.03 2/1/2006 12020 780.49 MB 32574 206.01 MB 261 10.16 MB 44855 72.62 0.58 3/1/2006 13619 972.80 MB 46765 267.29 MB 341 22.51 MB 60725 77.01 0.56 4/1/2006 11753 795.80 MB 49758 303.49 MB 2224 226.17 MB 63735 78.07 3.49 5/1/2006 13486 837.50 MB 52929 339.09 MB 445 31.66 MB 66860 79.16 0.67 6/1/2006 12666 984.25 MB 46501 285.35 MB 292 20.70 MB 59459 78.21 0.49 7/1/2006 10850 798.95 MB 44527 378.35 MB 124 8.58 MB 55501 80.23 0.22 8/1/2006 14174 1.27 GB 58866 531.21 MB 107 6.51 MB 73147 80.48 0.15 9/1/2006 13762 1.44 GB 47701 408.17 MB 60 7.27 MB 61523 77.53 0.1 10/1/2006 14598 1.50 GB 59932 582.66 MB 85 3.84 MB 74615 80.32 0.11 11/1/2006 13645 1.36 GB 76609 791.33 MB 221 6.93 MB 90475 84.67 0.24 12/1/2006 750 61.88 MB 5112 49.95 MB 11 365.50 KB 5873 87.04 0.19

Yes, you read that correctly. Anywhere from 69% to 87% of the email our company receives is SPAM! The worst part is that our email addresses are NOT published on our website. We need to push our ISPs, Congress and state legislators to enforce the laws now in place -- and to enact new laws that will effectively cut off spammers use of our bandwidth and storage space. Penalties should be stiff -- and the arm of the law should be far-reaching.
THINK and ACT!

TOPIC: U.S. Court Order Could Boost Spam By 50 Billion Daily

Sources: TechWeb / Digit-Life

I just ran across this in my morning news search. For the life of me, I cannot understand how a US court could 1) not realize the e360insight IS a spammer, 2) give a spammer a monetary settlement against a white hat team such as Spamhaus.org and 3) think that it can coerce a non-US group into settling by threatening to take away its domain name. This is a ludicrous situation that is sure to stir more revenge suits by other spammers. The worst part is that the article's title could be correct. We might all end up with MILLIONS more spam emails delivered to our inboxes. Here's the article, in its entirety...

A September decision by a federal court may mean more spam hitting inboxes, an analyst said Wednesday. Last month, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois ruled in favor of e-mail marketing company e360insight, and ordered U.K.-based Spamhaus, a non-profit anti-spam organization, to pay $11.7 million in damages.
e360insight had argued that the Spamhaus blacklist -- a database of spammers and suspected spammers that is widely used by spam filtering services and software -- erroneously included its domain. Spamhaus did not contest the case, but has refused to pay the fine, issue an apology, or remove e360insight from the blacklist.
The fear, said Richi Jennings, an analyst with messaging research company Ferris Research, is that the judge will next order ICANN (Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers), the U.S.-based organization which manages domain names, to strip Spamhaus of its domain in an attempt to force the company to comply.
"In the short term, any spam filter that relies on Spamhaus' blacklist will have a problem with its accuracy," said Jennings. "But I don't think it will come to that. Spamhaus will either find a way to make sure that U.S. law can't touch them, or some other group will step in to fill the hole." Spamhaus itself has said the U.S. court has no jurisdiction, stands by its categorization of e360insight as a spammer, and remained defiant at the news of a possible domain stripping.
"We think it can not actually happen, due to the effect it would have both on the Internet and on millions of users," Spamhaus said in a statement posted on its Web site Tuesday. Spamhaus claimed that its blacklist blocks 50 billion spam messages daily. "The effect of suddenly not blocking such a large amount of spam would mean that volume of unwanted junk hitting mail server queues all over the world. The effect of 650 million email boxes suddenly receiving a barrage of illegal spam, scams, and bank phishes is extremely dangerous. For this reason alone we believe that ICANN suspending spamhaus.org is almost certainly a no-starter."
ICANN also issued a statement Tuesday, saying even if it was ordered, it had no authority to de-list Spamhaus' domain. "Even if ICANN were properly brought before the court in this matter, which ICANN has not been, ICANN cannot comply with any order requiring it to suspend or place a client hold on Spamhaus.org or any specific domain name because ICANN does not have either the ability or the authority to do so," the group said in an online posting. "Only the Internet registrar with whom the registrant has a contractual relationship, and in certain instances the Internet registry, can suspend an individual domain name," ICANN continued.
Spamhaus' domain is registered with Tucows, which is based in Toronto, Canada. Tucows was not available for comment on whether it would comply with a U.S. court order, if one is issued. If that happens, said Jennings of Ferris Research, users will be the ones to feel the pain, not Spamhaus. "There's the possibility that this will scare people off running blacklists in the future," said Jennings.
He also argued that if Spamhaus and its blacklist were to "go dark," it might kick up even more talk by other countries and international organizations to "wrest control of the Internet from the United States." Such efforts have included proposals that the United Nations administer the Internet, and has grown out of frustration with some ICANN decisions, such as its May rejection of the .xxx top-level domain.
Spamhaus suggested that if push came to shove, the all-volunteer organization would simply give up rather than continue to defy the U.S. judge. "The reality is that if Spamhaus gets around the court order by switching domain to maintain the blocking, the judge would very likely then rule us in criminal contempt," the group said. "We don't want a criminal record for the sake of fighting spam. We normally help fit the spammers with criminal records, not the other way round."