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March 29th, 2010

Newsletter #115 Is Spam Now Boring?

Created on 25/07/07

A special hello to all new subscribers. This article is on the Web at this address.

Our last newsletter (20th June, 2007) was "Revamp Your Website in Four Easy Steps".

We are giving away ten FREE tickets to the fantastic New Zealand Coffee Festival which is at the Viaduct, Auckland, New Zealand on August 17th-19th. The first replies from Auckland residents (limit two) will get tickets.

Feature Article

Spam is still a plague on the Internet. Postini, a US-based message security company, report that in March spam and viruses were an amazing 93% of all email. This was up 135% on September 2006 rates and a 36% increase since January.

However despite spam being sent in increasing numbers, it appears that users are getting used to it. A recent Pew Internet survey in the United States found that 18% of users complained that spam was a big problem, down from 25% in early 2003.

There appears to be a few reasons for this:

The volume of offensive or pornographic spam seems to be reducing. In the latest survey 51% of users report receiving pornographic spam down from 63% two years ago and 71% three years ago. Compared to other sorts of spam, porn spam elicits intense reactions from those who receive it, particularly if the recipient is female.
Users have become savvier and recognize spam. According to the survey over two thirds (68%) say they almost never unintentionally open a spam email.

Users increasingly use filters to keep spam out of their inbox. Currently 71% use filters provided by their email provider or employer, up from 65% two years ago. Some 41% apply their own filters, up from 33% two years ago.

You Need To Be Online Marketing!

The Internet will become the dominant medium with almost all content being transmitted via the Internet in some way. There is already a rapid shift towards the Internet as a marketing medium with printed media and television becoming less effective. You need to be shifting advertising spend to the Net, whether it is investment in your Website, Search Engine Optimisation, Google Adwords or by thinking outside the square with something like Virtual Footy. Reply to this email or use our contact form on the right hand side of every Website page if you want to know how we can help.

Phishing, which is a spam email designed to trick the receiver into revealing personal information, is still common. The percentage of survey respondents who have received a phishing email has remained steady over the past few years.

Because spam email has become less effective, spammers have changed their objectives. Previously they used self-propagating worm viruses but now they are more likely to be interested in creating botnets, which are computers over which they have control. These botnets can be harnessed to send more spam with the goal of increasing the size of the botnet.

Also threats are increasingly on Websites where malicious code can be used to infect the visitor. Apparently 70% of sites containing this code are legitimate ones that have been hacked due to lack of updated patches or poorly written code.

So what can you do to make sure your home and company computer is more secure?

Make sure your antivirus program is up to date.
Use a software firewall that monitors outgoing connections. Windows XP firewall doesn’t and Windows Vista firewall’s default setting is to monitor incoming only. It can be tricky to setup but should ensure that your computer is not part of a botnet.
Ensure you regularly update all the programs you use, particularly your browser and email client. All programs have vulnerabilities that are normally patched when found.

Bill Gates thought spam would be gone by now: “Two years from now, spam will be solved” he said in January 2004. It is here to stay even though most people have taken steps to reduce its impact.

You could even say that spam is a little boring these days, but don’t relax, there are other threats to your Internet security.

Hot Tips

Newbies

Making a site a Favorite is a good way of finding your way back to the sites you visit most often, however they can get out of control. Whatever browser you use it is best to get organised by arranging your bookmarks into folders. In Internet Explorer go Favorites/Organise Favorites to create folders of Favorites. In IE6 (the older version) you can click on the Favorites button in the top menu, to open the left hand Favorites panel and then click on the icon to the left of the Web Address and drag it to the folder you want to store it in. In IE7 (the new version) you can do similarly or just use the Add to Favorites button.

Power Users

To quickly enter a dot com address in either Firefox or Internet Explorer go "Alt+D" which jumps your cursor to the address bar, enter the middle portion of the address (eg netinsites) then "Ctrl+Enter" and the browser will automatically start looking for http://www.netinsites.com.

Interesting Sites

Facebook when launched on February 4th, 2004 was restricted to students of Harvard. It was expanded to other Boston area schools and other universities. Since September 2006 it has been available to anyone. Users create profiles that contain photos, interests and join groups of users with similar interests. The viewing of detailed profile data is restricted to confirmed friends or members of your network. As at July 2007 Facebook had over 30 million members and was the number one Website in the US for photo uploading. http://www.facebook.com

InsiteFul Quotes

"The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom." Isaac Asimov

You can see our other Quick Quotes on the front page of www.netinsites.com; just refresh the page to see another one randomly selected from our database. Great for presentations or times when you want to appear to be a techno-dude(ss)!

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