ClearMyMail has been awarded the GOLD award by PC Advisor magazine after a recent review and test.

"ClearMyMail is an antispam system that can, with almost no effort or complex configuration, stop all unwanted email without suffering false positives."

You can read the full review at:

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews/index.cfm?reviewid=1944

After a in-depth 2 month review test of the ClearMyMail Spam Blocker, Techworld have awarded ClearMyMail their TECHWORLD RECOMMENDED award.

"Hard to believe - an anti-spam service that works"
"Works supremely well; No false positives; Service model makes it cross-platform "
John E. Dunn, Techworld

You can read the full review at:

http://www.techworld.com/security/reviews/index.cfm?reviewid=612 

Open. Delete. Open. Delete. Open. Delete. It doesn’t seem as if it takes up too much of your time, does it? Yet managing spam email predominantly sent from the US costs small to medium businesses in the UK over £4.5 billion in productivity costs according to recently conducted research by a leading anti-spam company.

Spam email is costing the average Small to Medium business nearly £2000 each year according to new research by a leading UK based anti-spam company, ClearMyMail, with the vast majority of it coming from America. On average each employee wastes two days of their working year filtering through and deleting illicit and often obscene emails, with it taking on average 6 seconds to download, check and delete each email.

The UK based anti-spam software service has found that for an average small business managing 10 different email accounts, 160 hours of working time each year are devoted to the tedious task of ensuring spam ends up in the trash.

More than 2.5 million small businesses in the UK now use email as their main communicative medium. James Coakes of Progressive Resources Ltd claims that spam email has cost his and his employees valuable time and effort.

“These statistics come as no shock. My employees and I have been battling the menace of spam for years now, constantly bombarded with often lude and definitely unwelcome promises and messages, from senders claiming to have a personal knowledge of me.”

He continued, “They were, and are a nuisance. I have since started using an anti-spam product, which has allowed my employees to concentrate on their work rather than what somebody is attempting to sell them.”

Dan Field, MD of www.ClearMyMail.com has some advice for those looking to cut down on time spent dealing with these unsolicited messages:

“As the Internet and email has evolved, so has spam, which is often advertisement in the most intrusive way. Securing your companies servers means that there are fewer servers that spammers can illegally use to convey their messages. However, the problem of unwanted email will remain until enough of the population, including those who use their computers for personal use install anti-spam software.

He continued, “This way, spammers will have such a small pool of potential targets that they may have to resort to more mainstream methods of advertising.”

You can read the full press report at:

www.ClearMyMail.com/press/stealth_american_spam_tax.aspx

Calculate how much spam is costing you in lost time at:

www.ClearMyMail.com/SpamCost 

Surprisingly it was the Macbook Air!

The aim of the CanSecWest hacking contest was to read the contents of a specific file stored on each of the 3 laptops (1 running Windows Vista Ultimate SP1, 1 running Ubuntu 7.10, 1 running Mac OS X 10.5.2).

At first, the hackers were not permitted any direct access to the laptops and had to try and get in through the network... no one succeed at this stage so the contest was opened up a little...

The second day allowed the hackers to direct an operator on each laptop to websites or to open up emails.

The hack

Within 2 minutes, Charlie Miller had successfully compromised the Macbook Air and had read the contents of the required file! Winning $10,000 and all 3 laptops.

The method used was not disclosed but he had to use pre-installed software so the compromise was achieved either by the Mail app or Safari web browser.

Protect your computer

It doesn't matter whether you use an Apple Mac, Windows PC or Linux... you are still at risk from hackers!

About ClearMyMail

ClearMyMail offers total email protection for your PC, Apple Mac, Linux computer and even your mobile phone. Blocking all spam, hacker emails, virus, Phishing, fraud and pornographic emails before they come anywhere near your computer.

- The world's only guaranteed spam blocker - now only £1.50/month
- Blocks all spam, virus, Phishing and other dangerous emails before they reach your computer
- PC Answers Editors Choice Award Winner, 95%!
- Webuser Magazine, 5 Stars!
- Comptuer Active Magazine, 5 Star User Rating!
- Buy.com, 5/5 Rating!
- Tech.co.uk, 5 Stars!

We are currently working on a whole range of new feature for ClearMyMail, some of which are aimed at people who like to read their email both on a computer and also on their mobile phone.

Mobile email is rapidly growing service, but if not managed correctly can result in large data transfer bills from your mobile service provider!  By using ClearMyMail in conjunction with your mobile phone you can already drastically cut down on the costs by eliminating all spam emails before they are downloaded.

Our engineers are busy working and testing a whole range of new features to help you manage your email on your mobile phone, which will further reduce your data costs.  Watch this space for news of the new features!

 

John Kenneth Schiefer, 26 from Los Angeles has pleaded guilty to four charges of wiretapping and fraud.  Schiefer worked as an IT security consultant but then illegally took control of over 250,000 PC’s by infecting them with his own malicious software.

Once the PC’s were infected they were fully under his control, which allowed him to then capture and re-use login details for PayPal.  The amount of money stolen from the victim’s has not yet been fully calculated.

A collection of infected PC’s is often called a “Botnet” and is often used to send out spam emails.  Schiefers Botnet of 250,000 PC’s is relatively small, with some Botnets thought to contain millions of infected PC’s.

Once a hacker has built up a large Botnet they often rent time out on the PC’s to other criminal gangs – usually to send out spam emails.  It is these Botnets that can quickly overrun the Internet with millions of spam messages.  With simple precautions and up-to-date virus scanners (ClearMyMail blocks all virus emails) the number of PC’s available to these gangs would drastically drop.

Todd Moeller, from New Jersey has been sentenced to two years in prison for sending out more than 1 million spam emails, all to AOL users.  The spam emails were advertising computer security software, from which he earned 50% of any sales made from the spam… it has been reported that Todd was making upwards of $40,000/month from this and other spam email campaigns he ran, including Pump and Dump scams.

Todd was also fined $180,000 after pleading quality earlier this year.  He was only caught after trying to make another spam deal with an undercover government informant.

Enjoy your time inside, Todd!

This is a question that I'm frequently asked and the answer depends on the type of spam emails that are being sent.  Most spam emails can be categorized into the following four groups:

1. Product/Service Spam

These are emails that are trying to sell you a product or service.  More often than not, this will be a magic pill to increase certain parts of your anatomy!  The Product/Service Spam group is the most common form of email spam.  They include spam emails that link through to websites, as well as direct sales messages.

The reason for spam:  

The reason Product/Service Spam emails are sent is simple... to make money.  The spammers are able to send out millions of spam emails every single day, with minimal costs.  It only takes a tiny fraction of a percentage of the recipients to click through and purchase one of their products for the spammers to make some serious money! 

2. Pump and Dump Scams

A "Pump and Dump" scam is basically an email that tells you of a great stock/share that is incredibly cheap at the moment, and that you should rush out and buy the stock/share.  The scammer would of already bought a large number of the stocks/shares before sending out the spam email.

When lots of people then start buying the stock/share the price will quickly rise.  When the price reaches a certain level the scammer will dump (Sell) his stocks/shares for a large profit.  Usually the companies involved are failing companies with no real value so when the scam is realised the price crashed leaving the other people  who bought the stock/shares with massive losses - but the scammer has already cashed out and made his money well before this happens! 

The reason for spam:

Again, the reason is simply money.... As long as enough people believe the scam and buy the stocks/shares the price will rise rapidly allowing the scammer to dump his shares before the price crashes. 

3. Fraud & Phishing Emails

Phishing emails are the emails that look like they have come from your bank (Or any other online site where your personal details are stored), asking you to logon or confirm your account details.  A common Phishing email may be forged email asking you to confirm your account logon details for your online banking.  The emails and websites used often look identical to the real sites but will be used by criminal gangs to capture your logon details which can then be sold on to other criminals or used to withdraw or transfer money from your online accounts.

Fraud emails will usually either ask you to help with the transfer of a large amount of money from a failing African country, or will be informing you of a large lottery win.  The catch with all of these scams is that the fraudster will be asking for some money up-front to help with the transfer of the money to you.  

The reason for spam:

These types of spam emails are sent out by criminal gangs, often part of larger organised crime gangs who may be involved in weapons trading, drugs and illegal pornography.  The Phishing emails have a simple aim - to get as many logon details as possible.  These logon details will then either be sold on to other criminals or used directly to defraud money from the victims... usually by simply transferring funds from the online accounts.

The fraud emails are often run from African criminal gangs, the most famous type is the Nigerian 419 scams - where the fraudsters will be asking the victim for help transferring millions of dollars out of their country.  They will offer the victim a large percentage of the money in return for their help.  The catch is that they persuade the victim to put up thousands of dollars to help with the transfer.  Needless to say the large some of money never materialises once the victim has paid the money.

4. Virus/Trojan Emails

Many spam emails are sent out through infected computers.  These infected computers are controlled by criminal gangs to send out spam for other fraudsters, and are often termed a "Bot-net"... a collection of hundreds or thousands of infected computers that are under the control of the criminal gangs.

The criminal gangs use viruses and Trojans sent through spam emails to infect more computers... the more computers they can infect, the more they can control and then hire out to fraudsters and other spammers.

 The reason for spam:

Spammers needs computers to send out their spam emails, the more computers they control the more spam they can send out.  Often they will rent out time on the computers they control (Bot-Nets) to other spammers.  To control more computers the spammers will send out virus emails that infect the computers and allow the spammer to control them to send out spam.

Symantec have recently reported a rise in PDF attacks sent through emails, but this time the contents of the PDF file is a Trojan rather than a Pump and Dump scam.

Our engineers did pick up on these new emails last week, but all had already been blocked by the ClearMyMail spam fitler so no customers were at risk. 

This is slightly different to the earlier outbreak of PDF spam, which were fairly short lived (Thanks in part to the fast response from ClearMyMail in blocking them).   These emails are being sent with the aim of infecting computers with a Trojan.  Once the computers have been infected they are likely to be used within a Bot-net for the purpose of sending out more spam.

It is fairly easy to protect against this attack though... Because the PDF does contain a know Trojan it is easily picked up by the ClearMyMail virus scanning engine (Part of our multi-stage email protection system) - so doesn't pose any risk to ClearMyMail customers.

What is interesting is how the spammers and virus writers are starting to use different file types to deliver their spam message or virus.  We have seen attempted spam sent through PDF files, and then it moved onto office documents (E.g. Excel files) and just last week we had MP3 spam...

MP3 spam was an interesting one.  The spammers had someone record their message as a voice MP3 file (In this case the message was for a traditional "Pump and Dump" scam).  They then added some random noise (To avoid some basic filters) and sent it out.... the main problem was that to by-pass enough spam filters they had to alter the message fairly regularly which cost them time and time is money to a spammer!

Welcome to the new ClearMyMail blog.  This is my first blog entry for what we hope will grow to be an informative and useful resource.

We will be using this blog to keep our customers, and those interested in email security up-to-date with all of the latest news, trends and developments in the industry.

Questions

We will also be opening up this blog to questions, so if you have any questions about spam, Phishing emails or any other email security topic then please get in touch.

Please subscribe or bookmark this page and check in often, as we will be making regular updates.

Kind Regards,

Dan Field

CEO
ClearMyMail Limited
The worlds only guaranteed spam blocker