Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services Released Top 10 Spam Stories of 2008 Released

Program Manager at Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services, Terry Zink, launched the top 10 spam stories of 2008. Zink said that Backscatter spam topped among the biggest news in 2008. In this spam, hackers accumulated authentic mail addresses and sent fraudulent bulk mails that appeared to have come from an individual, as reported by CircleID on January 1, 2009.

A hacker dubbed Spam King bags the 2nd rank in the top spam stories. He was slammed with a $230 Million fine for hacking MySpace. Another spammer Eddie Davidson was also found guilty and his story was ranked third.

Spammers targeting news firms are also included in the list. During August 2008, spammers came up with a new series of spam that appeared as the CNN breaking news report. It looked authentic as well as big in spam series. It infected systems with malware.

Besides, viruses attached with mails were circulating throughout 2008, leading to five times increase in the amount of viruses attached mails. This technique acquired the 5th position in the list.

Security experts also disclosed that outbound filtering was on a rise. They devoted almost a year in minimizing the number of spam passing through outbound servers. Further, outbound filtering acquired the 6th rank and troubled several researchers than any other spam case.

A story wherein David Ritz has his case stand against him secured the seventh position in the list. In this case, a judge in North Dakota gave ruling in favor of e360, who filed the case against him for illegally hacking their servers.

The 8th story is of e360 vs. Comcast. A hacker E360 sued Comcast, an internet provider, because Comcast had refused to deliver E360 spam to its customers. But Comcast counter filled and won.

At the 9th position, there is a survey that says almost 29% of users bought goods from mail scam hit their systems. Another spam story that marked the list in 2008 was the close down of California-based spam host company, McColo. When it was shut down, spam plummeted around 50% overnight.

Related article: Microsoft Patches Live OneCare to Tackle Quarantined E-Mails

» SPAMfighter News - 1/14/2009