NJ Spammer Draws 2 Years in Slammer

MarketWatch 's tips for avoiding the lure of fraud e-mails

(NEWSER) - We've all learned to avoid the obvious e-mail scams—but sometimes it's just hard to tell. MarketWatch gives you some tips from separating the chaff from the wheat:

1. Know what a phishing scam is: an attempt to con you into supplying ID info, account numbers, names, passwords and so forth. Be wary.
2. Do not reply to requests for financial information initiated by someone else. Legitimate businesses will not ask you supply or "verify" account information.

Ron Rosenbaum reports on vigilantes patrolling the "scamosphere"

(NEWSER) - Revenge is a dish best served electronically, Ron Rosenbaum reports in an Atlantic expose on scam-baiting. A community of e-vigilantes has developed elaborate schemes to thwart the ruses of fake Nigerian princes with equally creative faux dupes. Scammers are punished by coaxing them into laborious and embarrassing tasks, like holding humiliating signs or copying out entire novels. More»

New set of standards could make email more trustworthy

(NEWSER) - A new anti-phishing effort, backed by the big email service providers as well as banks, PayPal, social networks, and other companies, could dramatically reduce the number of scam emails you get in your inbox. Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL are backing the new plan; 15 companies in total have come together to create DMARC.org, which officially launches today and will promote standard technologies to authenticate email. The hoped-for end result? If you get an email that claims to be from paypal.com, you could trust that it is actually from paypal.com. If it works, companies would be able to communicate with customers in new ways, the Wall Street Journal reports. More»

It was apparently just a miscue, not spam

(NEWSER) - Nearly 9 million people got a puzzling email from the New York Times today, but fears of a massive hack are apparently unfounded. Turns out, it was good old-fashioned human error. The newspaper meant to send the email only to a few hundred people who had recently canceled home delivery, but it instead went out to anyone who had ever provided an email address to the paper. More»

Bigshots in politics, media, entertainment hang on to old addresses

(NEWSER) - AOL.com email addresses are so nineties, right? But apparently they're also a sort of weird status symbol amongst a certain set. Ben Smith first made the argument last week on Politico , noting that despite the "stigma" long associated with the AOL.com domain, there's also "a certain prestige" attached to those who have held on nonetheless. He offers up a long list of politics and media bigshots, including David Axelrod, Matt Drudge, Arianna Huffington, and Ann Coulter, who still have their accounts. More»