Spammers are more commonly using world events and tragedies as part of their arsenal. It is advised that all users ignore any such messages unless you are receiving news alerts from trusted sources.

If you do happen to open any spammer emails, never follow through to the links as this can be a source of malware and other nasties.

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Aside from getting into your email, this could also be used for domain hijacking. If Gmail is used as the administration/contact email for a domain, then hackers could request a password reset on the login and then obtain the details when they are emailed through. With these details a domain can easily be hijacked.

To ensure that your Gmail is safe, keep a close eye on your filters.

The world’s top 10 spam relaying countries account for about 57.4% of the global spam volumes. The BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) churn out 20% of all spam. Asia contributes 16.57%. India is ahead of China (3.39%), Republic of Korea (2.57%) and Thailand (2.04%).

“Since 2003, the volumes of spam have been growing steadily, now reaching in excess of 80 percent of all Internet traffic,” said Niraj Kaushik, country manager (India and SAARC) of Trend Micro.

He further adds, “Most spam today is to advertise ‘get-rich-quick’ schemes and similar dubious products. Starting off being a small irritant that most enterprises used to ignore, spam has today has taken the shape of a huge calamity. Enterprises not having a policy to curb spam will eventually see their profitability and productivity being affected.”

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Screengrabs and what appears to be a full listing of her email contacts have been posted on the web, including on WikiLeaks, raising concerns about the vulnerability of information in the official emails sent on the private address.

“This is a shocking invasion of the (Alaskan) Governor’s privacy and a violation of law. The matter has been turned over to the appropriate authorities and we hope that anyone in possession of these emails will destroy them,” the McCain campaign said in a statement.

The analysis was carried out by University of Cambridge computer scientist Dr Richard Clayton, in a bid to understand the widely noted discrepancies in the amounts of junk mail or spam that different people receive.

Dr Clayton took as his dataset the 550 million e-mail messages sent to customers of net service Demon between 1 February and 27 March 2008.

Commenting on the research at a spam and email conference in California, Dr Clayton said, “Measuring incoming email has shown that the first letter of email addresses makes a difference to the proportion of incoming spam.”

Robert Soloway is the second person in the country to be convicted under the Can-Spam Act for flooding the virtual world with fraudulent e-mail messages. His sentence of 47 months is less than half of what prosecutors wanted.

Robert Alan Soloway, who pleaded guilty in March to mail fraud, e-mail fraud and tax evasion, was sentenced to three years and 11 months in federal prison; a judge will decide later how must restitution he must pay.

Prosecutors said Soloway made hundreds of thousands of dollars selling so-called “broadcast e-mail services” and used networks of compromised computers to send out millions upon millions of junk e-mails.

In her sentencing memo, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathryn Warma wrote, “he is known worldwide for the volume and markedly malicious nature of his criminal spamming activity, the fraudulent ‘spam promotion’ sales scheme associated with it and for brazen and even boastful claims that he is above the law and anyone — including federal judges — who would dare attempt to seek his compliance with it.”

Adam Vitale, 27, was sentenced in federal court in Manhattan after pleading guilty more than a year ago to breaking anti-spam laws. He was also ordered to pay $180,000 to AOL in restitution.

“Spamming is serious criminal conduct; this is not a teenager engaging in child’s play,” U.S. District Judge Denny Chin told Vitale as he sentenced him. Vitale earlier apologized and said he had learned a lesson.

“Given the opportunity, I will never do anything like this again,” Vitale said prior to sentencing. “I really am sorry.”

The Computerworld report says that users began receiving spam email messages on Monday telling them that they must correct a problem with their iTunes account; however, the link leads to a third-party site masquerading as an iTunes billing update page:

“that phony page asks for information including credit card number and security code, Social Security number and mother’s maiden name,” the report noted.

News of the phishing attempt comes by way of e-mail security firm Proofpoint, Inc. “We’ve gotten used to seeing the usual companies and brands attacked, like PayPal, eBay and Citibank. But we’ve never seen Apple as the target,”

Proofpoint’s Andrew Lochart said. “It’s probably indicative that the bad guys see Apple’s online presence as large enough to be a target. It’s part and parcel of the success that Apple has enjoyed lately.”

The first spammer was Gary Thuerk, a salesman for computer firm Digital Electronic Corp. (DEC). Thuerk recognized that the academics, engineers and scientists connected through an electronic network called the Arpanet. His first spam read;

“We invite you to come see the 2020 and hear about the DECSYSTEM-20 family at the two product presentations we will be giving in California this month.” (To read the full message click here)

As you can imagine, people weren’t too thrilled to be getting an advertisement on their email, especially given the fact that APRANET was meant to be for ‘official US Government business’ at the time.

This type of targeted e-mail attack, called “spear-phishing,” is a variation on the more common “phishing” attack. Both attacks use fake e-mail messages to try to lure victims to malicious Web sites, but with spear-phishing the attackers try to make their messages more believable by including information tailored to the victim.

The email is an official looking subpoena via email requesting the recipient to appear in front of a grand jury. It had may have the recipient’s name, phone number, company, and correct email address included in the message. Even the URL looks legitimate at first glance. This is not a legitimate message and should not be released from the end user’s quarantine.

Attacks of this sort often last no more than a week. They target executives to gain access to their bank accounts, which typically have a significant amount of money. “It’s a very quick hit,” he said, noting that he has seen similar attacks result in bank account losses that range from $100,000 to $1 million in aggregate.