In a new phishing trend, spammers are focusing on individualized attacks. Recipients may be deceived into thinking the message is from a friend but these spammers want access to their credit card accounts!

The emails feature the recipients’ names in the subject lines, claim to have seen them at Starbucks and ask them to click on a link to view photos. Don’t click!!! It’s a scam!!! Those that take the bait may be exposed to objectionable material, incur unauthorized charges to their banking account, and may fall victim to identity theft.

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An internet firm linked to many of the internet’s criminal gangs has been shut down.

The US Federal Trade Commission said Belize-based 3FN aided gangs that ran botnets, carried out phishing attacks and traded in images of child abuse.

The servers and net hardware of 3FN have been seized and are due to be sold off as the firm is dismantled.

The operators of 3FN must also pay back $1.08m (£750,000 ) they are reputed to have made by hosting criminal sites. MORE

When people think of Google Docs we think of the ultimate replacement of Microsoft Word – for free however more and more people are using Docs storage repository for unusual and some times unlawful material as some spammers have just found out. Google will work with the authorities to stomp this out

FBI agents targeting alleged criminal spammers last year obtained a trove of incriminating documents from a suspect’s Google Docs account, in what appears to be the first publicly acknowledged search warrant benefiting from a suspect’s reliance on cloud computing. MORE

BBC reports that some of the latest Microsoft security updates for Windows XP will not be installed on machines infected with a rootkit virus. A rootkit is sneaky malware that buries itself deep inside the Windows operating system to avoid detection.

Microsoft said it had taken the action because similar updates issued in February made machines infected with the Alureon rootkit crash endlessly. The latest updates can spot if a system is compromised by the Alureon rootkit and halt installation. MORE

Apple released its much anticipated iPad for sale on April 3, 2010. Exploiting the product’s publicity, Internet scammers are targeting it through spam.

Tech Website, namely GeekSugar.com highlights that spam e-mails are being unleashed seeking people who will test the iPad. Users receiving the e-mails are taken onto Testitandkeepit.com that requests for iPad product testers spanning a few months. The site offers compensation in the form of the iPad itself. But, a prominent indication of the ruse’s tricky nature is that it asks for the recipient’s password and e-mail ID so that his friends too can be intimated. MORE

AMSTERDAM, 13th of April 2010. Dutch anti-spam law causes 85% drop in semi-legitimate spam sent out, 39 businesses received an official warning! MORE

Another high profile death. Another recycled scareware tactic attemping to lure users to download malware by telling them that their PC is infected with a virus. We saw it after the deaths of Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, and Natasha Richardson earlier last year. Now the attention of cyber criminals has turned to Monday’s death of the Polish President -Lech KACZYNSKI (Rest In Peace) as the dish of the day for malware terrorists. MORE

Search engine files patent application for methods of detecting link spam.

Ever since people caught on to how Google used the number of incoming links to a web site in its ranking algorithms, people have tried to game the system. From selling links to creating link farms, SEO has focused much of its attention on link building over the years. As a result, the search engines have had to counter this by trying to separate good links from bad.

Yahoo has filed a patent for discovering abnormal link structures and demoting the rank of web pages based on these abnormal incoming links. MORE

The spam filters on Gmail have become completely paranoid lately—sending , legitimate mails into the spam folder

Facebook is employing aggressive legal means in combination with technical measures in order to stop hackers from abusing its social-networking site, according to its chief security officer, Max Kelly. The company is constantly under fire from hackers trying to spam its 400 million registered users, harvest their data or run other scams. MORE