Microsoft scores one for the good guys Scott Richter, the self-proclaimed “Spam King,” just can’t seem to get enough attention. Admittedly responsible for sending literally billions of Unsolicited Commercial Email messages (UCE), Richter made headlines again recently when his spam-fed cash cow, OptInRealBig.com, filed for bankruptcy protection in U.S. federal court in his home state of Colorado. According to Richter’s father (who is also his attorney), “It’s the legal fees that are battering the company. OptIn is profitable but for these lawsuits.”

At the time of its bankruptcy filing, OptInRealBig.com claimed assets of less than $10 million and liabilities of over $50 million. Richter claimed his company made $15 million a year sending more than 15 million email messages per day. However, in 2003, OptInRealBig was dealt a powerful 1-2 punch from Microsoft and Eliot Spitzer, the Attorney General of New York; both sued Richter under local state anti spam laws. Although the New York case was settled out of court last year, Richter has had no such luck dealing with Microsoft, whose claims top $19 million.

A Case of Global Amnesia? Richter’s company and others like it market products ranging from diet pills to pornography. He’s also been accused of using spam to extract personal information from unsuspecting recipients. For instance, one alleged scheme hatched by Richter and his associates promised recipients a copy of a “Girls Gone Wild” DVD if the recipient registered on a website. The registration information was then used to bombard the recipient with more and more spam.

Richter contends that his methods are all legal, and that he’s just a regular guy trying to do right by the world; he’s even gone so far as to claim that he’s a “victim” of overzealous anti spam companies and prosecutors. “We don’t spam,” explained Richter in an August 2004 PC World interview. “The biggest problem is when people get an email that they think they didn’t sign up for or don’t remember signing up for, and they call it spam.”

To hear Richter tell it, tens of millions of people simply forgot that they had previously asked to receive his messages. According to the state of New York, however, he falsified header information and used deceptive routing and domain purchase practices in order to get his messages through. The lawsuit also accused Richter of using a network of approximately 500 “zombie” computers to send his messages. When asked how so many users could have subscribed and not remember doing so, Richter claimed the signups must have been via anonymous “partners of our partners” web sites, the names of which slipped his mind.

Not Just an Online Threat Evidently not satisfied with stealing bandwidth, Richter also shows a penchant for heavy equipment. In an unrelated 2003 case, he was put on probation after pleading guilty to a felony charge of receiving stolen items worth more than $10,000. According to court records, an informant’s tip regarding a stolen Bobcat loader led undercover officers to Richter. Over the course of 13 months, the officers proceeded to strike deals with him for a Honda generator, hundreds of cases of cigarettes, three laptop computers and other items, all offered at suspiciously low prices and purchased in some of Denver’s seediest neighborhoods. In addition to probation, Richter was also ordered to pay $38,000 in restitution for the stolen goods.

Despite his guilty plea, Richter maintains his innocence, saying he pleaded guilty to the felony charges because it was “easier to be done with it,” and he had “too much stuff going on in my life.”

What’s Next for Scott Richter? The 5-year-old OptInRealBig.com, which employed 25 people last year and had 350 clients, will continue to operate under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. While the bankruptcy filing shows the power of legislation and legal action from parties with a vested interest in stopping spam, Richter is not likely to fade quietly into the sunset. Under Chapter 11 bankruptcy laws, the company must follow a court-supervised “debt rehabilitation” plan to pay off creditors, but is not required to modify its business practices. None of OptInRealBig’s assets will be liquidated, meaning the company’s stable of spam cannons will remain active. The bottom line: Scott Richter will not be required to stop sending UCE in the immediate future, pending ongoing litigation intended to determine exactly what spam is in legal terms. In the meantime, the best defense against spam is a comprehensive gateway solution that will guard against all manner of email threats, especially spammers like Scott Richter.

We have all suffered from these annoying dangerous spam emails. Most of us still do. There are excellent anti spam solutions in the market, there is no reason to tolerate this no more.

To understand the solution we must first understand the problem. So, what is this spam email? Spam is unsolicited, unwanted, irrelevant or inappropriate email. Spam email is mostly used for commercial purposes. Spam emails are also known as “junk mails”.

So, why do people are constantly searching for the best spam blockers? Why do the market of anti spam solution rolls billions of dollars a year? Well, these spam emails are time consuming and are annoying. But, more than that, they cost a lot of money. Why? First, because time is money. But more than that, billions of spam emails are loading lots of unnecessary data over the servers.

Therefore, big software companies constantly develop anti spam solutions, spam blockers and email spam filters.

Anti spam solutions basically do one or more of the following things:

1. Anti spam solutions check the senders’ names and addresses and filter the spam emails according to a black list of spammers they own and update.

2. Anti spam solutions check the recipients’ names and addresses and according to certain parameters, they filter the emails. For example, if the mail is sent to a large group sorted alphabetically, the email is considered spam.

3. Anti spam solution scan the emails (Their subject and body) and search for certain words or phrases such as “Viagra” and filter the spam email accordingly.

There are many kinds of anti spam solutions such as anti spam lotus, anti spam exchange 5.5, anti spam for outlook express and others. Some work on the server layer and some on the client layer. But basically, they all do the same job - Make your life better.

Find the best spam blockers only on the Spam blockers top programs site .
More valuable info on http://www.tigilet.com

Remember when spam was just another horrible thing you would never eat? And then you grew up a little and spam became the lyrics to a great Monty Python song. And now spam is something to avoid at all costs. Or, in the case of free spam blockers, at no cost at all. Everything is better when it’s free, right? Such is the case with blocking out annoying spam from your email account, too.

Free spam blockers are popping up all over the internet. Kind of ironic, isn’t it, that some pop-up ads are advertising spam blocking technology. The problem with spam isn’t really the content, of course, it’s the time spent winnowing through all those e-mails in search of the ones that really contain useful information or are from people with whom you want to contact. The best free spam blockers in the world are not only free, but don’t take up any space on your computer. Yes, I’m talking about being very careful to whom you give your e-mail address.

The plain simple truth is that any time you fill out a form that asks for your e-mail address, you are just asking for spam. Maybe the site where you filled out the form sold your address to mass marketers and maybe they didn’t, but chances are if you have ever given your e-mail address to a company rather than an individual, you received spam because of it. And if you’re like most people doing business on the internet, you’re spending anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour and a half just checking your e-mail every day. You don’t have time to wade through the spam pool. That’s why getting yourself one of the reliable free spam blockers out there is so important.

You can almost instantly tell when you’ve come across one of these free spam blockers because of their oh-so-clever name. For instance, Spamhilator, SpamButcher, or SpamKiller. And you want to know a secret? They are almost all exactly alike. Oh sure, there are little differences that may mean a lot to you personally, but frankly it doesn’t matter. The best thing you can do is download them as a trial versionand with so many on the market offering trial versions, it makes no sense to ever download any of the free spam blockers that don’t offer trial versionsand check them out to make sure they do what they promise. And if they do what they promise, do they do it with a minimum amount of fuss and muss and maintenance on you part.

The key to using free spam blockers is maintenance. You got one in the first place to give yourself more time to do what you need to do. So why would you want to use a spam blocker is high maintenance itself? Go through all the free spam blockers that interest you and then narrow them down until you find the one that works completely in the background without throwing out stuff you really need and that doesn’t require you to keep checking up on it. That’s the one you want.

Matt Garrett www.Free-Spam-Blockers.Com
www.Spam-Filters.net

Identity fraud crimes, one of the most insidious forms of white-collar crime, are a federal offense under the Identity Theft and Assumption Deterrence Act. Identity fraud is the deliberate appropriation of an individual’s personal information to impersonate that person in a legal sense. In the sci-fi flick “The 6th Day” machines are used to replicate the mental state of a person, such as memories, habits, etc. and subsequently create a clone. Similarly, stealing someone’s identity allows a fraudster to clone or create your shadow, enabling him to make a number of financial and personal transactions in your name, thus making your life a living hell, particularly if you don’t realize what has happened right away, and the pretender siphons off huge funds. Identity theft is usually slow to detect and even slower to rectify.

Therefore, to detect many types of identity theft crimes in the earliest stages and minimize damages, you should subscribe to one of the identity theft monitoring services provided by all three credit bureaus. For a small monthly or yearly fee, the identity theft monitoring agency of your choice notifies you by email of any changes or unusual activity in your credit reports. Most of these services come with identity theft insurance as well as the reports. Some of the bureaus even offer a three-in-one monitoring service that alerts you to changes in any of the three bureaus’ reports. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the leading governmental agency addressing the problem of identity fraud, recently launched an identity theft monitoring website annualcreditreport.com where all consumers are eligible for a free copy of their credit reports. I recommend that you visit this web site and determine if the service is for you.

Banks, credit cards, debit cards and brokerage statements give a transaction-by-transaction replay of where you spent your money for the month. The more often you monitor them, the more quickly you will detect foul play. However, the best way to obtain and monitor your credit worthiness is through identity theft monitoring organizations that work with major reporting agencies. ConsumerInfo.com is one such identity theft monitoring agency that provides copies of reports and a credit check monitoring right over the Internet. Time is of the essence. Monitoring credit statements on the Net, removes the paper statements from the mail, and there is a very little lag time between making a charge on your card and being able to view it online, thus cutting detection time. Fast detection time is your friend in stopping identity theft.

Keith Londrie II is a well known author. For more information on Identity Theft, please visit Identity Theft for a wealth of information. You may also want to visit keith’s own web site at http://keithlondrie.com/

Most spam messages will include a link at the bottom which states something like “to remove yourself from the list click here …”. On the surface this seems innocent enough, but if you do respond you are potentially increasing the amount of spam that you receive by many times.

Wait a minute. You mean you ask to be removed and instead not only are you not removed but you will get more spam than ever? How can that be so? To understand why you must first understand how spamming works. You see, spammers operate by getting zillions and zillions of email addresses however they can.

Sometimes they purchase CD collections of “15 million clean email addresses” or “5 million email addresses” for some small amount of money. I’ve seen these collections as cheap as $9.95 (one wonders how clean these collections are).

Another common tactic is to use spiders to scan thousands of web pages for email addresses. These addresses are then added to a database which is then sold or used.

And sometimes the spammers just pick a domain and send their spam to a variety of possible email addresses at that domain. They just pick a domain and use a dictionary of names and send every one of those names to the domain. Those that generate a bounced (error) message are deleted from the list.

So you see, the spammer begins with a list of email addresses which are not validated. They are simply known to not have returned a bounce message (an error indicating an email account did not exist). However, what is not known is that a human being is actually reading the mail from that mailbox.

The problem with responding is that you validate for the spammer that a human exists at that email address. This increases the value of your email address by many times. A smart spammer can actually sell these verified addresses to collections of “clean” lists.

Of course if you actually buy something from the spammer you’ve increased the value of your email address to astronomical levels. In this case, you may find yourself added to countless “sucker” lists, receiving countless offers from the most obscure places.