“Was The Morningside Post website hacked?” a friend asked me. The site, which I once co-edited, seemed to have died, and returned as a zombie version of itself. About five months ago, my successors at TMP—the student-run news publication at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs—accidentally…
An unknown hacker has gathered up to 711 million email accounts stored on an “open and accessible” server in the Netherlands, ZDNet reported. The server contains passwords to both email addresses and servers which are apparently being used to send large amounts of spam through legitimate accounts, thereby bypassing…
Once I became a parent, I noticed for the first time that the products I was buying came with pre-addressed postcards. These postcards ask you to send in your contact information, so you can be informed if the product you bought is later deemed unsafe and recalled, so you don’t, for example, get killed by a whipped…
Normally, if a publisher has a problem with spam bots. it has something to do with dreaded promotional comments that don’t make any sense. But USA Today has another problem—the bots just love the colorful newspaper’s Facebook page. That’s led to the FBI getting involved.
Facebook is embroiled in another embarrassing scandal. It appears that some users who post InfoWars articles to the social networking site are noticing that it’s being marked as “spam.” As everyone knows, content from InfoWars isn’t “spam,” it’s “bullshit.”
Twitch broadcaster IronPhoenix87 was streaming Call of Duty on the PS4 for a few viewers late December when he was suddenly pummeled by dozens of random messages. “I have have hacked your twitch beware,” they read, over and over. “Spam by https://spampsn.com - - -.” IronPhoenix87 was playing an open game and doesn’t…
If you’re one of the many iCloud users that has been receiving spam calendar invitations, you’ll be relieved to know Apple has now worked up the courage to acknowledge the problem and is trying its best to fix it.
For the last few weeks, I’ve noticed that I’ve been getting an influx of spam calendar invitations to my iCloud account, often from random counterfeit retailers. “Save 20% on UGGs” one says. “$19.99 Ray-ban&Oakley Sunglasses,” says another.
People join LinkedIn to help advance their careers (or at least feel like they’re trying). People do not join LinkedIn to receive an endless torrent of emails with this infamous line: “Hi, I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.” A judge agrees, and now LinkedIn must pay.
We all have that list of, like, ten people who email us about crap we don’t care about — or just don’t want to see. Now, with two clicks, Gmail will let you block them from ever showing up in your inbox again. This is progress!
The only thing that sucks more than spam are the greedy people who send it to you. That's why the Department of Justice charging three spam kingpins responsible for one of the largest data breaches in history is so exciting. Finally, Feds are taking down the spam kingpins—or at least trying.
This new Pornburger has some unexpected ingredients: The bun is an upside down pineapple cake and the patty is made with beef and ground Spam. Add crispy jalapeño-rubbed bacon and sharp cheddar Riesling cheese and I'm ready to stuff my mouth with it.
Dish Network, it seems, has been rather partial to telemarketing. A little too partial. The TV provider has been found guilty of violating the Federal Trade Commission's "Do Not Call" list a staggering 57 million times.
Many of us have had the experience of receiving a spammy email from a friend or loved one, only to have a frantic follow-up note arrive a few minutes later from that person stating that his or her email account was hacked and warning us not to open or respond to any of the messages sent by the intruder. To be sure,…
Open your spam folder right now and there's almost certainly a grammatically questionable spam email offering you V1agra or C1al1s. But while you know that any pills procured from shady online retailers aren't regulated, apparently some people can't stop buying them. Brian Krebs reports that the problem is out of…
Send an encrypted email, and whoever sees it whistle past their eyes knows you're trying to hide something. So why not hide your most secret messages in plain sight, hidden in otherwise innocuous looking spam?
We've all received that email at least once before. A kind prince/princess/spambot in Nigeria has millions of dollars, and better yet, they want to split it with you. Just hand over your social security code and wait for them to arrive on American soil. As the above newspaper clipping shows, these types of scams were…
The latest crop of spambots on Instagram are employing a trick even slimier than just buying fake followers: They're stealing profiles. As The Verge reported today, some Instagram users are getting followed by their bot doppelgängers, profiles made up entirely from their ripped-off images.
You probably still get a bunch of bulk emails, simply because it's a pain scrolling around to find the elusive "Unsubscribe" link. Gmail just solved that: now, an unsubscribe option pops up right next to the sender's address in certain types of mail. Scroll no more.
The security research firm Cloudmark issued a sweeping warning about iMessage spam this week. Apparently, the cost of straight up sending regular text messages is encouraging spammers to use Apple's free service. And they're going after affluent people in major U.S. cities hard right now.
