Good news: One of the most notorious enemies of the Net world, one of the world’s most prolific spammers, is now behind bars.

Bad news: Despite his arrest, junk e-mail continues to fill mailboxes around the world. Oh well, life goes on despite the baddies all around us.

Even if Robert Alan Soloway is ultimately convicted and his operations shuttered, spam experts say dozens are in line to fill the void.

But there’s a way to “do justice” with Soloway and his ilk. The cartoon here gives the idea.

Spam cartooon

Soloway, 27, was once on a top 10 list of spammers kept by The Spamhaus Project, an international anti-spam organization. Others have since topped him, mostly based in Russia and other countries out of reach of U.S. or European law.

Soloway was arrested Wednesday on charges of mail fraud, wire fraud, e-mail fraud, aggravated identity theft and money laundering. Prosecutors say Soloway has sent millions of junk e-mails since 2003 and continued even after Microsoft Corp. won a $7 million civil judgment against him in 2005 and the operator of a small Internet service provider in Oklahoma won a $10 million judgment.

Soloway could face decades in prison, though prosecutors said they have not calculated what sentence range he might face.

Like most spammers these days, authorities say, Soloway sent out unsolicited bulk e-mails using networks of compromised computers called “zombies.” These are generally home computers whose owners typically have no idea that their machines have been infected with viruses or other malicious programs; service providers can’t easily block messages from zombies because they are mixed in with legitimate messages.

What set Soloway apart was his focus on spam designed to sell tools and services for companies and organizations to send their own junk e-mail, said Patrick Peterson, vice president of technology at anti-spam vendor IronPort Systems Inc.

The monster is back!

The Loch Ness monster is back — and there’s video!

A man has captured what Nessie watchers say is possible footage of the supposed mythical creature beneath Scotland’s most mysterious lake.

No, it’s not him! No reports of Osama being sighted in Scotland. Neither is it the ghost of Saddam. Nor of Georgie Boy.

lochness monster
This shadowy something is what someone says is a photo of the Loch Ness monster in Scotland.

“I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw this jet black thing, about 45 feet long, moving fairly fast in the water,” said Gordon Holmes, the 55-year-old a lab technician from Shipley, Yorkshire, who took the video Saturday.

Nessie watcher and marine biologist Adrian Shine viewed the video and hoped to properly analyze it in the coming months.

“I see myself as a skeptical interpreter of what happens in the loch, but I do keep an open mind about these things and there is no doubt this is some of the best footage I have seen,” said Shine, of the Loch Ness 2000 center in Drumnadrochit, on the shores of the lake.

Holmes said whatever it was moved at about 6 mph and kept a fairly straight course.

“My initial thought is it could be a very big eel, they have serpent-like features and they may explain all the sightings in Loch Ness over the years.”

Loch Ness is surrounded by myth. It’s the largest inland body of water in Britain, and at about 750 feet to the bottom, it’s even deeper than the North Sea.

“There are a number of possible explanations to the sightings in the loch. It could be some biological creature, it could just be the waves of the loch or it could some psychological phenomenon in as much as we see what we want to see,” Shine said.

Related Articles




Leave a reply