Mrs. Mecomber's Scrapbook

Yikes. According to CNet, more than 2 million computers in the the United States host botnets! Botnets are malicious programs that infect computers. They are spread through viruses and worms, and are controlled by a “master” somewhere on the Internet. Botnets spew out spam, more viruses and worms, and phishing attacks. Computers under the control [...]

If you use Twitter, be on the lookout for (another) phishing scam. It comes in the guise of a genuine follower’s message– usually it’s a direct message but there have been reports of the message on the public Twitter roster– saying something like “LOL, is this u?” or “hahaha u look funny here.” If you [...]

I hope there is no one out there, still falling for this kind of spam. It came this morning, and gave me a good hearty laugh; it was THAT lame: Dear Windows user, We recently noticed that your computer is not updated against viruses. We invite you to update your computer as soon as possible: [...]

To the non-blogger, that title may look strange indeed… I’m referring to Bad Behavior, the WordPress plugin. I installed it. Remember how I lamented my spam problems? How I was inundated with hundreds of spam comments per day? Well, I installed the plugin called Bad Behavior, and LOOK at my spam count for the past [...]

Wow. In FOUR DAYS, this is how much comment spam I’ve gotten for this blog. And I’m only halfway through the fourth day! Unbelievable, really. There were 57 pages of comment spam! There is no way I could have time to go through them all. I really wish these bots could be destroyed. Askimet grabs [...]

I’m stunned that of all the media news outlets, my local news is the only one carrying this story right now: Authorities shut down major spam supplier CHICAGO (AP) – Federal authorities in Chicago say they’ve shut down one of the largest spam e-mail operations in the world. The Federal Trade Commission says the group [...]