From The Red Tape Chronicles - Bob Sullivan writes, "In fact, there's twice as much spam now as opposed to this time last year. And the messages themselves are causing more trouble. About half of all spam sent now is "image spam," containing server-clogging pictures that are up to 10 times the size of traditional text spam. And most image spam is stock-related, pump-and-dump scams which can harm investors who don't even use e-mail. About one-third of all spam is stock spam now."

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From Techcrunch - Michael Arrington writes, "The first message, posted on the Google Groups forum on December 19, stated “Found my account clean..nothing in Inbox, contacts ,sent mail..How can all these information residing in different folders disappear? ..How to write to gmail help team to restore the account..is it possible?..Where to report this abuse?.Any help ..Welcome..Thanks in advance ps101″ "

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From Information Week - Gregg Keizer writes, "Spam volume soared another 35% in November, an e-mail security vendor said Thursday, and the month saw spam tactics that reduced the efficiency of traditional anti-spam filters."

"Scammers have been able to turn up the spam volume because of the seemingly limitless number of systems vulnerable to hijack, using an individual bot for only hours to send out large quantities of spam, then discarding that PC to move on to another. The volume, along with the constant tweaking they give to their messages, means that at times traditional rule- or blacklist-based anti-spam defenses can be overwhelmed."

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From The New Your Times - Brad Stone writes, "Hearing from a lot of new friends lately? You know, the ones that write “It’s me, Esmeralda,” and tip you off to an obscure stock that is “poised to explode” or a great deal on prescription drugs.

You’re not the only one. Spam is back — in e-mail in-boxes and on everyone’s minds. In the last six months, the problem has gotten measurably worse. Worldwide spam volumes have doubled from last year, according to Ironport, a spam filtering firm, and unsolicited junk mail now accounts for more than 9 of every 10 e-mail messages sent over the Internet."

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From arstechnica - Eric Bangeman writes, "VeriSign will keep control over the .com top-level domain under terms of an agreement signed last week. The US Department of Commerce has finally approved the deal reached last year, which will allow VeriSign to raise rates by up to 7 percent in four out of the contract's six years as long as the company provides six months notice."

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From The New York Times - Bob Tedeschi writes, "NEARLY a decade into the e-commerce era, the growth in online holiday shopping has shown few signs of slowing down, executives and analysts said. Fueled by Web searches for iPods, Elmos, gift cards and video game consoles, among many others, online retailers are expecting sales to increase by about 20 percent this year, or about the same amount as in 2005."

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From Netowork World - Cara Garretson writes, "Researchers and IT managers are confirming security vendors’ claims that spam levels have spiked in the past month – some say by as much as 80 % -- and show no signs of decreasing."

Full Story: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2006/110806-image-spam.html

Microsoft announced they will no longer support FrontPage Extensions for UNIX servers. Microsoft is releasing new software that will replace FrontPage Extensions.

What does this mean to you?

If you use FrontPage Extensions, we will support them for as long as possible until security or support becomes an issue. Many customers have long since abandoned FrontPage Extensions for the easier to use Site Studio. If you have any additional questions, please don't hesitate to contact support.

For those looking for a more advanced web site editing tool, we recommend Macromedia Dreamweaver 8.

"A significant rise in the global volume of spam in the past two months has security analysts worried that bot nets are increasingly being used by spammers to stymie network defenses erected to curtail bulk email.

Estimates of the magnitude of the increase in junk email vary, but experts agree that an uncommon surge in spam is occurring. On the low side, Symantec, the owner of SecurityFocus, has found that average spam volume has increased almost 30 percent for its 35,000 clients in the last two months. Others have seen much more significant jumps: Spam black list maintainer Total Quality Management Cubed has seen a 450 percent increase in spam in two months, and the amount of spam filtered out every week by security software maker Sunbelt Software has more than tripled compared to six months ago."

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