* Blue Security's demise in the hands of spammers
Blue Security was founded with a simple premise: a) sign up lots of people who did not want to be spammed and then b) send e-mails to spammers en masse on behalf of these people asking that the spammers stop sending their junk to Blue Security members. The premise was a good one in some respects and actually convinced some spammers to take Blue Security members off of their list.
However, several spammers did not take kindly to Blue Security’s efforts on behalf of spam victims and so attacked Blue Security and its customers with spam, denial-of-service attacks and threats. One threat indicated that Blue Security’s database had been compromised, that the personal or business e-mail addresses of Blue Security’s members were being distributed on the Internet, and that continuing to be a Blue Security member would result in a twenty-fold increase in the amount of spam that members were receiving.
The result? Blue Security ceased operations last week. The announcement on the company’s Web site announced that Blue Security would throw in the towel, acknowledging that even if it resumed operations, spammers would just shut it down again.
To me, there are at least three important lessons we can draw from this:
1. Many spammers are extortionists. What happened to Blue Security is analogous to a telemarketer throwing a brick through your front window because you put your phone number on the Do-Not-Call List, and then promising to continue to throw bricks through the rest of your windows if you don’t take your name off the list.
2. Don’t buy from extortionists. Lenin said, “The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.” Although I seriously doubt that many spammers are Communists, when you buy from spammers, you buy from the people who fill your mailbox with junk and who turn your PCs into zombies. Don’t do it.
3. Keep your own house in order. If you have a home PC with a broadband connection, maintain it with good anti-spyware tools that will prevent your PC from becoming a zombie. There are lots of good and inexpensive tools available that can help you do that, such as Sunbelt Software’s CounterSpy, Microsoft’s Windows Defender or McAfee’s AntiSpyware, to name just a few of the many products that can solve this problem easily.
