War Driver Convicted under Can-Spam Act

A Californian recently pleaded guilty to sending spam via other people's wifi connections. Wifi (802.11) is typically accessible several hundred feet from the base unit. It has become common practice for spammers to drive around looking for unsecured connectivity to send unwanted (and perhaps illegal) email over. This activity is known as war driving (presumably derived from the older hacking technique `war dialing').

SpamButcher and other spam blocker utilities can't do anything to prevent your internet connection from getting hijacked in this manner. The only solution is to secure Wifi access point using encryption.

The first generation of Wifi gateways typically shipped without security enabled. This has lead to major security problems both for home users and businesses. Typically consumers (and apparently some IT employees) don't understand that running an insecure Wifi access point can allow hackers access not only to the internet - but possibly data on their own system.

Also - if they commit illegal activity - it may appear to be originating from the owner of the access point instead of the hacker.

The best way to keep spam out of your own inbox with by using an antispam program such as SpamButcher.

SpamButcher performs better than other anti-spam filters by using the latest fuzzy logic technology.

SpamButcher can be used as an Outlook spam blocker, spam filter for Outlook Express or with any other email client that supports POP3.

Full Spam Related Story

Back