Displaying items by tag: Spam

COMPANY NEWS: Next Telecom is excited to have been named the SonicWall ANZ Emerging Partner for 2022. The SonicWall partner awards recognise the achievements of SonicWall partners in the pursuit of excellence in the rapidly evolving Cyber Security landscape.

GUEST OPINION: Australia is progressing steadily with an open banking rollout. The Big Four banks – CBA, Westpac, ANZ and National Australia Bank – introduced open banking in July 2021, and other banks and financial services are expected to follow in 2022. According to many fintechs, however, the introduction is going slower than expected, and they are pushing financial markets to open their banking services online by signing additional data holders.

"Small businesses are the lifeblood of the Australian economy. They need support and protection to grow,” says Sagar Sethi, digital marketing specialist and chief executive officer of Xugar. Yet, Sethi is concerned by a proliferation of unethical operators claiming to sell digital marketing but who instead burn the customer and take money out of the country.

AUTHORITY NEWS: The law setting out how businesses must action unsubscribe (or ‘opt-out’) messages from consumers receiving commercial SMS and email has recently been further clarified.

Telemarketing and spam emails or SMS messages are an issue for many Australians, with ACMA, the Australian Communications and Media Authority “protecting the public by promoting and enforcing the law.”

Marketing company Telco First (trading as Compare With Us) has paid a $79,800 infringement notice after an Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) investigation found it sent more than 65,000 illegal spam text messages.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has investigated Australia e-tail giant Kogan and found the company sent more than 42 million marketing emails without an easy way to unsubscribe.

COVID-19 related threats are the single largest type of threat in the first half of this year, according to one security firm which says it blocked 8.8 million COVID-19 related threats, nearly 92% of which were spam delivered via emails.

Security outfit Sophos claims that funds extracted from victims of sextortion schemes have been deposited by cyber criminals in bitcoin wallets.

Australian Internet users were the fifth most attacked by spam and phishing lures in 2019, the security firm Kaspersky says, based on statistics it collected during the past year. The firm found that 25.24% of Australians were attacked.

Optus has issued an apology to its customers who it says “received messages in error” after the company copped a $504,000 fine from the telecommunications regulator ACMA for breaching Australia’s spam laws.

Optus has been hit with a $504,000 fine by the telecommunications regulator ACMA for breaching Australia’s spam laws.

Online digital marketplace Oneflare has paid a $75,600 infringement notice for breaching spam rules by sending commercial SMS messages to phone numbers it found on public directories, and commercial SMS messages without an unsubscribe option.

There's a world class Kiwi software package that's popular enough, but deserves to be even more so, and that's the MailWasher PRO client for Windows, which provides a strong first line of defence against spam, malware, ransomware and and other unwanted mail. Right now, there's a Black Friday sale lasting until Monday 26 November that you really should consider.

(CORRECTION: Please note that this article contains corrections and clarifications at the end of the story.) The powers-that-be at Singtel Optus may think they are being mighty smart by sending unsolicited text messages to all and sundry to try and sell their mouldy mobile plans. In that, they are dead wrong. 

Online marketplace Service Seeking has been fined $50,400 by the Australian Communications and Media Authority for sending SMS messages without consent, for failing to clearly identify who authorised them and for not including an unsubscribe option.

Scammers gonna scam, so haters gonna naturally hate the scammers that try simple yet effective ways to take advantage of busy humans as the weakest links.

Recently I've been getting calls from an American sounding guy called John Mitchell, offering some kind of financial advice, in what is an obvious recorded message, all from different Australian mobile phone numbers.

With the World Cup football tournament beginning in 17 days, themed phishing websites, email scams and football-related spam is growing by the day, researchers at Kaspersky Lab say.

Cyber security company McAfee reports "record suggest in health care attacks, fileless mawalre, and cryptocurrency mining", with 59% YoY ransomware growth, new Mac OS malware yet new mobile malware decreasing by 35%, and plenty more.