I was browsing through my mail spool on my machine, and I noticed that there were some messages in one of my accounts for a vBulletin forum. After further review, it was some bounce backs that had accumulated from users that didn't have a valid email address.

I then started to do some Google searches for a vBulletin module (vBulletin's search is horrendous and practically useless) and found this module.

I was wondering the web looking at random items, when I came along an article at http://www.worldwidecreations.com titled Stopping spam before the door with SpamCop and IPTables

Its a great article with a lot of information and code on how the author is able to grab the offending hosts and place them within IPTables.

This is a very interesting read, it looks as though Spammer Alexy Tolstokozhev was found murdered within his spam-bought estate.

We all know how annoying can spam be. Although there are highly sophiscated tools nowadays, which can reduce the amount of spam in your mailbox to the minimum, it’s still at least unpleasent to see all those “penis enlargement” mails. But people working in this “business” aren’t safe anymore: Alexey Tolstokozhev (btw, in Russian his name means ‘Thick Skin’), a Russian spammer, was found murdered in his luxury house near Moscow. He has been shot several times with one bullet stuck in his head. According to authorities, this last head shot is a clear mark of russian hit men (known as “killers” in Russia). Tolstokozhev was a famous spammer who sent millions of e-mail promoting viagra, cialis, penis enlargement pills and other medications.

Thunderbird is a pretty great open sourced mail client that is available on multiple platforms and for free. From the beginning its development has been mostly be shadowed by FireFox. The two core developers of Thunderbird have left Mozilla, which is a big blow to the ongoing development of Thunderbird. Will Thunderbird not longer get as many updates or new features? Will development complete stop? Only time will tell.

CheckGmail 1.12 (Default branch) -
CheckGmail is a system tray application that checks a Gmail
account for new mail. It is fast, secure, and uses minimal
bandwidth via the use of Atom feeds.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
This release adds information about attachments
and clickable URIs in the message full text.
Numerous bugs have been fixed, including the
issues with XGL/Compiz, international character
display, and multiple monitors.

[FreshMeat]

NSA wire taps my Drupal?

The Privacy of Email - Anonymous Coward writes "A U.S. appeals court in Ohio has ruled that e-mail messages stored on Internet servers are protected by the Constitution as are telephone conversations and that a federal law permitting warrantless secret searches of e-mail violates the Fourth Amendment. 'The Stored Communications Act is very important,' former federal prosecutor and counter-terrorism specialist Andrew McCarthy told United Press International. But the future of the law now hangs in the balance."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
[Slasdot]