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Google adds spam explanation to Gmail, steers clear of enlightenment
Why is this message in spam? It's a question we find ourselves asking our Gmail boxes almost daily, when messages that really should have made it through to the inbox end up in electronic purgatory instead. So why does Google's algorithm choose to filter certain legitimate messages, while letting the vast majority arrive unscathed? The answer can now be found atop each message filed as spam, presented with the simplest of explanations, that generally fails to provide any actual insight as to the email's assigned delivery. Such worthless gems as "It's similar to messages that were detected by our spam filters," "It contains content that's typically used in spam messages" or "Many people marked similar messages as spam" now await you above each note -- seemingly assigned just as casually as the emails themselves.
Hotmail adds 'My friend's been hacked!' feature to finger phishers
Hotmail's spent the past few years playing catch up with the competition, but for the most part, it hasn't done anything particularly groundbreaking with its services. Earth shattering might not be the appropriate descriptor for its latest addition, but Hotmail's added a helpful new feature to distinguish plain old spam from the kind that comes form a trusted source. Now, when you get an email from a friend that smells of something sea dwelling -- say a plea for some extra scratch from abroad -- you can select "My friend's been hacked!" from the "Mark as" menu, alerting the powers that be that your friend's account has been hacked. When you mark a missive as junk, you can likewise click a box that reads: "I think this person was hacked!" Once that's done, the spammers are kicked to the curb, and your friend is put through an "account recovery flow" the next time they attempt to log in. On the prevention front, Hotmail will soon roll out a new service that blocks users from selecting common passwords. It might not be enough to coax us over, but maybe this time the other guys could learn a few lessons.
GSMA and Cloudmark cooking up an SMS spam reporting system
If you get just five spam text messages a day then consider yourselves lucky, as a Chinese mobile user could easily amass at least 30 messages daily, according to Cloudmark. Fortunately, said company has been working with GSMA and various network operators on building an SMS spam reporting system, which should help drastically reduce worldwide cellphone spam. The idea is rather simple: in a multi-country trial that ended last December, participants from AT&T, Bell Mobility, SFR, Sprint, Vodafone, Korea Telecom, and the Korean Internet & Security Agency forwarded suspect spam to "7726," which is short code for "spam." Cloudmark's cloud-based system would then be able to identify and block these messages in the future, be it scams, linkbaits, or just ads from perverse companies. While this sounds like a perfect solution, it's not entirely clear how much this service would cost the operators, but hey, it's never too early to start a petition if you need it that badly.
