Not that we haven't seen victories over SMS spammers before, but this one is sure catching a lot of attention due to the names attached. GSI Commerce and Timberland have reportedly agreed to "establish a fund of up to $7 million to settle a class-action lawsuit brought against them for allegedly sending unsolicited text messages to wireless telephone users in violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act." The settlement has already received preliminary approval from a judge in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois Eastern Division, and while the aforementioned firms vehemently deny any wrongdoing, they concede that taking this to court would be "burdensome, protracted and expensive." More expensive than $7 million? Is that guilt we smell, or what?

[Via mocoNews]

We had a pretty good idea that not only was this whole "Biggest Drawing in the World" business fake, but also impossible. First, we were skeptical that DHL could make deliveries based on coordinate instructions. Then, we determined -- with little effort -- that the little campaign was a DHL ad. Now we have a straight-up admission from artist Erik Nordenenkar and DHL that entire thing was fictional. Appearing at the bottom of Erik's site -- after the fact and millions of hits -- are the following words: "This is fictional work. DHL did not transport the GPS at any time." Meanwhile, DHL offered that this was an innocent college project and they were happy to let Nordenenkar film in their warehouse, use their name, and make false claims regarding the whole shenanigan. So, there you have it. The videos, briefcase, DHL receipts -- all spam. Move along.

[Via Wired]

Spammers in the UK just got a little pick-me-up from the Information Commissioner's Office, which recently evaluated its rules and decided that Bluetooth was not covered by the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, which prohibits advertisers and marketers from sending unsolicited messages on a "public electronic communications network." Since Bluetooth doesn't operate over a public network like SMS or email, the ICO can't apply the privacy regulations as they're now written to Bluetooth messaging -- advantage, spammers. The ruling isn't official yet, but we'd be surprised if the regulations weren't re-written to include Bluetooth and other short-range wireless connectivity standard pretty quickly.

[Via Tech.co.uk]

We certainly hope you dig the flavor of Russia and Estonia blended together in the morning, as your News Brews is probably cranking the mixture out en masse after reports that Russia has been waging a "cyber war" on Estonia for the past few weeks. Reportedly, Estonia's well-regarded networks have been "under heavy attack," saying that Russians are behind the mass outages of its state and commercial websites. Currently, Nato and EU officials are attempting to track down the culprits, and while Moscow has reportedly "denied any involvement in the internet attacks on its neighbor," relations between the two haven't exactly been rosy of late. Don't fret Estonia, if things get too bad, there's always Sealand.

[Via Guardian]

Watching the digits in front of your dedicated spam folder grow isn't entirely enthralling, and to be honest, witnessing just how much junk email you receive on a daily basis can actually be somewhat infuriating. The Spamtrap provides a much more tactile and satisfying way to demolish said waste, as it disregards the delete command and gets straight to the dirty work. The installation interacts with spammers by monitoring several email addresses, and once any spam is received, the Pentium II-based machine "automatically prints and shreds" the garbage so you can really tell the spam whose boss. Subsequently, the system then feeds blacklists with the information it receives in an attempt to further clean up the web for other individuals without such extreme means of purging their inbox. And for those environmentally conscience folks who are on the edge of irate, yes, the creator does go the extra mile by recycling the paper that inevitably gets wasted. Hit the read link for a video demonstration.

[Via BoingBoing]

Before we start, it'd probably be wise to point out that the SPIT we're referring to here is "Spam over Internet Telephony," not the stuff that formed those puddles around the iPhone booths the other week. NEC thinks that SPIT could potentially be the next big spam threat, and considering that SPIT combines the disruptive nature of junk phone calls with the ease of distribution of email based spam, it's easy to agree with this assessment. In order to preempt this threat, NEC has been hard at work on a piece of software called SEAL, which uses the Turing test to detect and then block any computer generated SPIT that it detects. A simulation showed that the SEAL software rejected 99 percent of the SPIT that it encountered: an impressive result, but the 1 percent that slips through could still potentially annoy a lot of people. Just think of how distracting each spam email that slips past your filter is, and then add the context of a ringing phone each time one arrives in your inbox: not cool. NEC hopes to improve the technology going forward, although as the current situation regarding email based spam shows, once the battle between prevention and the SPIT-spammers starts, it's unlikely to end decisively. NEC is showing off its SPIT-repelling SEAL software at the 3GSM World Congress 2007 this February and will continue to develop the solution until it's feasible to release it commercially.

[Via Digital World Tokyo]