December 30, 2008
It was a very good year

SpamIsLame's yearly roundup of spam news has been posted on his I Kill Spammers blog -- long but worth reading, as it's mostly good news for those of us trying to keep spammers from making the internet and email unusable.

December 26, 2008
Farewell, Castlecops.com

The anti-spam community is greatly saddened by the loss of Castlecops.com, a volunteer website devoted to internet security that was retired this week. It was in part a victim of its own success -- its scope had become so broad that it was a too big a time committment for the owners, and it was so effective in fighting internet criminals that it was a target of repeated and expensive attacks.

People are clamoring for its return; whether an institutional sponsor will step up and take over -- while maintaining the non-commercial nature of the site -- remains a question. But the hundreds of volunteers whose contributions helped make the site so valuable have not given up. They continue to fight to make the internet safe enough for people without special technical skills, helping to achieve its potential for allowing productive communication among people from all nations and backgrounds. Spammers should take note that not all antispam forums are publicly accessible, and their members find events like this to be a reason to fight even harder.