Today's convoluted explanation of why something isn't spam is provided by rasimport.com.br. Here's a (somewhat free) translation from the Portuguese disclaimer at the end of their messages:

Important Message: Our message is not spam, here's why: email is a form of correspondence equal to a telephone connection or a letter. In Brazil and in the rest of the world, in the same way that no authorization is necessary to send letters or to telephone somebody, it is likewise unnecessary [to have] prior authorization to send emails in whatever form, there is nothing in Brazilian legislation that refers to the practice of spam, ...

At this point the Portuguese becomes quite opaque (so much so that I wonder if it's not their grammar rather than my very limited grasp of Portuguese that's at fault) but they appear to be arguing that in any case, should such a regulation exist, it will be restricted to requiring that the sender provide an opt-out mechanism.

I'm sure you'll all agree that this is a fascinating argument. I look forward with great eagerness to hearing their justification of why they should be allowed to forge my email address in the 'From:' line of the spams that they send out.

A team of European researchers have announced a revolutionary new spam detection technique that promises to change forever how we filter incoming email, and, the researchers claim, could end spam as we know it. I suspect that claim may prove to be overoptimistic, but the technique does sound interesting and their early tests apparently show vanishingly low rates of both missed spams and false positives. What's more, they say that the next version of their detector will reduce the error rate still further.

The operators of the Storm Worm are known for continually revising the messages that they send out to reflect current events, holidays, and so on. I've just seen what looks like a new Storm Worm message with the subject "All Fools' Day". When you think about it, that's rather appropriate.

I'd like to give a quick shout-out or tip-of-the-hat or whatever to Peru sin Spam ('Peru without spam'), which is a site with similar goals and methods to ours. As well as covering general spam news, they have a list of Peruvian companies that send spam. Their list includes a number of the pests currently filling my inbox with their junk, including Thaisbor S.A.C., Avance Empresarial, Piramide Consultores, and Educe Capacitaciones, to name only a few (and not forgetting our old friends at Il Forno).

It's not clear how effective the naming-and-shaming policy operated by both Spamnation and Peru sin Spam actually is. Some of the companies involved — particularly the ones offering 'management seminars', who are the worst offenders in terms of spam generated — seem fairly sleazy. Still, it's nice to see someone making the effort and their site is a useful resource.

One of the familiar 'arguments' put forward by spammers trying to defend the indefensible is "It's just one message." (of course, it never is 'just one', but leave that aside for the moment). The usual response is to ask reasonably what would happen if every business in the world felt entitled to send 'just one message'. Of course that could never happen ... or could it?

A number of visitors to this site can't tell the difference between record pages from our spam-advertised domains database and the actual website of the company in question (yes, I know, I don't understand it either). This means that we get a certain amount of misdirected mail, often from Very Angry People.

Everybody's favorite piece of malware, Storm Worm, is back again. Since Storm made its debut in 2006, its developers have used a variety of tactics to lure recipients to download sites where they can infect their machines, beginning with fake news articles about storms in Europe (hence the name) and moving on through fake greetings cards, and pitches for imaginary games or MP3 download sites. Along the way, there have been several 'topical' or 'seasonal' variants that refer to particular events or holidays.

For Christmas this year, Storm has been offering a variety of Christmas-themed messages pointing to download sites with names like 'merrychristmasdude.com' and 'uhavepostcard.com'. Now that Christmas is past, it has switched to New Year greetings, pointing to 'newyearcards2008.com', 'happycards2008.com' and so on.

The prevailing opinion seems to be that the threat posed by Storm is diminishing, but its operators seem determined to show that there's life in the old worm yet. It's worth remembering that each time you get a fake New Year greeting from Storm, that probably represents a compromised machine running Storm.

Bizarre spammer disclaimers are making a comeback. Here's one that appeared on a spam from an Indian web design company touting for business:

Disclaimer: This is an unsolicited Business-to-Business correspondence. If you are not interested in this matter, you may delete this message without reading it. Please note that we have not purchased your e-mail address from any commercial sources. We have accessed it through primary research on the internet. In case you prefer not to receive any future business communication from us, kindly reply to this email with the subject `REMOVE' in the subject line.

I like the gracious way they authorize the recipient to delete the message without reading it. That's very generous. Unfortunately, they don't explain how you're supposed to delete the message without reading it when the disclaimer is attached to the bottom of said message. Oh, those wacky spammers and their paradoxes. I'm also glad to know that they haven't purchased my email address (“In which case, you're the only one that hasn't, buddy.”) but have obtained it through ‘primary research’. Apparently, I'm supposed to feel better that their spider crawled my site.