A research paper by academics from the University of Calgary forecasts the future of spam.

The researchers suggest that new and more sophisticated data mining of saved emails and address book contacts combined with natural language processing techniques will produce zombie PCs that send out emails which look like emails that owner of the PC has written to particular contacts before.

The authors predict that this smarter spam will hard to detect, although they offer a few suggestions on how it might be combatted.

The future of spyware and email worms is also covered.

[Via Slashdot ]spam, email, data mining, spyware, email worms, natural language processing

Here’s a puzzle.

MacScan is an app that promises, in the developer’s words, “to detect, isolate and remove spyware, keystroke loggers, Trojans, and bring awareness to remote administration applications which could have been maliciously or inadvertently installed on your Macintosh”.

It’s my understanding that these things do not exist.

Yet the app is very popular. MacUpdate tells me that it has been downloaded 38,554 times; Versiontracker lists 67,909 downloads.

What’s all that about? Curiosity? Neurosis? Preparation for the Apocalypse?