It’s amazing to se the massive support that the international blogosphere is giving to freedom of speech in general and Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer in particular these days. Kareem Amer, or Abd al-Karim Nabil Sulayman is a 22-year old law student from Alexandria, who, like many other bloggers, has expressed his thoughts on everyday life, politics and the world he sees around him in his Blogspot blog.

However, most of us aren’t as brave as Kareem. We live in counties where freedom of speech is a natural thing, as expressed in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). In Egypt expressing any views on the government, your university, or the prime minister is a prave thing to do.

I fully support the two campaigns and petitions for his immediate release.

I don’t care what Kareem’s views are. I only defend his rights to express them. I don’t know Kareem, but I have a feeling I would like him. I tend to do that, when people have the guts to express their oppinions - whatever those oppinons are.

I see it as every blogger’s duty to run to Kareem’s defence. If we don’t raise hell when one of us gets into trouble for doing what we all do, who will do it for us if and when we get into trouble?

Repressive regimes, such as the Egyptian, tend to scare of their critics now and again by setting examples. And four years in prison for saying that you thinks that your university is run as a terror regime and that Ahmed Nazif, the Egyptian prime minister acts as a farao? That’s a pretty strong message to every potential blogger to just shut up.

But I don’t think the Egyptian regime has counted in the international blogosphere. We are, quite able to send just a strong a message. A message of support for free speech. Kareem’s blog, has never been more popular. Even I have tried to read it, even though I don’t read arabic (and the translation tools are as useless as ever). It is getting more links than ever from everywhere, and I don’t think Blogger will ever shut it down after all the attention it is getting. Read the rest of this entry »

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It’s been a sad day for the spam fighting business.Today the battle between Dave Linhardt (of email-marketeers E360Insight) and the anti-spam organization Spamhaus.org took a new turn. Dave Linhardt claims that he now has a court order giving him full ownership over the domain spamhaus.org. He presents his claim at
http://www.e360insight.com/news-item1.php

And here is the reply from Spamhaus.org:
http://www.spamhaus.org/legal/answer.lasso?ref=1

Spamhaus today made a call-to-arms to all major ISP’s and Internet officials to come to their aid.

Dear All,

This is an appeal to ISPs and industry participants.

As you know Spamhaus is now appealing a default legal judgement obtained last year by a spammer in Illinois. The default judgement, granted because Spamhaus, a UK organization, chose not to defend the case in Illinois on jurisdiction grounds so as not to set a jurisdiction precedent, left the spammer with a $11.7 million judgement which the spammer has since been using to threaten U.S. ISPs.

In order to present the best appeal possible, Spamhaus urgently needs the help of a number of high profile industry participants.

We are asking you to consider adding your company’s name to an Amicus Brief which our attorney will file with the court on your behalf. (The text of the Brief will be finalized by the end of today).

The appeal will generate extensive press coverage, therefore the presence of your company name in the “Amicus filed on behalf of the following companies…” section will generate very positive PR.

If you can put your company name to an Amicus Brief in support of Spamhaus, please let me know and I’ll pass your details on to our filing attorney to contact you. Unfortunately we need to get this done quite quickly, we have just a few days in which to compile the names of the Amici.

Our filing attorney for this Amicus Brief is Matthew Prince (UnSpam). If you are able to add your name as an Amicus, please contact Matthew at <matthew at unspam.com>

Thank you,

Steve Linford
Chief Executive
The Spamhaus Project
+44 207 183 2002
http://www.spamhaus.org

It would, in my oppinion be an outright disaster if Spamhaus lost the right to their domain, and thus to the address to the most important anti-spam blacklist used world-wide by responsible ISP’s.

Let’s hope that all good forces, by coming together in this Amicus Brief, can fight the Illinois court ruling.

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The benevolent charity scammers are at it again. I still haven’t got a really good grip on how they carry these scams through, but this particular sting is extraordinally well written. Ahkmeed Paul Saidik, an incredibly welthy Dubaii merchant regrets his greedy life style after facing a cancer diagnosis, and wants help with giving his welth to charity:

	from		saik <saidik01@myway.com>
	reply-to			saidik01@myway.com
	date			Feb 6, 2007 12:55 PM
	subject			Treat as urgent

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Two big lottery prizes in just a couple of days! I missed this on Friday, but it’s almost too good to be true!  Alas I didn’t win the really large prize in the Euro Millones Lottery. (What language could that be anyway?) Only a “consolation cash prize” of 1,300,000:00 Euro. Too bad it’s a scam though.

How come people think that anyone would believe that someone paying out millions of Euro would use a hotmail address? Here’s the sting, a really poorly written lottery scam mail:

From:       e.millions71@hotmail.com
Subject:     CONGRATULATIONS!!! YOUR E-MAIL ID HAS WON. CONTACT AGENT FOR YOUR PRIZE.
Date:     2 February 2007 14:48:39 GMT+01:00
To:       undisclosed-recipients: ;

CONGRATULATIONS!!! YOUR E-MAIL ID HAS WON. CONTACT AGENT FOR YOUR PRIZE.
European Award Winning Prize.
Euro Millones Lottery Board
INTERNATIONAL PROMOTION /PRIZE AWARD.
FROM: THE LOTTERY COORDINATOR,
INTERNATIONAL PROMOTIONS/PRIZE AWARD DEPARTMENT
Paleisstraat 5, 2514 JA Den Haag:

Dear winner,

We wish to inform you that you have been approved as one of the lucky winner winners in the Euro Millones Lottery International Email Address draw on the 1st of February, 2007. All 5 winning addresses were randomly selected from a batch of 50,000,000 international email addresses. Your email address emerged alongside 4 others as a category 2 winner in the Euro Millones Lottery Draw.
Most recently this foundation set up the NEW LOTTERY SCHEME to give out prizes based on COMPUTER BALLOT SYSTEM. By doing this the foundation seek to encourage the use of Internet for academic and business pursuits.

Your email ID identified with Reference No: RJT/7438/TN and was selected by our E-games Random Selection System (ERSS) with entries from the 50,000,000 different email addresses enrolled for the E-game. Your email ID was included among the 50,000,000 different email addresses submitted by our partner international email provider companies.

You have won a consolation cash prize of 1.300,000:00 Euros (One Million Three Hundred Thousand Euro Only). The EUROPEAN EMAIL PROMOTION PROGRAM Group have approved a payout of your consolation cash prize which will be remunerated directly to you by the official Payment Agency Board.

We wish to congratulate you over your email success in our computer balloting sweepstake 2nd of February. This is a Millennium Scientific Computer Game in which email addresses were used. It is a promotional program aimed at encouraging internet users; therefore you do not need to buy a ticket to enter for it. You have been approving for the star prize of 1.300,000:00 Euros (One Million Three Hundred Thousand Euro Only).

Batch No:LF/53/849/TN
Ticket No:UW/83/02/TN
Lucky No: 52/658/95/TN
Ref No: RJT/7438/TN
Serial No: TM/YR38J/TN

To claim your winning prize you are to contact the appointed agent as soon as possible for the immediate release of your winnings:

Name: Mr. Donald Lucas.
ELECTRONIC MEDIA AGENCY B.V
Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Tel: +31-643-635-997
Fax: +31-847-272-428
Official Email: electronicmedia2@aol.com

You are advised to provide him with the under listed information as soon as possible:

1. Name in full
2. Address
3. Nationality
4. Age
5. Occupation
6. Phone/Fax

The appointed agent will be required to Notarize all your award winning documents in the Netherlandsl Court of justice in The hague and also obtain Approval Legal Clearance Certificate from the Court which is in accordance with the European Union Lottery Act 2002 on payment of International Lottery Winners. Be inform that the PAYING BANK will Effect Payment Swiftly upon satisfactory Report, Verifications and validation provided by this fiduciary agent.

Once again congratulations!!!.

Best Regards,

Elina Raynes(Mrs.).
(Group Coordinator)

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I almost thought I would never get another lottery notification mail, but this weekend, almost to my relief, this one slipped through my spam filters. I have never come caross the SWISS-LOTTO Satellite software email lottery before, and it differs a bit from other lottery scams since it actually parasites on a real lotto site, the quite legitimate SwissLos. However, there is no such thing as a UK subset of SwissLos, and if you know the first thing about the Swiss, you’d know that they are pretty good att taking care of money, and keeping records.

Besides. Why should a Swiss lottery send out emails using a domain such as hostle.net (the return path goes to nobody@webserver2.hostle.net)? And why on earth should they use a  yahoo.co.uk email address for correspondance?

The Swiss-Lotto UK is nothing but a sham and falsification. Here’s the mail, and yes, it happens to be sent out from

From:   internationalcoordinator@swisslotto.ch
Subject:     CONGRATULATIONS!!!…..YOU HAVE WON 750,000 Euros.
Date: 3 February 2007 07:52:06 GMT+01:00
To:   [a scraped]@lindqvist.com
Reply-to:   cordinator_swisslotto@yahoo.co.uk

SWISS LOTTO UK.
P O Box 1010
Liverpool, L70 1NL
UNITED KINGDOM
https://www.swisslotto.ch

CONGRATULATIONS!!!…..YOU HAVE WON  750,000 Euros

You have have been awarded 750,000 Euros in the SWISS-LOTTO Satellite software email lottery in which e-mail addresses are picked Randomly by software powered by the Internet through the worldwide website.

Your email address was amongst those chosen this year for the SWISS LOTTO Satellite lottery. And this promo is proudly sponsored by the SWISS-LOTTO UK organization.
You can log on to our website for more information concerning our entire lottery promo
https://www.swisslotto.ch .

Your email address,attached to Ref number 4, 12, 14,19,21, 31 with Serial number 1979-12 drew the lucky Numbers 35, and consequently won the lottery in the “A” Category.
You have therefore been approved for a lump sum pay out of 750,000 Euros

Please note that your lucky winning number falls within our European Booklet representative office in Europe as indicated in your play coupon.

In View of this, your 750,000 Euros will be released to you by our security firm in Europe. Our European agent will immediately commence the process to facilitate the release of your funds as soon as you contact them.

All participants Were selected randomly from World Wide Web site through computer draw System and extracted from over 300,000 companies and individual email addresses.
This promotion takes place annually. For security reasons, you are advised to keep your winning information confidential till your claims is processed and your money remitted to you in whatever manner you deem fit to Claim your prize. This is part of our precautionary measure to avoid double claiming and unwarranted abuse of this program by some unscrupulous elements.

To file for your claim, please contact our fiduciary agent:
Mr. Aron Baker,
Email:swisslottoclaimsagent06@yahoo.co.uk
Tel: +44 704 010 1519

Provide him with the information below:
1.Name:
2.Address:
3.Marital Status:
4.Occupation:
5.Age:
6.Sex:
7.Nationality:
8.Country Of Residence:
9.Telephone Number:
10.Fax Number:
11.Draw Number above:

This information facilitate the due process of the release of winnings avoid unnecessary delays and complications in the processing of your winnings.
Always remember to quote your Reference / serial number in any correspondences with us or our Designated agent.

Congratulations once more from all members and staff of This program and Thank you for being part of our promotional lottery program.

Sincerely,
Sharon Cole
Co-ordinator
SWISS LOTTO UK.
P O Box 1010
Liverpool, L70 1NL
UNITED KINGDOM
https://www.swisslotto.ch

N:B - PLEASE NOTE THAT ALL CORRESPONDENT WILL BE TEMPORARILY BE VIA EMAIL UNTIL 24 HOURS BEFORE PAY-OUT THEN YOU WILL BE NOTIFIED VIA TELEPHONE.

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This Lottery scam was submitted by a reader by mail a few weeks ago, but got stuck in one of my spam filters for a while. I rescued it just before emptying my Junk folder.

R. Johnsson, who submitted the mail, writes that she wants me to publish it warn others.

This is  a variation of the National Lottery scam, and as such it deserves a page of it’s own. And now it’s posted as a warning to anyone who gets the same mail. Don’t do what they ask you to. They’re just trying to get some money out of you.

The National Lottery
EURO MILLIONS PROMO/PRIZE DEPARMENT
Abbey Street Lower, Dublin 1, Ireland (Customer Services)
Ref: IR/9420X2/68
Batch: 074/05/ZY369

Dear Winner,

RE: YOUR WINNING NOTIFICATION!

We are pleased to inform you of the final announcement
of the Irish National Lottery 2007 Online Prommotion Result
held on the 20TH day of January 2007.You have won this lottery
as a result of random selection of emails from our microsoft
data base, this promotion takes place once in a year.

You have therefore, been approved to claim a total sum of
1,350,000 Euro.From the Irish Lottery Board.
For further information contact your fiduciary agent
DR. MARK O’MEARA Of the claims Department for your
FUND RELEASE VERIFICATION FORM.

Dr. Mark O’Meara
Claims Department
The IRNL Foundation
Email:drmarkomeara13@yahoo.co.uk
Tel: +44 (70) 1112-7993 +44 (70) 4570-2021

Just another lottery scam… It’s amazing they are still at this.

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