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Google Buzz – Social Networking Website

admin — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 20:44:05 +0000

The Click article for this week is brought to you by Hayley Underwood, my soon to be wife, so that she can tell you about Google Buzz; a new social networking application that she has been getting to grips with.

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Google Buzz is an extension of the Google Mail service offered by Google which the Internet giants hope will lure users away from alternative services such as Facebook.

Google Mail initially created shockwaves when first introduced as they offered a huge 1GB of storage space for messages and attachments compared to most of its competitors who at the time offered a feeble 2 to 4MB. Today they offer a huge 7GB as standard however times have moved on and alternative providers such as Yahoo Mail and Hotmail also now offer an almost unlimited amount of storage space free of charge.

Despite not having the advantage over the competition in this respect any longer, Google Gmail continues to be a popular service due to its ability to integrate well with other e-mail accounts and the way in which it allows you to manage your messages. As an example, Gmail groups together messages that are of the same subject, making them part of a conversation file. In this way you can manage large number of e-mails grouped into the same conversation quickly and easily so that deleting or achieving them doesn’t cause a headache.

Google Gmail is free to use and paid for by advertising however the adverts are very small, non-intrusive and are targeted so that they are more relevant to subject matter that you might find of interest. There are no large graphic adverts and no pop-up or pop-under adverts to clutter your browser.

Google Buzz is a social networking application integrated into Gmail. It aims to offer a better method to share photos, links, videos, and events with your Gmail contacts and personally I believe it is rather coincidental that this was developed after Facebook announced plans they were developing their own email system.

Buzz has all the basic features that you would expect from a social networking application including the ability to share status updates, photos, links and videos both privately and publically. You can choose who you’d like to follow by simply entering their Gmail address at which point they can be added as a friend for you to see a steam of all their updates that have been shared either publically or privately with you. As with Facebook, other users can comment on public posts and show their appreciation for an update or users status by clicking the ‘like’ button.

You can direct a comment into a fellow users Gmail inbox by simply putting @ the beginning of your comment and the user name of that person is then hidden to protect their privacy. This feature can only be used with people that are in your Gmail contact list. Also by clicking on the arrow to the right of any post, you can link content to the post, email the contact directly and mute the buzz that appears in your inbox.

Google Buzz also integrates with Picasa, Flickr, Google Reader, YouTube, Blogger, and Twitter meaning that you are able to share content from these applications directly. This is a nice feature as it allows you to post files and albums you may have already created without having to go through the hardship of creating them twice.

The social networking market has the potential for huge rewards, especially for a company such as Google that makes such a large amount of its profits from revenue generated by advertising. With news that Buzz will soon be available on the Android phone and iPhones platforms, it will almost certainly give the more established social networking sites a run for their money.

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Windows 7 Release

admin — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 21:53:56 +0000

“It’s the big week when Windows 7 is launched on Thursday, but one statistic that grabbed my eye was in a Wikipedia article stating that there are estimated to be three times as many XP computers in use today than Vista ones (68.49% XP versus 22.39% Vista). This suggests that XP is far from being the dinosaur system that the marketing people would have us believe. I’ve still got two XP desktops and no complaints, even though they are getting on a bit.

It also leads to questions about how popular Vista was with the general public and business world, and in this a recent BBC article a Microsoft executive admits that Vista never fully recovered from the early criticism, and they hope for better things with Windows 7.

Two quotes in particular that stick out is that of Annette Jump, a research director at a technology research firm who states that among companies “Vista is the worst-adopted operating system”, and another by the president of Microsoft International, Jean-Philippe Courtois, who opts for the understatement “We don’t feel great about Vista adoption.”

I’m still running the trial version of Windows 7 which is valid for 180 days, but won’t be camped outside the shops when it is launched.
Ian MacMillan, via e-mail“

At the time of writing we are at the eve of the official release of Windows 7 and as such we will soon be able to gauge the public reaction which is something Vista never seemed to recover from. Personally I feel that perhaps Vista drew so much early criticism because of the constantly shifting release date and unrealistic promises about what the software would offer. It wasn’t that Vista was ever particularly bad, it just wasn’t much better than XP and, unless it was being bundled with a new machine, there wasn’t much of an incentive to upgrade.

Windows is a big deal for Microsoft; at present it powers around 90% of the worlds computers and accounts for half of the operating profit that reaches the Microsoft coffers. For years critics have claimed that Microsoft’s virtual monopoly is about to end now that users are offered alternatives in the way of Linux, Mac OS and even newer “cloud” Operating Systems which are stored on remote servers.

Quite simply Microsoft cannot afford to have another ‘Vista’ as although they still retain a commanding lead in the marketplace, another slip up could permanently and irrevocably damage their presumed place as a future market leader.

So far however, all seems good with the new offering. I have been using the release candidate of Windows 7 for some months and have found it to be reliable, compatible, secure and even faster than Vista which we have to remember is a three year old Operating System now.

The company have also been working with other third party developers to ensure that application support on release is strong; by the time Microsoft rolled out the first service pack for Vista there were only 2,700 supported applications and by comparison Windows 7 will have 8,500 supported applications at launch. This is a sign that the company is going to avoid one of the biggest mistakes with Vista when it failed to prepare its partners for the new system.

From a business perspective, we will be stocking the new Operating System and so I hope that it does well but from a writers perspective I would be interested to see what were to happen if Microsoft were to drop the ball a second time around.

Bundled Software #2

admin — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 10:51:26 +0000

This week I received the following e-mail in response to my article last week regarding useless software which is ordinarily bundled with any new computer.

“Hi Chris, I’ve got a couple more suggestions for you…

Avoid: Microsoft Office 2007

Why?: Its annoying interface is a step backwards in usability and as usual Microsoft have put even more bloated junk in there Worse still, they attempt to up sell features like SharePoint to get the customer into expensive server software.

Superior Alternative: OpenOffice.org 3 (www.openoffice.org) which is available for Windows and now natively for MacOS X and Linux. It’s free and does the job perfectly well and it’s compatible with all current and previous Microsoft Office formats.

Avoid: Microsoft Outlook Express

Why?: Like Internet Explorer, it’s prone to security vulnerabilities and it wouldn’t think twice about e-mailing everyone in your address book if the user were to open a dodgy attachment.

Superior Alternative: Mozilla Thunderbird (www.getthunderbird.com) – Like Firefox it’s much more secure by default, it has a more intelligent spam filter and can be expanded with add-ons (such as the really handy Lightning Calendar add-on).

I wonder if you might be worth pointing your article readers in the direction of www.theopendisc.com where they can find a whole load of other great free software including things like The Gimp, OpenOffice, Inkscape and my kid’s favourite, Tuxpaint.

Rob Beard, Devon and Cornwall GNU / Linux Users Group”

I did intentionally stay away from including Office 2007 from my original list because as an incredibly expensive application it is rare to find it located as a default program on a new computer. This doesn’t detract however from the fact that I do believe that Open Office is a worthy alternative and that the new Office interface does appear to be a step backwards in regards to usability. In the past Windows applications always had a universal look and feel which made a new application incredibly easy to pick up but recently Microsoft applications have moved away from this predictable interface which results in a much steeper learning curve.

With regards to Outlook Express I certainly agree; it is a horrid application and I find it interesting that Microsoft will not be bundling Windows Mail (the successor to Outlook Express) with their forthcoming Windows 7 Operating System. Users will be given access to Windows Mail by way of a separate download but without the software being pushed on them, Thunderbird will almost certainly increase in popularity.

I also enjoyed the mention of the free painting application Tuxpaint (www.tuxpaint.org) which is a worthy download for anyone with a child between the ages of around 3 and 12. The program has been designed to not only be incredibly easy and fun for younger children to use but also give parents the confidence to leave them unoccupied with the computer. As an example, the application runs in a full screen mode so that the child doesn’t have access to the start menu or any other computer functions; there is also no obvious ‘quit’ button that would land them back in the Operating System. Saving and loading files doesn’t rely on any knowledge of the computers file system but instead a saved file will appear as a thumbnail which can then be clicked on to open it back up again. A range of fun drawing tools (which all have their own sound effects) are provided including a range of paintbrushes, shape tools, rubber stamps and even ‘magic tools’ which provide basic image manipulation and distortion effects.

Viruses #2

admin — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 17:14:50 +0000

Last week we started looking at some of the most prolific viruses of the last decade and I finished by promising an overview of a worm called ‘Storm’ this week. It would be accurate to say that on many levels I am impressed by the capability of this particular worm hence it requiring its own article however but since it has been created for ill gain, I am of course impressed merely in a disdained fashion.

The Storm Worm was discovered on January 17^th 2007 as it began infecting thousands of computers by using an e-mail message with the subject line “230 dead as storm batters Europe” and after just six waves of attack the Storm Worm accounted for 8% of all infections globally. During its life the worm has continued to primarily infect people in the same fashion by getting them to open an executable attachment (opening executable attachments is NEVER a good idea) by sending e-mails with a catchy subject lines.

The rather unbelievable and arguably impressive stuff begins to happen once a machine has been infected however when, unbeknown to the user, it makes itself part of the Storm botnet; a remotely controlled network of “zombie” computers that have been infected by the Storm worm. Once part of the botnet an infected machine can be told to execute commands given by the authors who have yet to be discovered – worryingly security analysts still have no idea of the country of origin.

Some have estimated that as many as 1 to 50 million infected computer systems comprise the network however one network analyst that claims to have developed software to crawl the botnet estimates a more conservative 160,000 machines.

This network has been known to participate, collectively, in a number of criminal activities from gathering user data, to attacking websites and forwarding the e-mail on to more potential victims. It is estimated that approximately 5,000 zombie machines are dedicated to passing the e-mail on, with a record 57 million messages estimated to have been sent on August 22^nd 2007 alone. In order to avoid detection by anti-virus scanners the worm automatically re-encodes the infection software twice an hour meaning that there are many different variants of the same worm.

The system itself works on a peer by peer basis (such as that employed by file sharing applications) so that external monitoring the system and bringing down the network is made next to impossible; the machines all talk independently of a centralised server there is no one point of contact that can be targeted. The remote servers which control the botnet are also hidden behind a constantly changing network of proxies and variable DNS (Domain Name System) addresses changes. The network has also shown signs of intelligent defensive behaviours and whilst it is unknown whether these are automated or human controlled responses, security operators who have tried to probe the network have instantly been punished with a consolidated DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack from the network which instantly cripples them.

The overall power of the network cannot be accurately estimated but if we work on a relatively conservative assumption that there are one million zombie machines (with broadband connections) being controlled from one source then the potential combined computing power and Internet bandwidth is quite staggering. If a network such as that created by Storm can exist by such a simple method of infection as an executable e-mail attachment then we could be in real problems for the future should the method of infection become more advanced and require no user interaction such as that employed by the Sasser worm which we covered last week.

Viruses

admin — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 17:14:16 +0000

Anti-Virus software gets a great deal of coverage in Click because ultimately it’s a very important component of any computer system and choosing the right program to protect your computer should be carefully considered. Whilst most understand its importance, not many understand the actual effects that a virus can have on your system. To demonstrate my point I need only think back to a phone call I fielded from a gentleman last week who was convinced that a virus had caused the power supply in his printer to malfunction. I thought it might be interesting to look over some of the more realistic and prolific viruses that I’ve seen over the last decade:

Melissa: Named after an exotic dancer from Florida, this virus tempts users to open an e-mail attachment with a subject line such as ‘Here is the document you asked for’. Once opened the virus replicates and forwards itself to the first 50 people in your address book and whilst it isn’t destructive the resulting Internet traffic caused major problems for web servers around the world when it was created back in 1999.

Code Red: In 2001 this worm exploited a vulnerability known as a buffer overflow in several versions of Microsofts IIS which was used on many Internet Web Servers. The result of infection on the server was defacement of hosted websites, further propagation as the worm and denial of service attacks (Dos) against several high profile targets including the White House. A DoS attack commonly involves flooding a particular machine with an unmanageable number of requests; in this case, infected machines would continually target activity towards the White House with the intention of bringing the server down.

Blaster: Again, this worm targeted a buffer overflow so that no user intervention was required for machines to become infected. This time a Windows service known as ‘DCOM RPC’ was exploited with the goal of infecting machines to create a DDOS attack against the Windows Update. A serious side affect for many users running affected versions of Windows was that the instability in one of this Windows service caused the machine to automatically shut itself down after a 60 second countdown. Unleashed on 11th August 2003 the infections for this worm peaked on 13^th August as widespread publicity and filtering by Internet Service Providers curved its progress.

Sasser: This worm which was first noticed on 30^th April 2004 works by exploiting a vulnerable network port so that once again, user intervention isn’t required for a machine to become infected. Once infected, a computer will then begin searching for further vulnerable systems to attack. As it didn’t have a malicious payload, the only damage was reduced computer speed and random shutdowns caused by faulty code in the worm crashing a vital Windows service.

Netsky: Created by the same 17 year old author who created Sasser (due to his age he spent no time in jail when caught), Netsky was an extremely prolific worm which first appeared in February 2004. Distributed via e-mail, if a user opened the infected attachment the worm would then scan the computer for any e-mail addresses and forward itself to all of them. The worm contained no malicious payload but provided problematic traffic to servers as it remained the most prevalent until October 2006.

Storm: Possibly one of the most destructive worms ever created, I think an overview of Storm and the vast number of infected zombie computers that it has amassed can wait until next week.

Readers Questions/Suggestions

admin — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 18:01:38 +0000

Once again, it’s time for me to publish a few of the e-mails that have arrived in my inbox this week.

Mozilla is becoming well known for its Firefox browser and Thunderbird e-mail client, but its Sunbird calendar is less well known. Put simply, it is a clone of the calendar in Microsoft Office but it is completely free and worth a look for anyone who wants an office calendar program without the expense of buying Microsoft Office.

Ian MacMillan, via E-mail

Nicely spotted Ian. Whilst completely free of charge and still in very early stages of development, Mozilla Sunbird is certainly worth downloading for those in need of an easy to use calendar application for their PC without the need for purchasing a package such as Microsoft Office.

The idea of the calendar will be for it to work across multiple platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux etc) as it works using the XUL user interface language provided by a number of applications such as Mozilla Firefox. As a result of this interdependency you will be required to have one of the free programs from the Mozilla suite installed such as Firefox or Thunderbird which I have reviewed before in the past.

To download the Mozilla Calendar head to www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/ and if you don’t already have Firefox head to www.mozilla.org – Both downloads are extremely small and free of charge.

Those interested in other projects that the Mozilla team are working on should head to http://www.mozilla.org/projects/ – To be honest most of it will be way over the head of the average user as a great deal of it is designed for developers but there are certainly some interesting applications to take a look at.

Having downloaded AVG Anti-Virus as suggested in one of your previous articles I am now getting lots of pop up ads when visiting a site – Should this be happening?

Andrea Winnchild, via E-mail

One thing that you should have learnt from me by now is that I’ll never recommend that you download a program that will also expose the user to pop-up adverts and Spyware.

The problem is likely to be caused by a piece of Adware or Spyware that you also have installed on your computer and it is just incidental that this was installed at approximately the same time as AVG. To rectify this I would recommend that you visit the Microsoft (www.microsoft.com) website and download their Anti-Spyware utility or download Spybot Search and Destroy (http://security.kolla.de) which are both very good programs designed to rid your system of such annoyances. If you require any further instructions regarding these two utilities please head to www.computerarticles.co.uk and download one of my numerous previous articles on the subject.

Whilst talking about removing rubbish from your system it might be worthwhile me taking this opportunity to mention that the CCleaner utility that I mentioned several weeks ago which is designed to remove obsolete files and registry entries from your system has been redesigned and fully updated. This is certainly a worthwhile application for most users who wish to clean up their system which can be downloaded free of charge by heading to www.ccleaner.com. Once again, a full review is available at www.computerarticles.co.uk.

Accounting Software

admin — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 16:58:01 +0000

We’ll kick straight off this week with a letter from one of my readers:

I am a keen reader of your Herald Express column and have downloaded some useful free software as a result. I was wondering if you know of any free downloads of Home Accounting software so I can manage simple income & expenditure, ability to categorise entries & bank reconciliation? Nothing too sophisticated.

John Green, via e-mail

I’ll be honest, I really didn’t have a clue where to start here; although I’m self employed I’ve never touched a piece of accounting software for more than two minutes without running a mile. I have always managed to get along quite happily by using the sales figures automatically generated by our system along with a stack of invoices detailing our outgoings and the whole lot then gets dumped in to an Excel spreadsheet; it’s by no means the most organised system but then by using a few simple formula I have the information I need

My problem locating a suitable piece of software for John has been compounded by the fact that such software seems to polarise users easily; the same piece of software will typically receive just as many 5/5 reviews as it does 1/5 reviews. I’d imagine that since accountancy software has such a steep learning curve that for everyone who gives up after two minutes, there is another that perseveres and finds the application quite capable once the surface has been scratched.

After a good look around I settled on Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2008. This decision pains because although it is free, this application is a huge 250mb download and this in my eyes is excessive for any application, let along one designed for simple bookkeeping.

My decision has been reached because, unlike most of the accounting software which has a habit of looking alien, this package looks and feels very similar to Office which should result in a much less steep learning curve.

There is a more comprehensive paid for version of the software available however the Express package covers most imaginable needs of a home user or small business owner. You can create invoices and quotes, generate sales and returns, input bills and charges as well along with more modern features such as eBay and Paypal integration. Those that are VAT registered can generate their VAT returns through the application and those with employees can take care of the Payroll. You are also able to import your existing financial data from other applications such as Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Money or Quickbooks along with importing and reconciling online bank statements.

To get started simply visit www.msofficeaccounting.co.uk and click the ‘download free express’ link and you will automatically be redirected to the download site designed for the UK version of this software complete with pound signs and UK taxation systems. It’s very rare that Microsoft release anything for free that could be considered fully featured and although this application does have its faults I am confident that providing you can stomach the large download then you won’t be disappointed.

Online Fraud #2

admin — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 16:48:58 +0000

Last week I talked about the rather bizarre attitude that the police and banking institutions seem to have towards credit card fraud and how it has become the fastest growing form of crime in this country.

At present the issue simply doesn’t seem to be a focus of attention for the authorities, most probably because it isn’t something that is in the public eye. As long as consumers are protected and small businesses are left to pick up the tab then why should the police stop these people getting away with theft?

Unsurprisingly I don’t feel the same; if someone is stealing money off anyone, whether it’s a business or individual then they deserve to be caught. In an attempt to push this issue out further in to the public eye, I have below an e-mail from another local company which I received on the day of publication of my last article.

“I just wanted to drop you a quick email commending you for the excellent article written in the Herald Express on 11 April. We too are an Internet based business and like you we have been targeted and earlier last year heavily stung on a number of transactions totalling approx £2000.

We reported the matter to the relevant banking agencies who discouraged us from wasting our time by reporting the matter to the Police. Having previously been victims of identity theft we were unsurprised, though highly frustrated by this attitude as the Police were not interested in identity theft and so were unlikely to do anything about this type of “hard to solve” fraudulent activity either. With a heavy heart, we as new business owners had to reluctantly carry the loss and adjust to less income than anticipated.

Your article hits the nail right on the head on every level and it wholeheartedly echoes our experience and sentiments. It’s quite amazing that this kind of activity is allowed to go unchecked particularly when compared to the effort that goes into other perhaps less serious issues. It would be wonderful, though perhaps naive to think some sort of robust Police action would be initiated as a result of your own and I’m sure countless others articles, however I won’t be holding my breath!

Phil Edwards, Director

Consumabulbs”

In the past we have actually contacted the police and card companies stating that we have received a transaction which we know is clearly fraudulent going to a residential flat address. We have offered to send the goods and give a time and date when the package will be delivered, so all that is required is for a policeman to shadow the courier, wait for the goods to be signed for, then swoop in and arrest the culprit. The police do this a couple of times, get the cases on the news and suddenly card fraud in this country plummets as fraudsters begin to worry about the fear of prosecution.

Unfortunately we were told that they were simply too busy to bother with cases like this and that card fraud wasn’t an issue for them. Now, some might consider it ironic that today on Radio One I heard about a woman who is to be dragged before the Crown Court because police were ‘tipped off’ that she threw an apple core out of her parked car window. What started out as a £60 fine sent to her home address has now escalated to a £5,000 legal case as the woman, a mother of three, vehemently denies throwing the bio-degradable piece of fruit and wants to clear her name. She understands that if found guilty she could face up to six months in jail.

On one hand you have someone who is stealing tens of thousands of pounds from countless companies and getting away completely scot-free. On the other you have a mother of three who you have been told threw an apple core out of her window so which do you prosecute? It’s got to be the fruit thrower, surely?

FoxIt PDF Reader

admin — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 16:35:57 +0000

At some point in our computing lives we will almost certainly stumble across a PDF (Portable Document File). These are extremely useful for transmitting a document, including any associated diagrams or pictures, in one single file which should look identical to the original on any compatible computer or mobile device. The fact that practically any modern day machine can use these files, coupled with the maintenance of the original appearance, has made this format extremely popular.

The possible applications are fairly obvious. For example, most modern day hardware and software doesn’t come with a printed manual but rather an electronic copy stored in PDF format on an accompanying CD. In the office, we send invoice copies in PDF format via e-mail as you can be sure that the recipient will view the document exactly as intended. Transmitting a complex document in an alternative format such as .doc would mean that the recipient would be unlikely to see things exactly as you intended, unless they had access to all the embedded pictures and fonts which are often unique to your particular machine.

The format was invented by Adobe back in 1993 and all that is required to read files in this format is the free Adobe Acrobat reader that can be downloaded from www.adobe.com. Unfortunately this software has become extremely bloated in recent years and can often cause your computer to crash or hang even when performing the most basic of operations. Therefore this week I’m going to tell you about an alternative reader which is an essential download for practically every person reading this article; even if you haven’t yet come in contact with a PDF file, you will soon.

The FoxIt PDF Reader is an alternative to the Adobe Acrobat reader that most computer users will have already installed on to their PC at some point. Whilst both pieces of software essentially do the same thing, FoxIt is just 2.1mb to download; approximately one tenth of the 25mb that’s required for Acrobat. The smaller application size means that when you open a PDF file it is on your screen almost instantly, whereas in some dire situations I was left waiting literally minutes when I tried to open some PDF’s embedded in e-mails when using the bloated Adobe offering.

As well as simply reading PDF files the software also allows you to annotate PDF files so that you can make notes, highlight text or draw graphics before saving or printing the changes. When saving you also have the option to save the entire document as a standard text file; this would be useful should you wish to import the content into an application such as Word for editing.

FoxIt reader is can be downloaded from www.foxitsoftware.com and alongside the Windows versions are also variants suitable for Mobile Devices or Linux machines. The software doesn’t include any spyware or adware and pays for itself simply by increasing awareness of the FoxIt brand as they do charge for various add-ons, as well as the more powerful PDF applications that they provide. Do look out on the site for handy other free offerings such as the Outlook PDF preview handler which allows you to view the contents of a PDF file from within Outlook without having to open it first.

I am always amazed that a small company on a shoestring budget can often do a better job on a piece of software than the original ‘pioneers’. The average man on the street will most likely find FoxIt a better piece of software than the Adobe offering; this is despite the latter having inventing the format, benefiting from years of experience and not to mention an almost endless budget.

Spam

admin — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 16:05:44 +0000

‘Spam! Spam! Spam! Spam! Lovely spam! Wonderful spam! Spam spa-a-a-a-a-am spam spa-a-a-a-a-am spam. Lovely spam! Lovely spam! Lovely spam! Lovely spam! Spam spam spam spam!’

Before I’m accused of losing it, could anybody reading the above that’s not aware of the Spam Song sketch, please look it up on YouTube immediately. I have to admit that I’ve dipped back in time to the era of Monty Python but it seemed somewhat relevant this week when I heard the news that a man dubbed the ‘spam king’ is to be tried by a Seattle court.

Robert Soloway has been responsible for sending billions of unsolicited junk e-mails (spam) worldwide since starting his illicit empire which funding a life of luxury including a water front apartment in Seattle and a top of the range Mercedes Benz.

It is almost certain that anyone reading this article has received an unwanted e-mail from Mr Soloway in the past due to the extensive reach of his company over the Internet. He is accused of hijacking thousands of computers, infecting them with a virus and then using them as ‘zombie computers’ to send messages to millions of inboxes across the world. These users of these computers would not have known that their machines were sending illegal spam and many of his e-mailings were sent under their legitimate e-mail addresses.

Mr Soloway is also being tried for a total of 35 different charges including fraud, identity theft, money laundering and email fraud. If convicted he could face decades in prison, a hefty fine and in addition prosecutors want to seize $773,000 that it’s estimated that Soloway made from his firm. The true extent of his financial empire is uncertain as despite four of his bank accounts being seized by authorities, police believe he has dozens more.

In 2005 Microsoft won a seven million dollar judgement against Mr Soloway after they sued him over spam sent through Microsoft’s MSN and Hotmail services. Later in the same year an ISP in Oklahoma won ten million dollars against him but neither company managed to get a penny.

I personally am bored of having to spend hours of my life every month sifting through spam. I do use an e-mail filter that blocks 99% of it but unfortunately it can also pick up genuine customer e-mails; this results in me having to sift through my junk folder to retrieve these messages. The arrest of Mr Soloway is symbolic more than anything else; it is unlikely to have any real impact on the number of spam messages we receive as many of them originate from places such as Russia and the Ukraine, and authorities there are a lot more relaxed about the issue.

This arrest is certainly a step in the right direction and I hope that over the coming year we see a couple more convictions as it’s only when the message that spam doesn’t pay gets across that we will eventually see this reflected in our inboxes.