New Talk21 scam?

Question

Attn: Email Account Owner,
This message is from  @talk21.com updating account messaging centre to all our email account owners. We are currently upgrading our data base and e-mail account centre. We are deleting all old @talk21.com email accounts to create more space for new accounts. To prevent your account (talk21.com) from closing you will have to update it below so that we will know that it's a presently used account. To upgrade your email account, please contact our upgrading officer stated below and fill the updating processing form:
Updating Officer: Mr Emma Gate
E-mail:[email protected]
Updating Processing Form. (Fill and send to this office via email)
Email Username:
EMAIL Password:
Last Log on:
Date created:
Residential Address:
Country:
Telephone:
NOTE: We have been sending this notice to all our email account owners and this is the last notice verification exercise.
Warning!!! Account owner that refuses to update his or her account  within Seven days of receiving this warning will lose his or her account permanently.
Thank you for using talk21.com!!!
Warning Code:VX2G99AAJ
©2010 talk21.com Internet Mail Service Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Answer 1

Meadmodj wrote:
I disagree that there is nothing the ISPs can do
We appear to have embraced the email technology and ease of use these past 30 years without any review or concern. Most email is SMTP which is Simple Mail Transport Protocol. That’s the problem the word Simple. No security and no authentication. The ability to send emails using someone else’s address shows how basic it is.
To add to this most Email providers continue to facilitate it via basic user ID and password with the user ID invariably the email address so any hacker is half way in.
These phishing scams appear obvious to those that are aware but they catch X% each time. They would not do it if it didn't work.
Then there is us. We go to all the time and trouble of protecting our Internet banking details only to keep forgetting them. Registered with a site lately?. Clicked the forgotten user id or password button?. Yes all this comes back over plain text SMTP. Each email on its own may not mean much but to a hacker entering your increasingly large email storage they can see patterns and subsequently guess or discover likely passwords used elsewhere. We are creatures of habit.
In the early days of Email there were proposals for Secure Email yet the technology has simply been ignored in pursuit of ease of use. So there is something both ISPs and we can do but it will take all of us to understand the issues and how important this is becoming. SMTP Email is the Achilles heel.
Some solutions
Closure of Emailing from other domains (i.e Talk21 emails must come from Talk21.com)
ISPs should be responsible for the Domains they host. They should also know their identity
Secure Email – Use of digital signatures to verify who is emailing
Secure Email - Encrypted Email
Triple Authentication – something in addition to User ID and password such as token, mobile phone key etc.
Zonal filtering. i.e I only want emails from the UK or EU or validated DNS
Government to pass a law outlawing unsolicitated Email (not personal or without just cause or where the email has been obtained from a third party without consent)
I don't disagree with some of your comments, unfortunately there are a few items you haven't considered.
There are 1000s, if not 10s of 1000s of ISPs around the world. There are 10s of 1000s, if not 100s of 1000s of hosting companies around the world. Many, many are rogue. Many countries have no anti-spam or even anti-"illegal" hosting - many just take the money. There are actually a few friendly hosts in the UK. It is virtually impossible to get each and every one to adhere to "the rules".
You say talk21.com emails to come from "only" talk21.com domains - how do you actually police this ? How do you prevent botnets sending out spam "from" any and every known domain ?
Which Government are you referring to ? Spamming is already illegal in many countries, but that isn't the actual problem.
There are various of blocklists out there, and BT/Yahoo! does use them - e.g. the Spamhaus RBL. Many people use various similar lists of known spam friendly hosts and IP address ranges.
There are billions of spam emails sent daily, and if it was as easy as you believe to prevent it happening, then it would be already prevented.
There are millions of affected computers around the world in various botnets, and more and more are being infected all the time now that countries such as India and China are increasing massively in their connection rates.
Clearly each end user can do their own personal checks etc, but it isn't as simple as that. People will "always" fall foul to various dodgy schemes - even silly obvious one, because "it might be correct".
Many end users do not update their software, and many end users click on links and install stuff because it "looks safe" ......
I could go on for pages, and pages, but it wont solve the actual problem any day soon.
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