Project Honeypot has announced that they’ve collected one billion spam messages since they started in 2004. They have a pretty remarkable rundown of the trends for spammers in the last couple of years, including a look at the volume of product spam (V1AGRA, etc) versus fraud spam (419, etc). The majority of spam is still largely fire-and-forget, and only a relatively small percentage of spam is targeted at the recipient.

Interesting to me was that last year there were, basically, no phishing scams involving the popular social media sites. That’s all changed this year, though: “Today Facebook is the second most phished organization online and, if current trends continue, is on track to take the top spot in 2010.” Given the staggering number of people with Facebook accounts, phishing these accounts means the spammers have better odds of finding a sucker. I mean, not everyone has a JPMorgan Chase bank account, so phishing expeditions involving that site are bound to be received by more people that don’t have an account there than do. With Facebook, you’re almost guaranteed to send a spam message to someone who does have a Facebook account. And chances are high that many users use the same password for Facebook that they do for other stuff — like their own email account, for example — so successfully phishing a Facebook account can be a pretty useful thing for a spammer.

At my day job, we receive several million spam messages a day (we have, after all, over 60,000 active accounts at any one time). The alarming thing about these is that many of them are extremely targeted to our organization. Many of them do not contain the tell-tale spelling or grammatical mistakes so common in most spam messages. Indeed, the only indication that these are fraudulent messages is that they ask the user to reply with their username and password. And, depressingly, people do reply. It’s a constant fight to educate people about the dangers of spam.

And remember: spam email is different from the delicious potted meat product from Hormel. You can’t eat spam email, but you certainly can eat the potted meat product!

With all of the different people earning a distance education MBA online, it’s not a surprise to anyone that so many new programs are available these days. One of the biggest new developments in the online world of education is the access to programs for earning degrees in criminal justice. There are an absolute staggering number of people interested in earning this type of degree as the industry steadily expands. This is why the programs available online have been becoming so incredibly popular.

Many individuals interested in earning this type of degree do not have a college close enough to them to attend the campus. The average person, especially working professionals, does not have the means to re locate in order to attend school. With an online course these types of limitations almost completely disappear. Although many programs require you to write exams at a physical location, the majority of your studies can be completed completely online. This means that thousands of people all over the world now have the possibly to educate themselves like never before. If you are interested in earning a criminal justice masters degree, this is definitely something that you should begin to explore further. This is especially true if you have things currently preventing you from attending a traditional learning environment such as a college or university campus.

Although there are many great opportunities for criminal justice careers, there are also many other great choices for earning a distance education MBA online. Almost every program and certification course offered by traditional colleges and universities are now being offered through an online setting. This includes business admin degrees to a master’s degree. Soon enough there will not be a program available in colleges that is not also available online.

There are a ton of different advantages associated with a distance education MBA university. One of the biggest aspects of these programs that have been so beneficial for many is the online tools that are provided to students. These include tools for organization, collaboration, and teacher /student interaction. These are something that has made the choice to opt for an online education much more desirable for many individuals. If you are interested in learning more about what online programs can do for you, and exactly how you will be able to benefit, don’t hesitate to contact schools now and get the process started. You can be on your way to earning a degree in no time!