Eclipse Internet has proudly published results showing that the KCOM-owned ISP successfully blocked some 98.2 per cent of spam emails from reaching customers’ inboxes during the month of July – equivalent to over 503 million emails.

Whilst the majority of spam emails which offer you Viagra, cialis and access to offshore African bank accounts left to you in the will of some relative you’ve never heard of are pretty easy to detect, flag and delete, some spam emails are cleverly constructed hoaxes of emails sent from legitimate organisations which would plausibly try to get in contact with you via email – eBay, for example.

All Eclipse Internet packages come with their own branded VIRUSsheild and SPAMsheild security solutions, allowing customers to get set up and surf safely out of the box. As well as identifying and blocking a large proportion of spam before it reaches customers’ mailboxes, the anti-virus/anti-spam solution allows customers to check and delete suspect mail before it can do any damage.

The entry on spam at the website of security experts Symantec says that “messages that do not include your email address in the TO: or CC: fields are common [hallmarks] of Spam,” and therefore should be deleted before opening any attachments which come included.

Clodagh Murphy, Director of Broadband Operations at Eclipse says that “Spam email is a real nuisance and can pose a security threat to customers. Unsolicited email unfortunately is becoming more prolific as internet usage continues to increase. At Eclipse, we try to ease the pain for our customers with our very effective anti-virus/anti-spam solution.”

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Consumer concerns over the controversial adware outfit Phorm were brought into sharp relief last week when it was revealed that Virgin Media staff members did an HMRC – some 3,000 customers bank details were burned, unencrypted, to a CD-R which was then promptly lost somewhere.

The details, including names and home addresses, were allegedly taken from those customers who had signed up for Virgin Media services in Carphone Warehouse high street outlets.

According to a report published in The Register, Virgin Media have coughed up for credit file protection, meaning that customers credit histories will remain unaffected by any fraudulent activity which may arise from the data loss – good to know in these times of credit crunches and sub-prime slip-ups.

This will be another thorn in the side of the Phorm camp, who have been fighting an uphill struggle to convince consumers that their personal details will not be compromised by their cookie-tracking customer-relevant ad service.

Virgin, along with BT Broadband and TalkTalk have all agreed to sign up with Phorm, on the proviso that customers will be given the choice to ‘opt out’ of the service. Findings of a survey carried out by Ofcom which were published last month, revealed that more than two-thirds (69 per cent) of UK citizens are concerned about identity fraud and the amount of personal data that is available to companies and businesses. With the top three ISPs in the UK facing increasingly stiff competition from the other three snapping at their heels, any decision likely to alienate and drive away existing consumer bases isn’t likely to roll very well.

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Yet again, it seems as though the security details of the BT Home Hub, the nation’s most widely used wireless router, can be easily compromised, thanks to a recent update which was intended in good faith to make the wireless router harder to crack.

Previously, the default password in the Hub would be simple enough for most hackers to guess and break in – the chaps from the BT security department decided to change this default setting so that the original password, previously “admin”, would be replaced by each Home Hub’s unique serial number, which would be impossible for anyone to guess off of the top of their heads.

However, its turns out that getting hold of a Hub’s serial number is pretty easy to do. Requests for a serial number sent on a LAN are quickly answered, giving hackers everything they need to leech off of a Hub user’s connection.

Thankfully there is a simple way around this; change your password yourself. BT have helpfully listed detailed instructions on how to do this and advise that all customers increase their security from the default WEP to the more robust WPA.

Look out for our new and improved wireless security page coming soon here on Broadband Finder, where we’ll be able to give you the 411 on how to best surf in safety.

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