Social Networking
Riding the social media wave
Friday 9 January 2009, 1:59 PM
While We’re Worried About Our Jobs, Spammers Thrive!
As we all plan resolutions to make this a better year than the nightmare that was 2008, scumbag spammers have no intention of turning over a new leaf.
Security firm Symantec told me that towards the end of 2008, spam levels decreased after the McColo shutdown, which accounted for about half of all Internet spam globally. However, it seems spam levels are again on the rise and have crept back up to 80% of their pre-McColo shutdown levels, as old botnets and new ones are being created. And just when you thought business [and computing] couldn’t get any worse!
The year had barely begun when a particular spammer unleashed a new attack on the online world. By impersonating a well know bank, a spammer distributed a New Year’s greeting card, which when clicked on asked the reader to enter their personal information to receive an urgent warning about banking fraud, but in doing so they became fraud victims themselves. This year will be a difficult year for many and spammers are continuing to use the state of the economy to their advantage. Low-life spammers are using subject lines in spam messages like, ‘Survive the Recession: earn 500 dollars or more a week!’ and ‘I found you a new job [500+ a week]’, to draw us into reading malicious offers.
Finally, this week saw spammers using the popularity and reputation of social networking site Twitter to spread spam. The spam messages were carefully crafted to closely mimic the legitimate notification of e-mails often distributed by this site. The reader is asked to click on the link in the e-mail which takes them to a real group created on the social networking site by the scammer. The group then links to a free blogging site as an intermediary to redirect end users to the ultimate destination URL. Once the user gets to the destination URL they are requested to fill out a form collecting personal information.
Every sane person in the world would agree that spam is a royal pain the derričre and that the world would be better off without it. Sadly, it exists because 0.1% of the people who see spam actually read it and click on the links in it. That’s enough to keep spammers in business. We should all fight spam by rounding up our computers into a pyre and cremating them... Should business be conducted by mail and telephone, along with the occasional meet and greet to put a face to a name and communicate just how appreciative we all are of being able to conduct business in this dire market? Sometimes I wonder if we've got this all wrong...
Christian Harris
Managing Director, BidUpBiz.com
Security firm Symantec told me that towards the end of 2008, spam levels decreased after the McColo shutdown, which accounted for about half of all Internet spam globally. However, it seems spam levels are again on the rise and have crept back up to 80% of their pre-McColo shutdown levels, as old botnets and new ones are being created. And just when you thought business [and computing] couldn’t get any worse!
The year had barely begun when a particular spammer unleashed a new attack on the online world. By impersonating a well know bank, a spammer distributed a New Year’s greeting card, which when clicked on asked the reader to enter their personal information to receive an urgent warning about banking fraud, but in doing so they became fraud victims themselves. This year will be a difficult year for many and spammers are continuing to use the state of the economy to their advantage. Low-life spammers are using subject lines in spam messages like, ‘Survive the Recession: earn 500 dollars or more a week!’ and ‘I found you a new job [500+ a week]’, to draw us into reading malicious offers.
Finally, this week saw spammers using the popularity and reputation of social networking site Twitter to spread spam. The spam messages were carefully crafted to closely mimic the legitimate notification of e-mails often distributed by this site. The reader is asked to click on the link in the e-mail which takes them to a real group created on the social networking site by the scammer. The group then links to a free blogging site as an intermediary to redirect end users to the ultimate destination URL. Once the user gets to the destination URL they are requested to fill out a form collecting personal information.
Every sane person in the world would agree that spam is a royal pain the derričre and that the world would be better off without it. Sadly, it exists because 0.1% of the people who see spam actually read it and click on the links in it. That’s enough to keep spammers in business. We should all fight spam by rounding up our computers into a pyre and cremating them... Should business be conducted by mail and telephone, along with the occasional meet and greet to put a face to a name and communicate just how appreciative we all are of being able to conduct business in this dire market? Sometimes I wonder if we've got this all wrong...
Christian Harris
Managing Director, BidUpBiz.com
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