Monday, April 06, 2009

Spammers Adjust To Economic Times

Numbers. So much of the spam world is numbers.
  • IP address… numbers
  • Volume of spam email … numbers
  • Money lost due to scams… numbers
Behind every number is a person: A spammer running a rogue email server or a person opening an email. And with this simple act of opening an email, they fall prey to ID theft, malware installation and possibly an emptier bank account.

Spam emails with monetary themes are reported to be on the upswing and why not. Falling stock values, job losses and bailouts are top-of-mind for just about everyone. Newspapers hammer this theme home. CNBC parades a steady stream of analysts all predicting or not predicting “The Bottom”. The talk among parents waiting to pick up our darling children at my kids school, often centers around who lost their jobs this week. Bailout this. Don’t bailout that. Top-of-mind.

So is it any surprise the spammers have moved from pushing offshore drug distributors to pushing economic solutions.

A five minute search of my own quarantine folder brought these “economic” related subjects to the forefront…

  • Save Money on your Credit Card
  • Attention: Union Trust Bank Customer
  • Behind on House Payments? Load Modification
  • Stay at Home Mom Makes How Much?
And guess what? In the same search period, not a single email for cheap offshore drugs or Viagra knock-offs, not a single email. A total and complete retargeting (or rebranding) of spammer resources.

And since my personal interest lies in international spam (thanks to my company’s XE-Filter product designed specifically for international spam email), I want to bring up this little nugget from the “Emirates Business 24/7” web site…

"Spam is also getting globalised as Brazil, Russia, India and China are among the biggest emerging broadband markets worldwide and as such offer a tremendous opportunity for cybercrime ".

Kind of hits right in the heart of my company's demographic. Do your company a favor… check XE-Filter out.

Thanks

AAS

____________________[ AD ]____________________

XE-Filter offers six layers of email protection...

Block by Country-Of-Origin
DNS Blacklist
IP Address Whitelist
IP Address Blacklist
Sender Address Whitelist
Sender Address Blacklist

Labels: , , ,

posted by CMS Blog Master @ 12:55 PM 0 comments

Sincere apologies for being away so long...

Been a long time since I played with this little spam forum of mine so let me apologize to those who visit this little blog of mine. I know you are out there be cause I regularly get updates on web traffic and see y’all coming around.

So what jarred me into action and brought me back from my real work to this blog?

Well I was doing some Google Analysis on keywords and there, popping up several times in page one rankings were link to articles that I have written for the blog.

First thought... great… second thought … what was I doing not updating it.

So my second though won out, real work aside, I am now looking for a topical item to publish. Maybe something ironic? Maybe something downright idiotic? But I will publish.

So until then a side note from a Michigan State fan …

Sparty On .... GO GREEN GO WHITE …. Beat those NC guys in powder blue.

Labels: , , ,

posted by CMS Blog Master @ 12:01 PM 0 comments