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Nigerian scammers have launched a new spam campaign sending fake Google Calendar meeting invitations in an attack targeted towards corporate users, security vendor BitDefender warned today. As the hook to dupe users into opening the message, the emails are personalised and bypass URL filtering with a different link sent to each recipient.
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Spam continues to come to a cellphone near you, Trend Micro analysts confirm. Unlike spam received through the email inbox on computers, “text message” spam are actually more costly to the user, as users are charged for any spam they receive.
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When businesses want to communicate with their customers via e-mail, many send messages with a bogus return address, e.g. "somethinghere@donotreply.com." The practice is meant to communicate to recipients that any replies will go unread.
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Online advertiser ValueClick has agreed to pay a record S$2.9 million to settle a U.S. Federal Trade Commission complaint that it sent deceptive advertising claims in spam e-mail and failed to secure consumers’ sensitive financial information.
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As reported in the February State of Spam report, we have observed spammers disguising themselves as the IRS and dangling an offer of a tax refund to unwitting recipients. That is, a refund made available once you input your credit card information into their site.
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In the last two months, several Internet security firms have suggested that spammers had devised a way to bust the “captcha” that is protecting Gmail. This would allow them to use the popular e-mail service to drown the rest of the Internet with e-mails containing links to malware and clumsy Viagra propositions.
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Martin Lee knew all the reasons you shouldn’t respond to spam e-mails. As a software engineer who studies how to block such messages, he’d warned against answering them himself.
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First we had phishing, now we’ve got pharming — a newer buzzword in Internet scams and a computer attack threat that’s especially dangerous for people who use home networks. Why? Because even the best anti-virus software and firewalls can’t detect or stop pharming once it hits your system.
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Six botnets are responsible for 85 per cent of all spam, according to an analysis by net security firm Marshal. The Srizbi botnet is reckoned to be the largest single source of spam - accounting for 39 per cent of junk mail messages – followed by the Rustock botnet, responsible for 21 per cent of the spam clogging up users’ inboxes.
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A four-month investigation into the inner workings of the phishing scourge that drives identity theft attacks has uncovered an underground ecosystem of compromised Web servers, do-it-yourself phishing kits, brazen credit card thieves and lazy code copycats.
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How many of us click on the links sent to us by trusted friends? Does the trust implicitly extend to the links they are sending? This trust is precisely what phishers take advantage of. Traditionally phishers have mainly used instant messaging (IM) and email to take advantage of the average user.
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iT security and control firm Sophos is warning computer users to be extra vigilant about any emails which claim to come from financial institutions, no matter how genuine the correspondence appears. The warning comes as customers of a small credit union, Kessler Federal, are being targeted with phishing emails that attempt to cash in on a phishing warning posted on the organisation’s website, and entice worried customers to call a fake phone number to verify their details.
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The 25-year-old’s spamming came to the attention of authorities after an ISP complained of his massive mailings. His activities reportedly began in May 2006. Security vendor Sophos said Shiina acquired a list of 600,000 email addresses for 100,000 yen and earned 2 million yen in advertising for his spamming.
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For the first time since 2004, the three complaints indicators are increasing. In 2007, the FTC received over 810,000 Consumer Sentinel complaints when they had never taken over 700,000 in any previous year. As ever, Identity Theft is the main complaint category.
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