Michael Jackson Continues as Popular Spam Bait

According to the security company 'Symantec,' even after a year has passed since the demise of Michael Jackson (the pop star also called "King of Pop" or more favorably "MJ") on June 25, 2009, spammers are still using his name to launch attacks.

Symantec has recently observed a spam mail that encourages people to buy "The Official Michael Jackson Commemorative Anniversary Coin in Loving Memory of Michael Jackson." It (the e-mail) states that customers can obtain this coin for only $19.95 with handling and shipping costs extra.

But the security company has said that the message asks the customer for personal information comprising his full name, home address, city, country, phone number, e-mail address and credit card details.

As spam mails still account for 90% of the total e-mail during May 2010, it is obvious that spam mailers like to recycle some spam tricks and campaigns to gain more from their investments.

Additionally, it isn't new to have malware and spam schemes surrounding Jackson's death. When the popular star passed away in 2009, spammers immediately used his name as a popular spam subject.

Symantec isn't alone issuing warnings of spammers attempting to exploit the demise of the singer, but also other security companies have joined in.

Graham Cluley, Senior Technology Consultant at Sophos (another security company) states that the sudden demise of Michael Jackson has shaken everyone across the globe. However, massive news stories of this kind work as the most immaculate medium for spammers seeking to trap poorly protected computer-users, as reported by Sophos on June 26, 2009.

Things became so complicated with Jackson's death that users' online searches for the latest updates on Jackson's demise prompted Google to switch on its security controls, while tentatively blocking the Google News system from access.

Widely-followed news happenings, particularly the death of celebrities like actors Farrah Fawcett, Brittany Murphy and Heath Ledger, have long been used as bait for malware and spam attacks poisoning web-pages so that these pages would constitute the upward-ranking search results.

Related article: Mozilla Rules Out Bug in Its Firefox

» SPAMfighter News - 7/6/2010