Spam Study Shows Tricks Spammers Use

In a recently conducted study, MessageLabs Intelligence discloses the words spammers choose for their e-mails so that more people can be enticed into their tricks.

Says the security company, the content of spam messages is pretty predictable. Often they contain words trying to sell something like names of products alternatively words such as "sale," "price" or "discount." Also sales spam usually consists of the word 'Viagra,' indicating the high status associated with 'pharmaceutical sales.' In fact, pharmaceutical sales accounts for 75% of the entire spam mails promoting any particular sale.

Generally spam aims at tricking recipients into purchasing a touted product in the earliest possible time. There's a tendency to persuade them towards necessarily owning something that's apparently unavailable at any other place.

Conversely, unlike spam, malware doesn't try to steal money. Rather, it attempts at loading a code onto the victim's computer that subsequently lets the person controlling it to manipulate that system. It can as well be added to a botnet to spew spam alternatively utilized for keeping watch on the user's online activities for stealing sensitive data.

Moreover, as per the MessageLabs study, for both malware spam and phishing, the most frequently used term was "account," suggesting that spammers' common target was financial entities. Phishers mostly targeted 'PayPal,' while malware authors chose to use 'attachments' for the successful execution of attacks.

Nonetheless, the word most ordinarily used in targeted attacks was 'please,' which was also among the 5 most popularly used words in malware spam and phishing.

Remarking about this, senior analyst Paul Wood at MessageLabs Intelligence stated that using polite language was key to successful spam. V3.co.uk published this on August 6, 2010. The analyst added that as for malware, the most vital factor was to have the right social engineering even for advanced malware.

Thus 'polite' and 'social engineering' words are mostly effective for drawing the interest of e-mail recipients. They increase the possibilities of getting more people ensnared with the scammers' lure. Meanwhile, the study discovered that people answered a mean of 1 in every 74,000 junk messages, with some 120bn spam mails dispatched daily.

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» SPAMfighter News - 8/13/2010