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Social Networking Site Posing Major Spam Threat Reveals Kaspersky

According to the latest monthly report, Spam published in the November 2011 issue by Kaspersky Lab, social network accounts (especially Flickr and LinkedIn) were affirmed to be posing the major threat of being insecure due to the scrupulous plunge of the online scammers, as reported in the itp.net on December 26, 2011.

During November 2011, users of Flickr were targeted with an enticing pharmaceutical site containing virus, while Twitter victims fell prey to an almost similar trap as they received invitation for joining the social networking site. The invitation seemed to be almost similar to the invitations that are sent from a Twitter site. The invitations illegitimately contained an adult message, seemingly attractive, which when clicked directs the user to an adult site.

The LinkedIn trap similarly sent strange message through mass mailing, imitating a legitimate notification from the site. The content of the message barred recipients with a warning against the cancellation of a recent transaction made through an e-pay system.

Kaspersky Lab notified that cybercriminals had hacked the accounts and sent fraudulent notifications masquerading National Automated Clearing House Association (NACHA) payment system that replicated the LinkedIn site.

Apart from the abovementioned fraud mails, it has been into notice that in November 2011, there has been a mass attempt towards entrapping naive users with fake holiday packages. Holiday packages were crafted taking into consideration major occasions like Thanksgiving, which is highly popular in the US and some other countries and Eid al-Adha, popular among the muslim-populated nations.

E-mails circumventing Eid al-Adha festival were crafted in the Turkish language; while mails with the Thanksgiving theme announced holiday packages, as explained by Kaspersky. Even, Christmas and New Year Holidays gained acclamation among the spammers.

However, mass mailing spam with fake holiday tours doubled in November 2011, with a +3.5 percentage points, which is estimated to be much low compared to the upcoming holidays.

Moreover, according to the latest report issued in November 2011, the top four spam sources remained unchanged though the targeted destination were shifted with Brazil and Indonesia. A look to the spam statistics emanating from the Top five countries include India with +1.86 percentage points, followed by South Korea with +2.31 percentage points, Indonesia with +2.29 percentage points, Brazil with +0.12 percentage points, and Vietnam took the 5th position and contributed 4.5% of spam in November 2011. The total level of spam from these countries increased by a total of 7.2 percentage points.

Related article: SoCal Computer Hack Traces to Watsonville

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