Following Certain Spam Could be Fatal

Millions of spam mails assault Internet users especially e-mail owners everyday. Although many anti-spam solutions are currently available, but some of them don't work effectively enough allowing spam messages to inundate inboxes. Most often these unwanted junk e-mails promote medicines or watches.

One such medicine is slimming pills. However, users purchasing them via spam ads could put their lives at risk, warned experts at Sophos.

Sophos issued a security advisory to discuss an interesting study over spam messages. The security firm posted a picture of the dietary supplement called Ephedra. Numerous spam mails promote it by embedding its image. Despite the ban on this product in the U.S.A., spammers are all the time trying to sell the medicine through bulks of spam mails they send to different e-mail addresses.

Buying slimming pills online might pose two big dangers. Firstly, such purchases are without medical advice, which could prove to be incompatible with a person's physical condition thereby causing him or her more harm than benefit. Secondly, there is no guarantee that the buyer would be receiving the actual medication. There is a fair possibility that spammers are selling bogus medicines to increase their profit margins, as per Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos, in a company press release, March 5, 2007. spammers after all care only about their profits, rather than the health of the people. So, anybody with a medical problem should take a doctor's advice rather than following an Internet crook, suggests Sophos.

According to Sophos' Security Threat Report 2007, spam constitutes mostly of medical spam superseding stock spams and pornography. Weight loss products are the most common items spammers peddle with.

Spamming activities primarily stifle the Internet with undesirable messages, making situations very hard for e-mail users. They also push goods of the most scrupulous kinds, Cluley continued.

Sophos recommends the use of a consolidated solution by companies to protect themselves against spam, viruses and spyware. Yes, it is also possible to avoid spam blockages by reducing the inflow of junk e-mails through filters or by using a web-based e-mail provider such as Gmail, a most reliable anti-spam service today.

» SPAMfighter News - 3/21/2007