Pump-and-Dump Spam Now Less Attractive For Scammers

Pump-and-Dump stock spam, which covered 50% of all unsolicited e-mails in February 2007, has fallen to as low as 5% in June 2007, according to new research, as per the news reported by Vnunet.com on June 27, 2007.

Pump-and-dump spam is a financial deceit where spammers artificially inflate the value of stocks by means of false or exaggerated promotion. When the prices shoot up they dump their already acquired cheap stocks at the new high prices to earn extra. This kind of sale often leads to crash down of stock prices, which result in major losses for the real investors.

Whether pump-and-dump spam has plummeted because of recent steps by the SEC, or due to excessive use by spammers, or increase in efficacy of spam filtering tools is open for discussion. In any case stock spam is now generating much less profits for spammers, said Bradley Anstis, director of product management at e-mail security firm Marshal. Vnunet.com published this on June 27, 2007.

Marshal Threat Research and Content Engineering team has reported the lowest decline in the amount of stock spam over 10 months in the last month of Q1 2007.

Analysts discovered that a pump-and-dump campaign had affected the stock prices. Marshal says pump-and-dump spam is much riskier for spammers as opposed to other forms of spam. Unlike spam promoting pornography or pharmaceutical products where the spammer simply has to sell a product, in stock spam spammers have to make some financial investment first. While it means a gamble for spammers, pump-and-dump has been very successful for them in past.

As modern advanced spam filters are more effectively blocking stock spam mails and end users are getting savvier about the spam tactics and being less likely to be entrapped, spammers' gains have declined. Added to this, the risks relating to investment required for stock spam have made it less preferable to spammers, said Anstis, as reported by Itwire.com in the fourth week of June 2007.

The U.S. SEC has reportedly suspended 30 companies of trading after they became targets of pump-and-dump spam in early 2007. This is probably another reason for the decline in stock spam.

Related article: Pump-and-Dump Reached the Lowest Rate at 5.1%

» SPAMfighter News - 7/9/2007