Spammers eye the bedroom with countdown to Valentine’s Day looming

SPAMfighter, the company backed by the world's largest spam fighting community, is reporting a dramatic spike in Viagra spam in the weeks leading up to Valentine's Day. While this type of spam is not new and recent findings by Consumer Reports show that the down economy has yet to dim our love lives "in the bedroom," the study suggests that stress may be dampening expectations and performance causing Viagra seekers renewed vulnerability to spam scams.

Out of 400 million spam e-mails analyzed in the last two weeks, SPAMfighter found that over 8 million messages referenced Viagra in its correct spelling form. This is significant because spammers typically use mangled variations of words to elude spam filters, for example: V1@gra VÌagra, VÏagra, or V1agra. SPAMfighter also found that spam sent by "Canadian pharmacy" is by far the largest culprit. Surprisingly, they are doing nothing to conceal their intentions, meaning they must be blasting out a sizeable volume of spam.

According to SPAMfighter, "Spammers play on human psychology. They make it their business to know what is on the mind of the Internet user and with Valentine's Day approaching, men who feel the mounting pressure both at work and at home may become more vulnerable. It's not a surprise that spammers are using the upswing in Viagra searches as bait for their prey."

Reinforcing the surge in spam, Pfizer, makers of Viagra, showed sales growth in Q4 2008. These gains came despite workers losing health coverage during the economic downturn.

SPAMfighter urges those who might be under pressure to perform on Valentine's Day to not be duped by these types of spam e-mails and to remain vigilant for other spammer tricks such as malware-related spam, phishing spam, unregulated drug spam and classic junk e-mail.

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