Spammers Becoming Trickier in Their Approaches to Con Internet Users

According to Postini, security subsidiary of Google, spam scammers are routinely employing new and advanced tricks to cheat people. Consequently, security specialists say a number of these scams enable their perpetrators to net as much as U.S$100,000 per month.

Also according to Postini, the spam mails presenting inexpensive printer ink, celebrity diets, amazing orgasms and debt waiving on credit cards are finding new methods to enter inboxes.

Currently, according to the company, cyber criminals are largely abusing security vulnerabilities and using more complicated techniques, in spite of authorities cracking down on different Internet frauds.

Moreover, spammers in the present days largely avoid the easy-to-detect scams such as the Nigerian prince scam that has false Nigerian princes sending e-mails to victims telling them there is a large windfall for them that just requires them to give their account number with the bank they use. Instead, they now prefer refined 'localized spam' that redirects the user onto an Internet site where a local calamity is discussed. Clicking the video link provided in the spam mail, however, leads to the downloading of malware like a computer virus onto the victim's PC, Google wrote on a security blog.

Furthermore, security specialists stated the extent of online scams implies that cyber criminals are capable of netting large profits even when just a few people are conned.

Thus product-marketing manager Adam Swidler for Postini said spammers nowadays use a large number of PCs to distribute spam mails so that their origins are obscured, implying that it would be more difficult to repeat the drastic McColo shutdown. TaipeiTimes published this on April 19, 2009.

In the meantime, security specialists stated the latest tactic of scammers is to send spam that pose to be PayPal's messages. However, when PayPal became aware the fraud, it started using its digital signature on e-mails.

Moreover, Google suggests that users must maintain up-to-date anti-virus and anti-spam software.

Additionally, Postini reports that there has been an increase in spam volumes over January to March 2009. Accordingly, from the middle of March to April 2009, Postini finds that spam mails grew approximately to 57 messages a day.

Related article: Spammers Continue their Campaigns Successfully

» SPAMfighter News - 4/29/2009