Pump-and-Dump Reached the Lowest Rate at 5.1%

Marshal, the company providing e-mail and Web content security announced on 26 June 2007 that 'pump and dump' spam had taken a significant downward trend. Stock spam now accounts for 5% of total spam while it represented 50% in February 2007.

Marshal having its North American HQ (Headquarters) in Atlanta, global headquarters in U.K. and many regional offices around the world, it regularly reports of spam thwarting.

During early 2007, 'pump and dump' was very common. It reached a peak rate of 50% of the total spam in February, said Bradley Anstis, director of product management at Marshal, as reported by Darkreading.com on June 26, 2007.

Over the last quarter 'pump and dump' spam had fluctuated while it revolved around an average of 30%. But over the past four weeks, Marshal TRACE (Threat Research & Content Engineering) team recorded a drastic drop in stock spam quantity to a minimum of 5.1% that was witnessed in ten months.

As stock spam messages have become fewer because current spam filters are trapping more of them and also as end users are getting savvier to the spam tactics and less vulnerable to the scams, earnings of spammers are declining. As a result, the growing risks on today's stock spam are preventing spammers to dive into such ventures, said Anstis, and Earthtimes.org published it on June 26, 2007.

In the week starting June 11, 2007, a spam campaign targeted German company TalkTech Telemedia. The spam used a sophisticated PDF attachment in an attempt to elude spam filters. Having succeeded in that the scam pumped the company's stock value as high as 20%. Ironport reported that the scam sent 5.4bn copies of the spam mail resulting in a dramatic 8% leap in the total number of spam.

Whether the fall in pump-and-dump spam is because of recent steps by SEC, excessive use by spammers, or progressive use of effective spam filtering tools is open for argument. In any case stock spam is generating much less income for spammers, said Anstis, as reported by Darkreading.com on June 26, 2007. The Securities & Exchange Commission of US prohibited trading of 30 companies that were targets of 'pump and dump', early 2007.

Related article: Pump-and-Dump Spam Now Less Attractive For Scammers

» SPAMfighter News - 7/6/2007