MoMusings

Scammed, Spammed, or Both at the same time.

As it is the season for giving gifts and thinking of others less fortunate than ourselves, I was somewhat surprised when I received the following email:

However, I was even more surprised, when I looked at the e-mail in more depth, and the resulting website being linked to in the e-mail.

First off, the e-mail body was a graphic, not ASCII text. This immediately set off alarm bells in my mind, as this is the most widespread trick being used by spammers, especially those that send out spam using botnets.

Secondly, I was receiving dozens of copies of the e-mail, but they all had different forged from addresses and subject lines, another sure sign that it is either the work of a spammer, scammer or malware.

If you went to the site [which is now down], this is what you would have seen:

Very slick, very professional…Of course what they have done is merge the content of two other ‘real’ sites to make this ‘fake’ one.

Even the donation button goes to a ‘real’ payments handling service, who I’m sure had no idea that this was to be used to con people; getting them to part with their money by using a despicable social engineering trick; that of sick children who need help.

Talking of spam, I seem to remember that at the start of 2004, Bill Gates said that the spam problem would be solved within two years…Guess again Bill!

Jan. 24, 2004, Gates told a group at the World Economic Forum that “two years from now, spam will be solved.”

The spam problem will only be solved when two things happen:

1. People stop buying products being offered via spam.
2. The companies that use spammers to hawk their wares are prosecuted, fined or taken to court. Or are made to pay in some other way.

Anyone got any other suggestions what we should do to the spammers; I was thinking along the lines of cruel and unusual punishments, such as getting them to read every spam e-mail sent out by them over a year out loud, whilst being physically spammed, with real ‘SPAM‘

Don’t even ask what I’d like to happen to the scammers…

To all of you out there that are not spammers, scammers, malware authors, cyber-criminals [or normal criminals too] I would like to wish you a very Happy Christmas and a prosperous new year. If you don’t celebrate Christmas, then happy holidays.