Notice A Jump In Spam, Lately?
by Tony Hung on August 9, 2007
Have you noticed a jump in spam lately? I know I have. Heck, even my wife has, and she has fairly good email practices (doesn’t leave it lying around the ‘net for people to spam). Turns out that there is a massive spam surge going on right now, that is part of a massive pump and dump to pump up the stocks of a business called Prime Time Group which operates in Florida. Each piece of mail comes with a .pdf which tries to pump up the stock. According to Sophos, this pump and dump scheme is different in the size and scale of the spam, which, apparently, tremendous — and it must be, if its overwhelming gmail’s spam-catching capabilities. [tip: Computerworld]
4 comments
I would comment, but I’m too busy cleaning the spam out of my inbox and blog.
But seriously, there has been a huge surge on both fronts. My girlfriend has been complaining of the same thing about her work email, which she uses for nothing but work purposes.
by Derek on August 9, 2007 at 2:16 pm. #
I thought it was just me, imagining things again. I certainly did notice the new style of spam — PDF attachment to a message from what looks like a real person, either with no subject line or one that sounds legit. I get about 20 of them a day and haven’t opened a single one. I’m so out of touch sometimes — thought they might have found a way to put a cross-platform virus in a PDF. Thanks for revealing the big secret.
(They can’t put a Mac virus in a PDF, can they?)
by Maria on August 9, 2007 at 2:57 pm. #
Thanks Tony, I hadn’t really noticed until the last couple days. I’ve been waking up wondering why I suddenly had so much email- now I know. For a minute I thought I was really cool…oh well.
by Chris Clarke on August 9, 2007 at 3:27 pm. #
Chris — you’ll always be cool to me. ;)
by Tony Hung on August 9, 2007 at 4:46 pm. #