{"id":14980,"date":"2014-07-17T17:05:41","date_gmt":"2014-07-17T17:05:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kasperskydaily.com\/b2b\/?p=2250"},"modified":"2020-02-26T10:53:32","modified_gmt":"2020-02-26T15:53:32","slug":"spam-the-scam-unimaginative-in-large-numbers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/spam-the-scam-unimaginative-in-large-numbers\/14980\/","title":{"rendered":"Spam the scam: unimaginative in large numbers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another morning, it\u2019s time to check mail. After a handful of proper messages are sorted and replied to, just for fun \u2013 or rather because some expected mail hasn\u2019t reached me yet, \u2013 I check the \u201cSpam\u201d folder. And with some deviated sort of satisfaction close it. Everything\u2019s as usual: here goes my mortgage drops, enlargement pills, Breguet duds, and a grammar-impaired, though utterly respectful, request for assistance with a huge money transfer from a \u201clawyer\u201d with a very exotic name. All of the usual is in place.<\/p>\n

\n<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Something catches my eye, though: an unwanted and a pretty insolent advice<\/em> to place my CV at some obscure job site; its name and the name under the mouse cursor are different. And the sender calls me by my first name<\/em>. I feel almost angry. But then again it is most likely a common scam. A little less common, since it draws emotional response, but otherwise nothing unseen before.\u00a0<\/p>

Spammers have been here for so long, that they\u2019ve become unimaginative.<\/p>Tweet<\/a><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s a good thing that spam filters are up and running. It\u2019s scary to imagine how much of this trash would rain down upon me every minute without them, given that, according to Kaspersky Lab\u2019s monitoring, 69.8% of global email traffic accounts for unsolicited junk<\/a> (last May figures).<\/p>\n

By the way it has dropped 1.3% in May, and there were times when there was much more spam than now, but still it\u2019s a bit too much. Spam is by no means interesting to receive, but it\u2019s quite fun to watch spammers\u2019 travails as they try to make their junk look respectable.<\/p>\n

Around Mother\u2019s Day, botnets across the US are pumping gajillions of messages with \u201chave-I-got-a-deal-for-ya-and-yer-mama\u201d sorts: \u201cprompt delivery, special price\u201d. Mails are decorated with large, colorful pictures of flowers, candies, and other spam filters\u2019 fodder<\/em>, showing an almost disturbing lack of imagination. Usually such mail advertise some legit sites, but the actual links redirect users to completely different pages. Visiting them can be unhealthy.<\/p>\n

Then, as summer drew closer, more people get their minds on their gardens (given they had those). Spammers were ready too, of course: here\u2019s your shovel, and here\u2019s your turf, and here are all kinds of seeds for your real-life \u201cFarmville\u201d \u2013 everything at \u201cspecial\u201d price with \u201climited offer\u201d. Domains advertised mostly appeared just days before the spam avalanche started rolling down.<\/p>\n

Then there are diplomas. That\u2019s an old, never-changing story: every Spring there is an influx of \u201cspecial offers\u201d of fake diplomas of you-name-them universities, fake qualifications, etc. Now there are, however, more interesting offers: donate to church, get a doctorate<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The problem is that such \u201conline doctorate\u201d has nothing to do with education and science. Even if it is not plain fake. Some churches in US indeed have a (weird) right to award people with \u201chonorary doctorate\u201d degrees.<\/p>\n

The honorary degrees in general are purely decorative, and over the last few years one could hear many times that this or that rock musician received them from this or that university in US or UK, \u2013 as a token of respect (although it\u2019s always a question, who receives more publicity that way, a university or a famous rocker). So as well as there\u2019s little to no point of getting a fake diploma (it\u2019s false nature may be discovered at any time), \u201chonorary doctorates\u201d are just a little more than knickknacks. But spammers, of course, decorated their adverts with young people in academic caps and robes.<\/p>\n

\"900\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yet another eternal saga is medical and\/or pharmaceutical advertising. Enlargement pills, yes. Also prescription drugs without a prescription. Medical goods, health checks, cures from anything, from baldness to arthritis<\/a>, at prices that fell so low, so low, just yesterday, just for you!<\/p>\n

Most likely you\u2019ll be redirected to a freshly-created website that would like to learn more about you. What? You\u2019ve left your personal data there? Well done! Now your private information has settled down at every address base spammers use around the world. Expect more and more exciting scams, oh, pardon, \u2013 offers! <\/p>

Once one spammer learns things about you, all the others do too.<\/p>Tweet<\/a><\/blockquote>\n

Getting on the scammers\u2019 hooks like those mentioned above looks a bit silly, of course. But only if you are an experienced user. More people join the Web all the time, some are clueless about scams, and they may get trapped in next to no time.<\/p>\n

After all, had the spammers\u2019 activities not paid off, there would be no spam.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s like spammers aren’t even trying anymore. Still, be on the lookout for some of these typical tricks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":209,"featured_media":16064,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1999,3052],"tags":[2131,240,2132,2133],"class_list":{"0":"post-14980","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"category-smb","9":"tag-junk-mail","10":"tag-spam","11":"tag-spam-filters","12":"tag-spammers"},"hreflang":[{"hreflang":"x-default","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/spam-the-scam-unimaginative-in-large-numbers\/14980\/"},{"hreflang":"en-au","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com.au\/blog\/spam-the-scam-unimaginative-in-large-numbers\/14980\/"},{"hreflang":"en-za","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.za\/blog\/spam-the-scam-unimaginative-in-large-numbers\/14980\/"}],"acf":[],"banners":"","maintag":{"url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/tag\/junk-mail\/","name":"junk mail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/209"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14980"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33243,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14980\/revisions\/33243"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}