Spam News

Canadian pharmacy spam makes up 70 percent of global junk emails

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Spammers are taking advantage of Canada's association with low-cost pharmaceuticals to push knock-off drugs in billions of junk emails, according to antivirus firm McAfee's October spam report.

McAfee said 70 percent of global spam is now Canadian pharmacy spam, the latest example of how spammers abuse high-quality brands in an effort to gain legitimacy for their products, scams and malicious email payloads.

Other examples of brand abuse documented in McAfee's report include spam messages claiming to come from Western Union, banks or financial institutions and high-profile companies like eBay.

McAfee reported on its security blog that more than 150 billion spam messages are sent daily, "enough to send everyone in the world more than 30 emails every day (including people without computers)."

Through combinations of faked email addresses, carefully selected images and imitation of brands, logos and fonts, spam email can be highly convincing. But spam is not just a nuisance - cybercriminals use spam for sophisticated phishing attacks and to spread malware.

Maliciously crafted attachments in spam messages such as PDF files can be used to hijack PCs with Trojan malware. Users should protect themselves from spam threats with the latest anti-spam filters.