The changing landscape of online fraud Long life spam

[DorsetBoy]

  As spammers find their e-mails blocked, they are trying other tactics. Expect no respite 

WHEN Mark Zuckerberg, the boss of Facebook, presented its new messaging service on November 15th, he praised one feature in particular: the "social inbox", which would catch spam or other unwanted messages. "Because we know who your friends are, we can put in really good filters to make sure you only see things you care about," he said, with unwarranted confidence.


Spammers are moving onto social-networking sites such as Facebook because they find e-mail increasingly unrewarding. Data from Cisco, which makes networking gear, show the volume of e-mail spam began declining slowly in late 2009 (see chart) and by almost half in the past three months, after the authorities disabled spam networks in Russia and the Netherlands.

One reason is that online-security firms have worked on every bit of the chain, from the content of junk e-mails to their sender, with the result that they stop more than 98% from reaching its target. First they blocked e-mails containing suspect words or links. Then they blacklisted addresses used by spammers. In response, senders started using botnets (networks of otherwise innocent computers). But security firms have now got better at spotting patterns in the spammers' output....... (more)

[Rik]

It's a war. Measure and counter-measure. There's too much money to be made for the spammers to give up easily.

[DorsetBoy]

It's a war. Measure and counter-measure. There's too much money to be made for the spammers to give up easily.

Just goes to show how bloody stupid gullible many of the internets users are doesn't it.

[Rik]

Yes, but then we new that from the malware infections, Dorset.

[Technical Ben]

It's less a progress of online scams, and more a progress of existing scams to the internet.
It's always been a part of a scammers ways to try and befriend people, then run off with their money. 

[Rik]

Which almost always relies on greed on the part of the victim.

[DorsetBoy]

Which almost always relies on greed on the part of the victim.

There must be a very large percentage of the worlds population that are dissatisfied with the size of their  various appendages and their ability to perform on cue 

[Rik]

Or like a cue? 

[pctech]

I also worry about these 'work at home and earn £400 a day' ads that keep popping up.

I know of someone that got sucked into an organisation that recknoned to advertise charities and she was going to seminars etc and tried to recruit me, I took one look at the site www.ourgv.com and knew it was some kind of link spamming site.

I told her I was deeply concerned and asked whether she'd parted with money and she got very upset and disappeared offline (we were communicating via MSN messenger) and I've not heard from her since.

[Simon]

Worrying.