Increasing use of personalized spam

Last week, we received a sample of personalized spam. The name of the recipient has been redacted � however, it is an accurate spelling of that person�s name.

It goes without saying that the recipient of the spam has no idea who �Tony� is.

So how did this happen? While the first thought might be spammers scraping names from Facebook or LinkedIn, this may very well have occurred by by scraping publicly-available alumni lists. There are a lot of open alumni lists out there, as this Google search shows. And, of course, Augstana college is one of those sites with an open alumni list.

We�ve seen more and more personalized spam attacks over the last several months, and it is a troubling trend. For obvious reasons, a finely targeted spam has a higher chance of being read and acted upon. And that�s one more reason for the urgent need for broad user education and ongoing improvements in security products. And when I say user education � I mean blast it out on mass media through Ad Council methods or what have you.

Alex Eckelberry