Recent trends in spam

Spam keeps changing. I thought I�d anecdotally highlight some recent trends we�re seeing in spam:

� Fake university degree offers appear to be way up.

� A new type of spam which pushes affiliate links. The look is always the same � green link text, simple headline.

This one pushes AdultFriendFinder:

This one pushes an adult site, again apparently using an affiliate ID.

� Malware-pushing spam is still pandemic. Various interesting subject lines, and even resorting to outright begging:

And so on�

� The plague of �me�: Another very popular spam going around these days is an email with an attachment (usually about 40k�50k in size), featuring a picture of this girl:

The spammers don�t put any extension on the file, which is named �me�. However, it is a jpeg format file.

(This is just a baiting tactic to lure the recipient into a scam.)

Otherwise, for the most part, it�s still the same old fake luxury goods and �Cialis/Viagra/cheap meds� garbage, along with the usual extraordinary amount of spam promising the enlargement of a particular male body part.

Alex Eckelberry