Reports: Spammers Cooking Up More Financial Fraud

[Peaches]

Reports: Spammers Cooking Up More Financial Fraud

Financial spam scams tripled so far this year over last, spammers to target 'tiny URLs'

By Kelly Jackson Higgins

DarkReading

"It didn't take long for spammers to jump on the financial crisis bus: A little more than one week into the New Year, financial spam has tripled over the same time last year, according to new spam data released today.

And in the wake of the recent Twitter phishing hack, look for the bad guys this year to start exploiting those convenient and cute "tiny URLs" (tinyurl.com).

These are among the big trends in spamming highlighted by Symantec, MXLogic, and MessageLabs (now part of Symantec) in their latest spam trend reports and forecasts. McAfee, which will release its spam report next week, also points to financially related spam, such as do-it-yourself home businesses aimed at the unemployed, and expects targeted phishing and corporate blackmail to jump this year as well.

MessageLabs says financial scam spams so far have tripled this month over the same period last January. This type of spam -- such as "Congratulations New Year winner! You have won the UK National Lottery" -- currently makes up around 10 percent of all email, according to MessageLabs, versus 3.1 percent during the same period in 2008, and 4.2 percent in December 2008. "

Full story here: http://www.darkreading.com/security/vulner...ies+and+threats