Valentine’s Day Spamming

As a result of the widespread usage of internet, there is a major threat on phishing crimes and attacks. It was estimated that spamming attacks are in rise and there is steep increase of 20% this year. Spammers and attackers select forums, social networking sites and mail for attacking. Special holidays like new year, Christmas and Valentines are considered to be the right time for spammers to attack. In the last few, in terms of spam attack South America, Japan and India are considered to be highest regions of attack because of the widespread usage of Internet Connections. India, Taiwan, Thailand and Chile are the predicted to be the countries of origin of spam.

As the Valentines Day just got over and world cup cricket approaches, researchers are detecting a strong increase in the spam attacking. Spam gift cards, greeting cards, designer goods, flowers, and financial services seem to be the most popular. In the name of online ticket offer, spammers attack. It also believed that the spammers are looking to steal the credit card info and actually buy something from one of the spam sites. So Unsolicited mails should never be trusted and responded. Users should be careful not to click on links or attachments contained in unsolicited emails or instant messages. Many Spam Filters are available for filtering the spam from internet.

Usually, spammers know what people look for. For example in the Valentines season, we will get a mail asking “Do you want to send a flower to your loved one?” When we open the mail and click the link below, we will find a message telling there is no such offer exists and if you want to unsubscribe, enter your mail address below. If the mail id is entered as per the instruction, it is like handing over the mail id to the spammers. Similar to the increase in spam attacks, the spread of malware has also increased.

Sometimes spams being are sent to our mail adapting very tricky methodology. During special occasions like birthdays and New Year, we will come across some captivating mails and greeting cards in our inbox. The recipient will look very familiar to us. When we intend to open it, it would ask to install software and when the same is done, malicious software or spam messages get downloaded in our system.

Recently, the most famous social networking site Facebook was attacked by a application called Rouge. It was the new application launched in the Facebook especially for Valentine’s Day. Users came across a Valentine’s Day special love poem posting application and without knowing it was the spam content, they added it. As a result it added spammed the victim’s friend list.

This spam named Porambski, as a result made 160000 Facebook users account to get hacked. It has also sent 7 million spam messages and 4000 people closed their Facebook account. Facebook received plenty of complaints because of this attack. Federal court of California declared judgment in the favor of the Face book.. The court ordered him to pay compensation for the damages he made to the company. Spammer Porembski is blocked from using this site