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Richi Jennings

Spam'n'stuff

Symantec: Spammers Forge Phony Newsletters, Trying to Fool Filters

3 comments

IT TOPICS:Emerging Technology, Enterprise Software & Services, Networking, Security

It seems that spammers have a new tactic in their war to get their unwanted... uhhh... content through our spam filters: forged newsletters.

What they're doing is sending messages that look like legitimate newsletters. Nasty. Examples seen so far appear to be from well-known brands such as 1-800-Flowers, Kohl, U.S. Airways, and "a fantasy football league."

I've not seen any in my overflowing spam traps -- credit for discovering the phony newsletters goes to Symantec. I guess it takes a large organization, with 24x7, follow-the-sun labs to really keep on top of new developments in spam tactics. It's the speed of identifying these sort of early indications that separates the men from the boys, as it were.

For more detail, see my fuller analysis at richij.com.

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send me your news letters

Submitted by Gilles Baillargeon on January 29, 2007 - 6:16 P.M.

send me your news letters

Thank you! I like young Kids And would like to kill Georges Bush!

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While sending forged

Submitted by Elwyn Jenkins on January 22, 2007 - 12:16 A.M.

While sending forged newsletters seems to be a new low for spammers, I have detected forged letters signed with my email address. The only way I knew they were around was that some people replied to me hitting the reply button. The spammers include a link in the body of the text. If a person clicked on this link in the body of the text (rather than hitting the reply button), people are linked to a form to leave personal information. People responding to this leave information for the spammers.

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As a newsletter publisher

Submitted by Avoid Spam Filters on January 21, 2007 - 11:43 A.M.

As a newsletter publisher this is really serious for a number of reasons.

First our subscribers will be hitting the "this is spam" button after reading the spam embedded in our forged newsletters. Then when our legit newsletters are delivered the spam button gets clicked on the real thing. This can cause major spam filter issues at the major ISPs and Email service providers.

Not to mention damage to our brand and loss of subscribers. Only really big sites with huge subscriber lists are probably being targeted but what about sites like mine with 10,000 subscribers?

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