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Economy, IRS Figure In May Spam
David Utter
Staff Writer
2008-06-09
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
The monthly look at the State of Spam by security vendor Symantec found the usual efforts to take advantage of current events by spammers.
 | | Economy, IRS Figure In May Spam |  |
Junk messages seeking any way possible to separate people from money or equally valuable personal information continued to pour into inboxes around the world in May. Current events, said Symantec, fuel the efforts to make spam seem legitimate.
As gas prices continue to hit record levels in the US, some spammers hope there will be people credulous enough to buy in to alternative solutions. The offers in May ranged among purported gas cards, free gas, and devices that can squeeze more miles per gallon out of a vehicle.
Don't you believe it. If the market couldn't get away with selling gas at the economic equivalent of a vicious curb-stomping, it wouldn't. Randomly emailed offers suggesting things like running a car on water only serve to separate the foolish from their cash.
Mortgage woes also proved the impetus behind other spam in May. Some spam offering foreclosure relief began making the rounds recently, but the only relief will be coming to the spammer's wallet as people respond.
Spammers also tried to capitalize on the US economic stimulus payments being doled out by the federal government. This current event led to spammers sending out faked IRS emails requesting personal information.
Each response a spammer receives increases the likelihood more abuses will follow. It should be easy enough for people to ignore spam, yet there's always someone who thinks they will be the one to profit from an arriving spam.
That mindset continues to prove impossible to overcome, despite years upon years of warning people about spam. Until drastic measures are taken on the boundaries of the Internet to stop spam from hitting inboxes, we're disillusioned about prospects of making any gains against spamming today.
About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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