Internet Defense Technology

We have been seeing a lot of headline news being used in the subject line of Spam emails.

Seen stuff about OJ Simpsons guilty verdict, the economy of course and more.

Unless you have actually subscribed to news email, getting anything like this is spam and you should delete it without opening it.

Even if you have subscribed to news emails, make sure the sender (or the from) is the place you subscribed to before opening the email.

Deleting email without opening it is the best way to prevent your email address from getting sold to even more spammers. While there is no guarantee, it is a step in the right direction.

There are three prominent email phishing scams going around that everyone should be on the lookout for:

• Google Adwords
• Fed-Ex
• UPS

All of these will try to get you to click through to a website which is in fact not really the company’s website.

There is always a problem and you need to act right away to fix it.

If you think there really might be a problem DON’T CLICK ON THE LINK, instead, independently go to the website and check it out yourself.

2 cents from Eric Brownstone, Founder and CEO of Internet Defense Technology

I have noticed about a ten times increase in my Spam email over the last few weeks.

It’s amazing how much I now know about the horrible economy, the failing stock market… and how I am going to loose my house soon, and never be able to buy anything ever again.

Should I just end my life now?

Or do I take heed in the various Spam messages, and put all of my money into the new “XYZ Fund” so it will be safer than in the bank? Or get a new Interest only loan on my house from “Joe’s Good Bank” and save my home from foreclosure.

Really its CRAZY, who has this much time to craft emails that suck people in and take MORE money from them.

Maybe when this election is finished and we have a new President things will calm down, and I can finally get back to the Spam that I enjoy seeing, after all penis enlargement, and drugs that allow me to have sex again are so much more important.

I get asked this a lot too and did a an early post called How Many People Actually Buy Something from Spam? which covers this subject.

Basically this is a conversion problem.

Say the spammers send out ten thousands (not uncommon number, sometimes more) spam messages and out of that say two people click through and they make money off of them. That is 0.0002% and they made money off of it.

Simple math and a little scary that it doesn’t take that much unfortunately.

That is why we at IDT feel it is so important to push education out. That way the spammers stop making money and stop spamming (hopefully).

Been seeing a lot of people talking about changing their email address to get away from the spam.

They wonder how long before they are going to have to change it again.

There is no set rule on how long it will take to get spam again. This depends on how you use your email address.

Obviously, if you never give it out to anyone you are going to have a pretty clean box. If you only give it to a few friends you trust (and tell them never to give it out) then you are probably ok.

As soon as you start buying stuff on-line, signing up for e-newsletters or put your address up on any webpage (your site, your social network identity, etc.) that is when you start opening yourself up to spam. You can see my other blog post on How Did the Spammer Get My Address? which goes over this in more detail.

So, there is no answer to that question really. It depends on your activities.

Now for the usual part (considering this is an email spam filtering company’s blog) you should just get a great filter that stops the spam from ever reaching you and you don’t have to worry about that. Of course, that means you need to check out ours here.

Saw a report from the Federal Trade Commissions (FTC) recently released a list of the top email scams:
1. Advance Fee Fraud
2. Phishing
3. Check Overpayment Scams
4. Work-at-Home Scams
5. Weight Loss Claims
6. Foreign Lotteries
7. Cure-all products
8. Investment Schemes
9. Pay-in-Advance Credit Offers
10. Debt Relief

You can forward any emails you get on this to spam@uce.gov

Forbes also did a list of the top scams which all of which can be done via email. There list was:
1. Home Construction
2. Bait and Switch Mortgage
3. Fake Check
4. Internet Coaching Services
5. Layaway Loans/Payday Loans

Hopefully these lists will help you be aware of what can come to your email box and that it should just be deleted. Don’t get trapped in one of these scams.

When you forward email from one address to another this can sometime lead to difficulties with filtering.

The worst example would be having a hotmail email address that you know forward to work or even gmail.

One of the checks that spam filters do is to check and see who the email is coming from (one reason spammers like to fake a real legitimate email as the from). If they see that it is coming from your toher legitimate email address, they won’t check any further.

While any good filter will check more than that, not all of them do and this can lead to you having a lot more spam in your inbox.

Solutions:

* Tell people about the email address change and give everyone a deadline to change over all their records. Examples, my old email address will be off in 6 months please update your records to “new address”, adding this in the footer of your emails out for a little while too.

* Get a better filter that checks much more than where an email is coming from (and there is my plug for our product, of course).

My favorite is the first one “maybe even you” is a cute touch as to why you are getting spam:

• Someone from your email address, maybe even you, had recently requested our vacancy list
• Make your babymaker hard as rock
• I have an obscured business transaction for you
• Cheney visits Afghan President, Shoots Him in the Face
• I want sale you rolex. Do you want one?
• Sperm-flavored cocaine all the rage in LA
• Huge Love Weapon is Never Too Much
• How’s the palo so far? I loved your blog about spain and the bumtapper. I laughed my head off
• The Technology of the HairMax LaserComb
• Angelina’s Newborn Twins Marry Each Other
• Parking domain names is about the same level as a baby seal hunter, ENLARGE-YOUR-PEN!S spam and Michael Bolton.
• Thousands of excellent anals from Congleton
• Make Your Love Wand Function Better.
• Britney Spears Shaves Head At Request of Zombie Overlord
• Britney Spears To Be Adopted By African Child
• Midget immigrant stowaways found in Lindsay Lohan’s gaping…
• What do Somalia, Long John Silvers and the U.N. have in common?

Not to be out-done here is a small collection of the Paris Hilton email spam subject lines:

• Paris Hilton Wins Pulitzer Prize
• Paris Hilton Sells Her Soul to the Devil, Admits it on Larry King
• Paris Hiltons vagina begins prison sentence
• Paris Hilton gives birth to twins… aliens
• Paris Hilton To Invade Rwanda
• Sponge Bob named in Paris Hilton paternity lawsuit
• Aliens Deny Impregnating Paris Hilton
• Stephen Hawking Defends Paris Hilton Against Sex Allegations
• George Bush Caught Naked with Paris Hilton.

This celebrity thing is definitely a new thing, just a few months ago there was not this much spam centering around the celebrities. Someone realized that most people are fascinated by them and thought could catch a few more people if targeted them.

I have seen several complaints of an email with the subject line: “Hey we have hijacked your baby but you must pay once to us $50000. The details we will send later.”

This is spam and totally fake (people who don’t have babies have gotten this email).

I am in shock that spammers would send an email with this headline. All to get an email opened.

I am so sorry if you got this email and it caused you even one second of worry or pain.