2% of all spam iPhone related - some may be hazardous to your computer

July 2nd, 2007

An informal survey of 1500 e-mail spam messages found that 32 of them contained reference to Apple's new iPhone. That works out to a little more than 2%.

While many of these emails only suggest they have competitive prices on the iPhone, many claim that the recipient has actually won one of the coveted electronic toys in a contest. Presumably the qualification for being entered into the drawing was having an email address on the internet.

Most often emails proclaiming you've won something are only moderately malicious. They commonly try to trick you into filling out surveys revealing your personal data for marketing purposes, although some may be covert efforts at identity theft. The prize rarely if ever materializes.

Every time a hot new product hits the market a fresh batch of these ploys show up. However, it would seem this round is somewhat more sinister.

Many of these messages point to websites that use security exploits in an effort to join your system to a botnet. Once your system has been exploited, the only reliable way to secure it is to reformat.

One way to avoid being exposed to such sites is to install a program to stop junk e-mail. Numerous cost-effective options exist. While none are perfect - reducing your exposure to such messages can help increase your general level of security.

Which browser you use to surf the web can also impact how vulnerable you are to such scams.

One of the exploits that uses ActiveX reportedly has no patch to date. Of course, some would argue that ActiveX simply is a security exploit. Users of FireFox or other browsers besides Internet Explorer should generally be immune to this particular security hole.

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