Yahoo and Hotmail accounts being created by spammers and used to send spam.

According to BitDefender a new trojan is making the rounds that takes over computers, and then automatically attempts to create multiple new Hotmail and Yahoo! accounts. The underlying goal: send spam email.

While the details of the scheme aren't enumerated - it would seem someone has found a way to bypass the CAPTCHA tests both free webmail providers employ to prevent such scammers.

In prior schemes it's been rumored that CAPTCHA tests were passed on to would-be viewers of pornographic websites. Users who decoded the scrambled letters were allowed to view naughty pictures. In exchange, spammers were able to secure additional accounts to send from.

Webmail accounts typically include some amount of built-in advertising. Programs design to filter spam are often aware of this and are more hesitant to remove emails sent from such accounts. Alternately, since such accounts are commonly used to send junk messages - some programs block them entirely without performing any content analysis.

SpamButcher is a next generation program to help users deal with the problem of email they don't want. While success rates differ, many customers report virtually spam free email.

BitDefender claims that roughly 500 new such accounts are created each hour. The number of emails sent is difficult to calculate.

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