The Dark Side of Illegal Finance Spam

This article discusses the increase in scam and phishing related spam.

Phishing is the practice of attempting to fool users into giving their financial or identity related (social security #) data to a fake website setup to imitate a trusted site such as Ebay or Paypal.

Using an anti-spam filter can help reduce the amount of fraudulent spam you receive. However, many filters are tuned to detect traditional commercial content and intercept fraud related spam at a lower rate that other messages. The extensive use of templates by the offenders can provide useful information to filter on.

Scammers also commonly used hijacked computers to make tracking them by their location on the internet problematic. Some networks are so overrun with compromised systems that the entire service provider is blacklisted.

Increasingly, a large percentage of all identity theft is occurring online. Clueless users are easily lured in by an apparent message from their bank claiming that they need to verify their account information.

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