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The Spam Omelette #54 - On Canadian Pharmacy and Christmas Discounts

Welcome to this week’s issue of the Spam Omelette, BitDefender’s report on spam trends and techniques. If you happen to have joined later our newsletter, please do have a look on our testing methodology and spam map generation procedures before reading any further.

Week in Review: December 02 - 09

1. UNSUBSCRIBE links lurking to snatch your email

Although fake unsubscribe links have been in use for quite some time now, spammers are still abusing them, mainly to add extra legitimacy to the so-called "newsletters" and in order to trick users into "validating" their email accounts. Most of these unsubscribe links take the user to a PHP-based webpage that is able to collect which users have clicked the unsubscribe links, in order to forcefully subscribe them to other similar offerings.

2. Merry Christmas from CHASE Bank!

Ranking second in this week's spam top, the brand CHASE has been identified in a medium-size spam wave targeting Chase Bank users. The message announces victims about a mandatory update of their personal information on their e-banking account. Needless to say that users who comply with the request will actually send their login credentials to an unauthorized third-party and get their accounts wiped clean.

3. The CUSTOMER is always right

The word CUSTOMER has been detected by BitDefender's spam researchers in spoofed messages allegedly coming from the Viagra official reseller. Disguised as an informative newsletter, the message promotes a wide range of sexual enhancements such as Viagra and Cialis, but redirects unwary users to a clone of the Canadian Pharmacy website. At the moment, medicine spam holds the lion's share with about 59 percent of the unsolicited messages globally.

 

4. Need PILLS? We've got them!

Ranking fourth in this week's issue of the Spam Omelette the word PILLS has been spotted in unsolicited mail also coming from Canadian Pharmacy and advertising sexual enhancements. Ironically, the message ends with a rhyme taken from nursery poem Goosey, Goosey Gander.

 

 

5. Christmas discounts sent via EMAIL

The word EMAIL concludes this week's review on spam and has been identified by the BitDefender spam researchers in unsolicited mail sent on the behalf of Canadian Pharmacy. The message mimics a legitimate newsletter, but has been modified to include a centered image of the current offering.