Sophos Smells Super-Sized Spam Stock Scam

Bit of a mouthful title, and no – it isn’t mine!  However, it is worth noting that there is a significant increase in spam emails out there (that may or may not make it through the filters in place to your inbox) trying to encourage you to buy stock, particularly given the current financial markets.

What is continuously surprising to me, is that people keep falling for these scams.

(Edit – actually, I missed the date on this article, and it was from October 07, rather than 08.  I got confused, partly by the date, and partly because I was getting heavily hit with stock spam at the time).  Oh well, we all have the occasional slip)

Sophos Article here.

Legitimate Emails

According to Sophos, currently only email in 28 is legitimate.

So the next “unbelievable” offer, request for your account confirmation, “I really want to meet you”, “I have funds I need to get out of the country” etc etc email you get in your inbox, you might want to think twice (or more) before blindly acting upon it.

Thank goodness for spam filtering, but even so, a number always gets through, and potentially, these are the smarter ones that you really need to watch out for, as they may pose as something quite legitimate.

That isn’t to say you should stop reading emails, but like ‘they’ say: “don’t believe everything you see on TV”

The Mythbusters of Email Hoaxes

When it comes down to it, the number of legitimate emails in the world are vastly outnumbered by the illegitimate ones. There are the spam ones, the phishing ones, and a small (but annoying) collection that are simply deliberate hoaxes, which may or may not have been sent with any specific malice, but still cause the less naive to question the legitimacy of any email received (particularly those that are forwarded on), and the more naive to simply believe everything that floods into their inbox.

I have no reason to specifically trust any of the “anti-hoax” websites either – what if one (or more) of those had been set up to legitimise hoax emails, or cast doubt on legitimate ones?

However, in saying that, I still find it useful to check a few when I receive a hoax email, to get an idea of its true source, and age. Many of these emails have been around for years, perhaps occasionally receiving a bit of a dust-off and a new coat of paint.

Hoax-Slayer is one such site. I don’t know its legitimacy, but it seems at first glance to be legitimately targetted. I’m sure there are many others.