The Inquisitr » spam

Amazon to help you be a spammer while painting a bullseye for the FTC

Steven Hodson — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:22:46 +0000

One of the big topics today that I have picked up from my morning reading is the news that Amazon is going to help you become a Twitter spammer.

Yup now you will be able to populate your Twitter stream with links to items in the Amazon stores that you can sell as an affiliate and make money. Now to be sure there are probably a great number of people who will be totally ethical and above board when it comes to posting this type of stuff to their Twitter stream.

However I am willing to go out on a limb here and say that this kind of transparency will be extremely rare.

This idea is ripe for misuse and will do nothing more than provide a mechanism for affiliate marketers to start flooding Twitter with seemingly legitimate offers disguised as friendly recommendations. I wouldn’t be surprised if by the end of the week that this takes off to the point that previous hijacking of accounts will start happening again with links to Amazon products being the end game for supplied links.

The other big problem, which services like Magpie and SponsoredTweets have addressed is the matter of disclosure – especially with the upcoming changes as proposed by the FTC. In what I have read so far nothing is mentioned about the requirement of some sort of disclosure being a requirement of posting Amazon affiliate links to Twitter. In fact by all appearances you are totally left to your own ethics as to how you write up the Twitter message in your affiliate link message.

As Sarah Parez quite rightly pointed out in her post about this on ReadWriteWeb this is becoming nothing more that Twitter product placement or as she puts it – a hidden advertisement

The problem with this sort of “hidden” advertising, though, is exactly that: it’s hidden. This is the internet’s version of “product placement” – subtle advertising in plain sight yet never clearly identified as such. Was your favorite TV star using a Macbook? Was he drinking a Coke? Already commonplace in Hollywood, these almost subliminal advertising messages permeate our consciousness every time we turn on the TV. Now that same sort of hidden ad will soon show up in the Twitter streams of your favorite tweeters.

Sorry but with no guidance regarding disclosure, or even making it a requirement, this new idea for Amazon is exactly the reason why the FTC is getting involved. So much for self-regulation.

Funny: is your online lover who they say they are?

Kim LaCapria — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 23:30:57 +0000

It just always seems like those spam bots are one step ahead of us. Always.

[XKCD]

Yet another DUH! report – spam accounts for 92% of all email

Steven Hodson — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 00:20:00 +0000

Yes folks you heard it here, and probably a whole bunch of other places by now, but I would let that stop me from doing my best netizen civic duty. You see McAfee has just published their quarterly Threat Report (pdf) which surprise surprise lets us know that spam now accounts for 92% of all email. While no-one would want to suggest that this kind of report is a benefit to them and their sales of security software they do say that this is an all-time record.

Not to point any fingers of course but the United States heads the top of the list, at 34.3%, of countries producing all this spam that McAfee just happens to sell a product to fight. As well the repost also shows that the top subject of this massive increase of spam, at 31.2%, is big dicks and the drugs that will help you achieve this momentous physical achievement.

Just so you know that I’m not jerking you around here’s some nifty breakdown charts for you to peruse as you rush over to the McAfee site to buy the newest overpriced piece of bloated security software.

Spam by Subject

Spam by Country

a big hat tip and thanks to TheNextWeb.com for saving me the irritation of having to read the report in order to get these charts for you.

Simple guide to predict Twitter spam

Steven Hodson — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 20:57:11 +0000

As Twitter has grown it has attracted the scummy side of marketing and other less savory types of link hi-jacking leaving some folks wondering if it is worth all the trouble to be a part of social media. It is getting to the point that we are having to double check any follow requests to see if we can detect a potential spammer who will make our lives miserable with those irritating spammy private direct messages (DM’s).

Well another blogger who I really like has come up with a fairly simple three step checklist that will help you discern those pain in the ass people. Hutch came about the list after carefully looking over follow requests and the person’s Twitter page. These are his three things to watch out for

1. Following/followed by several thousand

This is something you often see. They’re sporting several thousand followers, and they’re often following the same number back. This high number is your first clue (yeah, I’m guilty here). If they’re somewhat new, they’re following several thousand, while only a fraction are following back.

2. Bio has one of the 7 deadly terms

Marketer. Coach. Speaker. Expert. Affiliate marketing. Social media. Multilevel marketing.

See one of these terms in the bio, and the probability of an auto-DM spam just increased 500%. Something about these folks. They got a Twitter lesson along the way that says you need to “engage” your audience on social media. You know, with a personal auto-DM.

3. They followed you, out-of-the-blue

This is the last trait. Somehow, you hit their radar. Not sure how. Maybe it was word you used in a tweet. An @reply exchange with someone they’re following. A search on your bio.

This is the final, most important trait. They have several thousand followers. Their bio has one of the deadly words. And then they find you out of the blue.

Thanks Hutch – this is much appreciated. Now if we could just get an Internet based seek and destroy Taser gun we’d be all set.

GMail’s ultimate gift to mankind

Steven Hodson — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 16:45:00 +0000

I would bet that just about anyone reading this post still has one or two newsletter, or newslist, types of emails that they are no longer interested in coming into their email inboxes. These are the one’s that we signed up for as part of some service we thought was cool at the time or some site’s mailing list that we thought we would always be interested in. Things change, interests move on but still we get those emails coming but now they are caught by filters or rules and shuffled off to the trash bin.

Much of the time this happens because we forget the information we provided when we signed up. Even myself I still have four or five emails coming in regularly but they head to the junk folder because I’ll be damned if I can remember some obscure password I might have used at the time.

Well I just found out via Zee over at TheNextWeb.com that Google’s GMail has come to the rescue with a new feature that attempts to help you with this problem. As of today you can now use the Unsubscribe tool to have GMail send an unsubscribe request on your behalf at the same time as you mark the email as spam.

From the GMail support page on this new option

You’ll see the unsubscribe tool when you mark a message from particular types of mailing lists as spam. If the particular message is a misuse of a mailing list you like to receive, you can Report spam as usual. But if you never want to receive another message or newsletter from that list again, click Unsubscribe instead. We’ll send a request to the sender that your email address be removed from the list. It’s that simple!”

This almost makes me want to use Gmail for a week or so.

Please keep sharing your crap on Facebook – it may save our email inboxes

Steven Hodson — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 23:45:00 +0000

I think everyone probably has some favorite relative; or so we keep telling ourselves they are, who no matter how nicely you try and tell them to quit it keep on sending you all kinds of crap via email. So not only to we have to struggle with a constant flow of spam, notifications coming out of the wazoo but we have to deal with Uncle Joe Bob and Aunt Bobbie Jo’s recycling of the same stupid links you got from other people 10 to a 100 times last week.

However we could actually see a rise in email usefulness thanks to – you guessed it – Facebook. It seems that social sites like Facebook are seeing a rapid rise in the sharing of links. Yes apparently social sites are seeing an increase to around the 66.8% mark of users sharing links which is surpassing email’s 65.1%. Granted it might not seem like a lot of difference but common we gotta take the good news where we can find it and anything that reduces the load of crap hitting our inboxes should be celebrated with a block party – on Facebook of course.

As Jason Meserve over at Technologizer says

Rather than in-boxes cluttered with “Me too” and “That’s great!” replies from a litany of people you may not know, social networks are serving as the catchall for everyone’s need to chime in and giving hope to those that desire to “zero” their inboxes.

All hail ‘zero’ inboxes with many thanks to Facebook so please keep up the good work people. The Web thanks you.

12% of people stupid enough to shop through spam

Kim LaCapria — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 17:18:14 +0000

Thanks, jerks.

It’s the question most internet users can’t seem to wrap their heads around. Why is spam so prevalent? Could anyone possibly be that stupid? What the hell is the point? Surely no one ever buys anything presented to them through the medium of spammy e-mails, right?

Wrong. The practice may live on because, in short, it actually kinda works. In a recent survey conducted by The Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group, or MAAWG, a smallish sample of 800 people revealed some surprising information about the practice of unsolicited e-mail marketing.

Per the study, just under half the respondents (48%) indicated they’d never clicked on or answered spam. So, that means the other 52% have, which is understandable counting in stuff like your cat walking on your keyboard or a sluggish mouse. Now in this survey, 98% of the people polled have two or more e-mail addresses and consider themselves to to moderately to strongly aware of issues surrounding e-mail security. But 12% of those surveyed- wait for it… actually responded to spam out of interest.

Yes, it’s true. Spam may be keeping on because it’s a worthwhile marketing venture. Recent estimates by Microsoft have spam pegged for 97% of all e-mail traffic worldwide. And 80% of that spam is bot-net related, so… dolla dolla bills, y’all!

So, come on, 12 percenters- out yourselves. What have you tried to buy from spam?

Twitspam Identifies Purveyors of Disinformation [#iranElection]

Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 02:56:19 +0000

Any time there’s a trending topic on Twitter, there are spammers that suddenly come out of the woodwork to exploit that topic with the intent to get you to come view their magical slapchopping, traffic-building, penis-enlarging dietary supplement.

In the case of what continues to be the top trending topic today on Twitter, #IranElection, there are those with a vested interest in utilizing the popularity of a trending topic to do worse than move a few more units of their suspicious product. Those with political skin in the game have been found to be impersonating credible, on the ground Iranian Twitterers to spread disinformation intended to harm the cause of the political dissidents, according to a post from Twitspam this evening.

Twitspam is a blog that tracks all sorts of malicious and spammy users of Twitter, and they’ve compiled a list suspicious and malicious Twitter users attempting to exploit the #IranElection hashtag.

Block Now

Obvious Disinfo

http://twitter.com/Persian_Guy (Using fake RT to spread disinfo)

http://twitter.com/serv_ (posing fake RTs; disinfo)

http://twitter.com/TruePersian1 (Was preaching violence & destruction in all caps; now updates are protected)

http://twitter.com/twitrevolution (Suggesting violence towards police and blocking of roads; such actions are likely arrestable. Either provocateur or someone really violent)

Trolls and SPAM

http://twitter.com/louis_friend (Tweets are obviously fake, includes obscene links such as the infamous Goatse pics)

http://twitter.com/jamal1986 (all links are to infamous Goatse pic)NEW!

http://twitter.com/hoobastank_band (all links are to infamous Goatse pic and is faking RTs) NEW!

http://twitter.com/WorldNewsUpdate (all links are to infamous Goatse pic) NEW!

http://twitter.com/atcatsf (all links are to infamous Goatse pic) NEW!

http://twitter.com/falseprophetakb (Nazi symbolism; claims Mohammad is a “false prophet” hence the username, and name is “HowardStern”)

http://twitter.com/IRFORREAL (fake url for unrelated site)

http://twitter.com/ohaitere (Alternating between a false report of Mousavi death and SPAM about iPhones)

http://twitter.com/jfcrow (few tweets, all appear to be random keywords)

http://twitter.com/Karmuk (Retweeting same message over and over)

http://twitter.com/mikehiavelli (Same tweets over and over)

http://twitter.com/globalmeeting (Same tweets over and over)

Suspected

http://twitter.com/FreeMediaNews (Some tweets are fake reports)

http://twitter.com/IRElec (Using entrapment techniques that are well known)

http://twitter.com/lisamforeman (Possibly fake Guardian.co.uk account)

http://twitter.com/AJE_Producer (Possibly fake Al’ Jazerra Account)

To Watch

http://twitter.com/amoo_miki (Was following many people with no updates; only just started posting)

http://twitter.com/AnonymousInIran (Was an Anonymous Posting Proxy with ANYONE able to post through it; now banned in Iran)

http://twitter.com/rccccr (was following users with Iran election tweets, still no posts)

http://twitter.com/BrothersinAbrah (a single hashtag post only)

http://twitter.com/_SuperGreen_ (No updates so far)

http://twitter.com/ghb78 (Following seems to be random, followers likely auto-refollow)

Suspended or removed:

http://twitter.com/IranisFree (Had link to a website that crashes IE)

http://twitter.com/am12976

http://twitter.com/iranianfree2k9

http://twitter.com/rWhZEV (Fake Iran Election headlines)

Conspiracy Theories (Not necessarily purposeful disinfo)

http://twitter.com/persiantiki

http://twitter.com/chartingstocks (Writing fake articles on the Iranian Election Twitters)

http://twitter.com/obamaspy

FTC swoops in and smacks down rogue ISP Pricewert

Kim LaCapria — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 23:11:11 +0000

The United States FTC issued a statement today announcing a rare takedown of rogue ISP Pricewert, LLC. (Aliases include 3FN and APS Telecom.)

Besides sounding vaguely like an obscure German-industrial band, Pricewert stands accused of actively recruiting and colluding with cybercriminals to infect computers with spyware, viruses, trojan horses, Jonas Brothers tracks, and according to the FTC statement, pornography containing bestiality, incest, and violence. The FTC alleges that Pricewert advertised its services on the “darkest corners of the internet” (4chan?) and even set up a forum to allow criminals to exchange information more readily.

According to the FTC, Pricewert either ignored take-down requests or moved criminal elements to other IPs to thwart detection. Further dastardly acts cited in the complaint include DOS attacks, botnet deployment and spam distribution.

The FTC have backed up their case with IM transcripts that show senior employees conspiring to configure botnets with bot herders. The court issued a temporary injunction barring upstream providers from enabling the alleged bad guys, and froze Pricewert’s assets pending a hearing on June 15th.

Stepping over that Twitter line

Steven Hodson — Sun, 31 May 2009 16:47:18 +0000

I like Twitter so don’t get me wrong here but all you people playing the Spymaster would you please piss off. Seriously, it’s bad enough that we are having to suffer through using a service that is proving itself to be prone to hack attacks, phishing attacks, non-stop marketing bullshit from so-call social media gurus but now we’re having timelines being invaded by a game that can only be played over Twitter.

I was pretty well okay with that up until this morning. I have gotten pretty good at being able to make up for Twitter’s, and by extension – Twitter clients, total lack of timeline filters and ignore the more irritating uses of hashtags and idiotic retweets. I was even getting good at adding this Spymaster crap to my mental Twitter filter list but when you invade my inbox that is crossing the line.

It’s not so much the game itself but the people playing it so here’s a big HINT – I do not need to see Direct Messages showing up in my Twitter client or more importantly my Inbox asking me to join some stupid ass spy ring. As Joe over at the Joe Stump Blog puts it

I’ve started both unfollowing and reporting users of this game to @spam. This isn’t because I hate my friends, it’s because I have no other recourse to stop this application’s abusive behavior. So what makes this so abusive? The game gives money and income boosts the more you tweet out about the game. Turning off said notifications can greatly reduce your chances in the game. Basically, it was engineered from the ground up to promote spammy behavior.

Add what Eric Eldon at VentureBeat has to say about this stupidity

I’m not exactly sure what it is because I haven’t joined. I just know about it because a lot of people I follow on Twitter are playing it, and one gets the impression that any action they take in the game (”assassinating” each other or whatnot), gets tweeted back into their followers. Apparently, there are settings in the game to limit the tweetspam, but nobody seems to be doing that.

Maybe they should rename this game to SpamMaster.

You get that you twitless Spymaster players – you are spamming us. Period.

You are joining the ranks of the very people that many of you have railed against in the past. You are becoming spammers – you are crossing that line.

I’m willing to fine tune my mental filters to try and ignore the normal Spymaster crap that is adding noise to the Twittersphere but the moment you encroach upon my Direct Messages and my Inbox you’ll only get one thing from me – Blocked.

Hell has come to Web 2.0 and social media

Steven Hodson — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 21:16:23 +0000

Spam especially the sexually related stuff has to be the bane of our online existence. After all how many Viagra or Grow a Bigger Dick spam emails do you have to get before you literally want to start choking people. That was one of the nice things about Twitter and FriendFeed – other than the idiot carpet bombing marketers trying to play the Follower Game it has been pretty quiet for outright spam.

That is until today. If what I say on my FriendFeed page is any indication I have discovered the newest type of spam – Social Media Comment Spam. Interestingly enough while I was writing this my FriendFeed page refreshed in the background and that piece of spam was *poof* gone. I don’t know if it was something FriendFeed did or not but the fact that it happened is possibly an indication of what we have to look forward – Not!

Thank goodness for screen captures.

Get ready .. get set .. here comes the Twitter spam on a big scale

Steven Hodson — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 21:12:05 +0000

For those of us using the Twitter service spam is something that while an irritation it hasn’t become a major intrusion the way it has with email. That could change with the availability of the first commercial Twitter spamming tool called TweetTornado (tweettorando.com) which bills itself as a “fully automated advertising software for Twitter”.

The software potentially lets spammers, malware authors and phishers generate bogus Twitter accounts and use them to spread their crap across the micro-blogging universe. As well as create the accounts it will also give the user the ability to automatically update all those bogus accounts through proxy servers which makes it a perfect spamming tool.

According to Dancho Danchev of the Zero Day blog at ZDnet TweetTornado plays off of a simple flaw in the Twitter new user registration system

TweetTornado’s core functionality relies on a simple flaw in Twitter’s new user registration process. Tackling it will not render the tool’s functionality useless, but will at least ruin the efficiency model. Sadly, Twitter doesn’t require you to have a valid email address when registering a new account, so even though a is used, the user is still registered and is allowed to use Twitter.

Well isn’t that just the greatest news you’ve had today eh.

Google is #4 spam friendly provider

Steven Hodson — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 01:05:43 +0000

Way to go Google I knew you could do it .. errr wait a sec this isn’t so good after all. It turns out that Google’s free services are being heavily used by spammers according to a report from Spamhaus. While last month Microsoft was the in the #5 spot it appears that whatever house cleaning Microsoft did succeeded – everyone headed over to Google.

"Microsoft got rid of the bad guys, and off they went to Google, which is now hosting a lot of the stuff that was on Microsoft’s domains," said Richard Cox, Spamhaus’s chief information officer.

Other Internet providers, including Sprint and Verizon, currently round out the #8 and #10 slots on the Top 10 list, respectively.

According to Spamhaus, spammers are using Google Documents to host pages that redirect to rogue pharmacy sites. The anti-spam group also documents a number of Google e-mail accounts being used to further so called "advance fee" or Nigerian 419 confidence scams.

Source: Washington Post

Well I guess this is yet another milestone that Google can point to about how they are doing better than Microsoft. Mind you I’m not sure it is one the shareholders will appreciate but then again depending on any AdSense revenue generated by the spammers, sploggers and other assorted miscreants that exists inside of the Google ecosphere of products.

Spam-Fighting Solution Gets $20 Million

JR — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 17:01:55 +0000

The company behind commercial spam-fighting solution CertifiedEmail has scored $20 million to expand its business. Goodmail Systems announced the fresh funding this morning.

Goodmail’s CertifiedEmail system — used by e-mail providers such as AOL, AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, and Yahoo — provides legitimate commercial and non-profit entities with keys that separate their messages from spam and other malicious messages. It says only senders “with the best email practices and consumer reputation” get the clearance.

Users, then, see the legit messages delivered right into their inbox with multimedia content enabled — supposedly cutting down on confusion between real and junk mail.

“The new funding will enable Goodmail to enhance CertifiedEmail so that non-spam messages with multimedia and active content can also be delivered and opened with complete security,” the company says.

The $20 million comes from Bessemer Venture Partners with help from DCM, Emergence Capital Partners and Softbank Capital.

Goodmail says its CertifiedEmail system has grown 30-fold over the past year and is now processing 3 billion messages per month.

Goodmail Systems

Calculate How Much Spam Costs You

JR — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:18:00 +0000

Spam’s annoying, but when you factor in the amount of time you spend dealing with it on the job, the numbers can add up.

At least, that’s Google’s message in its new ROI Calculator, designed to determine exactly how much money you or your business is losing because of spam. The system works by asking you the number of employees at your business, the number of annual workdays and the hourly salary for an average employee, the average number of spam messages received daily by employees, and how many seconds it takes them to deal with each one. It then calculates the lost salary and productivity, both per employee and across the whole company.

Now, it’s worth noting that this system is designed specifically to sell you on Google Message Security — the spam filtering service Google acquired from Postini last year and rebranded. But in spite of the marketing angle, it’s an interesting little tool to play around with (and the marketing portion of it is easy enough to ignore).

For comparison’s sake when it comes to your findings, some research conducted by Nucleus last year found an average American company loses $712 per employee on spam every year.

Postini

A Big Spam Bust – You Could Have Fooled Me

Steven Hodson — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 19:28:51 +0000

Spammers have to be the lowest scum on the Internet food chain. There must be a special place in hell and if there isn’t there should be. The current estimates put spam emails being sent out at 90 per cent on all email traffic. With a percentage like that it is no wonder that email has become a form of communication we all feel like we are fighting to control on a daily basis.

Well yesterday, the FTC wone a preliminary legal victory against one of these spam gangs that they say account for one third of all spam emails being sent out. HerbalKing the target of the legal action apparently sent out billions of email messages per day pushing such things as pharmaceutical drug, herbal pills and replica watches. Brad Stone of the New York Times tells of Marshal Software; a security firm who worked with the FTC, who estimated that one of the group’s main botnets was capable of pumping out 10 billion email messages a day.

As for making money from spam the FTC investigators who monitored the group’s finances said that it had cleared $400,000 in Visa charges in one month alone. Who says being a slime bucket doesn’t pay eh.

While the FTC would like to believe that this bust will make a dent; however small, in the deluge of spam we get everyday Graham Cluley from Sophos is a little more realistic about it

“It wouldn’t be a surprise if people don’t notice any difference in their in-box tomorrow morning.”

Yup that pretty well sums up my inbox this morning – how about you?

Election 2008: Who’s Winning The Great Spam Race?

JR — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 15:37:21 +0000

Some new numbers are in about the Obama-McCain matchup — and we’re not talking last night’s debate.

Research from Secure Computing shows spammers are using Barack Obama’s name seven times more than John McCain’s in the subject lines of their junk mail. The data analyzed spam sent during the month of September. It found a spike in McCain mail around the time of the Republican convention — which balanced the race out a bit — but Obama has maintained his spam lead, the firm says.

Our favorite quoted spam subject lines from the study:

Jesus Endorses Obama; Four Horsemen Opt for McCain
Obama Ahead Amongst Voters With Similarly Weird Names

When it comes to the VP candidates, not surprisingly, Sarah Palin trumps Joe Biden in the spam-off — but not by as large of a margin as you might think. The ratio falls out to five Palin e-mails for every four Biden. In an interesting contrast, during that month, the ratio of news stories about Palin to Biden came out to 7:1. Spammers, seemingly, were not swayed.

Oops…Wrong Button

JR — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:00:31 +0000

Ticketek — the Australian equivalent to America’s Ticketmaster — seems to have an “Expose Private Info to the Internet” button within its internal mail client.

Someone at the ticketing agency recently sent out a message to all its customers about a concert pre-sale. The message also, however, contained tens of thousands of private e-mail addresses from its database. Anyone hungry for spam?

Ticketek told The Age the screw-up was a simple matter of “humor error.” They really should place that “Expose Private Info” button farther away from the “Send” command.

Apparently, Australia’s government is right now in the midst of revamping its Privacy Act to tighten restrictions surrounding electronic data breaches. Presently, commissioners say their guidelines are behind the times when it comes to these sorts of issues.

Ticketek, for its part, promised its staff will be apologizing to all of those affected by its slip-up. Of course, those apologies may be lost within the dozens of Viagra ads also now being received by those customers on an hourly basis.

Spam Twitter To Win, If It’s Up Long Enough

Duncan Riley — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 03:07:28 +0000

Spotted by Mashable is a new site called Tweet2Win that offers regular prizes for users who spam Twitter with requested links.

The concept is simple enough, users sign up on the site then must tweet a link to a given site, with the first request being a tweet with link to Tweet2Win. Every person who tweets the link goes into the draw for a $150 voucher. In future weeks the site will ask users to link to advertisers…once they find some advertisers willing to use the service.

On the positive side the idea is simple and somewhat clever, and credit due there to the people behind it. On the other hand asking people to post to Twitter site links for the chance of the prize is really just sugar coated spamming, with a touch of PayPerPost thrown in as well. In small doses most people are not going to notice services like these, but imagine 10, 20 or 50 sites like this and the potential spam they would be generating. Twitter users would also risk losing followers with the spam and perhaps even having their accounts suspended.

Not my cup of tea. Just don’t try this on FriendFeed or I might have to seriously care.

Yahoo Files Lawsuit Against Unknown Spammers

JR — Tue, 27 May 2008 15:11:08 +0000

Yahoo wants payback from a group of spammers who used its company’s name on a phishing scam. The only problem? They don’t know who the spammers are.

Yahoo filed a lawsuit against the unknown suspects, according to court documents detailed in an official announcement today.

The company claims the spammers sent unsolicited emails appearing to come from Yahoo and telling recipients they’d won money in a lottery drawing. The messages then instructed the users to click on a link to submit personal information and receive their prize. Yahoo says anyone who followed the process would end up being charged hundreds of dollars in processing fees to complete the transaction.

So how will Yahoo win against a defendant who isn’t known? Execs say they have info from a third-party email service that could track the culprits down.

“This lawsuit sends a clear message to spammers,” Yahoo Mail VP John Kremer explained in a pre-written statement.

“We are going after individuals who have attempted to negatively impact the e-mail experience for consumers across the Internet. Through our continued litigation efforts, our top goal and priority is to further protect Yahoo Mail users and the public from this type of fraudulent activity.”