New Flavour of Spam - MP3 Stock Scams

An anonymous reader writes "Spammers are back with a new trick, this time round sending messages with MP3 attachments that contain the latest pump-and-dump stock scams. One sample identified by Sophos was a heavily distorted 30-second MP3 file. A synthetic female voice was used to promote a particular stock. Says Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos: 'Although the spammers seem to have a fair bit to learn about machine-generated sales patter, some companies might consider blocking all MP3s in email as a matter of course. So many music files infringe copyright, and it can be hard for a company to establish which ones are legal and which are not after they have arrived. Blocking MP3s, or at least quarantining until requested by the user, can be a good way for a company to take a proactive stance against the use of email for illegal file sharing. It also has the benefit of neutralizing this sort of spam at the same time.'"

Comments

What's the saying about a fool and his money?

[mcmonkey]

The realize the real victims are the rest of us who suffer the extra traffic on the internet and in our mail boxes, but who is smart enough to check email, play an mp3 file, and have money to lose and yet still be dumb enough to fall for this?

This isn't a scam, it's economic darwinism.

No one "falls" for it.

[khasim]

But there is a group of people who THINK that they can ride on the scammer's pump-n-dump scheme and make some money on the up-side of the pump.

These are the people who know it's wrong and don't have the guts themselves to run a stock scam ... but feel okay about trying to make some money off of one.

I didn't say they were very smart.