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

Re:Show of hands, please...

[timtimtim2000]

I was just going to suggest this! Bastards!

It's not the medium

[halcyon1234]

It's the message. If there's fucking stupid people, they'll fall for fucking stupid things. This isn't "a brilliant now scam". It's the exact same scam, praying on the exact same people: fucking idiots stupid enough to open an attachment because the email told them they'll make money.

Maybe we should just start taking a supremely draconian stance on this. Someone comes down to the police station saying that all their money is gone because some email scammer stole it? Shoot them in the head. Then use their bank records to track down the scammer, and shoot them in the head, too. If you can't find the scammer, that's okay. Soon enough their pool of victims will dry up due to head/bullet related activities.

You'd think this wouldn't work, because people would stop coming down to the police station because they heard people were getting shot in the head. But then again, you'd also think that email scams wouldn't work because people keep hearing about other people getting ripped off by email scams. Those people will fall for anything. The cops can just send out an email about it. "Got ripped off by a scammer? Come down for free $$$! No h3ad shotz for sure!"