Personalized Spam Rising Sharply, Study Finds

designperfection9 writes "A new study by Cisco Systems Inc. found an alarming increase in the amount of personalized spam, which online identity thieves create using stolen lists of e-mail addresses or other poached data about their victims, such as where they went to school or which bank they use."

Comments

30% of all Web traffic?

[alain94040]

From the article:

The latest study was based in part on [Cisco's] ability to monitor 30 percent of all Web and e-mail traffic

I hope the journalist misunderstood something, otherwise all my fears about the NSA just got crunched.

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Re:What bothers me more is

[zappepcs]

What you are saying is true, but it can't be legislated. It can, however, become a vocation. Yes, for just 3 easy payments of $19.99 we'll teach you how to be safe on the Internet.... blah blah

An internet driver's license seems like a good idea till you think about all the absolutely retarded drivers you saw on the way home from work recently. Then it sinks in: some people are NOT trainable.

If you think of the Internet as a huge data warehouse and spend some time with a scripter it will not take long to find out that you can personalize millions of spam emails with little to no effort other than writing a script or two. All you need is for 1-2% of those to reply and enter logon details and you have a profitable business plan, albeit illegal.

When so little return can still make you profitable, it's hard to discourage spammers. Internet driving licenses would not prevent that 2-5% of the population that can't be taught to tie their shoes from answering unsolicited emails. There is a base or root value where crooks and con artists will always be able to find prey, whether they are selling gilt edged bibles or offering better sex or longer life. Hell, there are those that are flogging lame do-nothing anti-spyware software in an effort to fleece them of their money.

As long as there are humans and an Internet there will be spam problems. You could even set up a business as an online retailer clearing house where people would send you money to pay for things for them, trusting you to tell them when it is a con job. There are those would would pay for it... say $2.50 per event to be sure they didn't get conned. How's that for a scam?

See... this problem won't go away anytime soon. Washington? Are you listening? New laws will only make this situation WORSE, not make it go away.

Re:What bothers me more is

[xaxa]

A bigger problem is when you can't provide a decent, random string for the "security question". I opened a bank account online last week, but had to go to a branch to prove my identity (fair enough). The banker didn't like where her PC said I'd put "438@@/arcCHK" as my mother's maiden name, and asked for a real name. I'm waiting for the online banking activation codes to come through, I hope it doesn't depend on this value.

Re:Not just them

[Sfing_ter]

Of course they do, it's just that if they don't do as NSA says, then they don't get to continue to rebuild their monopoly. It be Bidness, and the constitution gets in the way of Bidness.