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Spammers 'Gearing Up' Botnets For Holiday Rush

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the black-friday-is-gonna-suck dept.

chicksdaddy writes "Spam — there's less of it, but it's much nastier, according to the latest statistics from Google's Postini e-mail security service. According to a post on Google's Enterprise blog, the viral content of spam e-mail (both malicious links and attachments) was up 111% from the same quarter in 2009, even as spam volume overall dropped 24%. The Summertime malware push may be evidence of a push to pump up bot networks in advance of the busy holiday online shopping season, according to Google researchers."

4 of 30 comments (clear)

  1. When will people learn? by Pojut · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Spammers wouldn't exist if people didn't fall for their trickery. Not necessarily trying to play "blame the victim", but spam wouldn't exist if people take a few seconds and actually think things through.

    Just saying.

    --
    Living With a Nerd
    1. Re:When will people learn? by Monkeedude1212 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Oh it's no more their fault than it is anyone else's.

      We're always going on about how they need to install a good antivirus and get their system checked out - so when the popup offers them a good antivirus and its "checking their system out" for free - of course they're going to click.

    2. Re:When will people learn? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      The answer is: never. They never will.

      PC viruses have been around since at least the early 1980's, and quite probably even the 70's, and people are *still* installing them in 2010 because they want to see the cute dancing bear or see what's in "hot_naked_chicks.jpg.exe".

      If, in 30+ years people haven't learned that these things are a bad idea, they're never going to. Ever.

      I agree with you, it wouldn't be a problem if people engaged more than 4 of their neurons towards the end of not propagating spam and viruses, but the simple reality is that they aren't going to.

    3. Re:When will people learn? by shentino · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Blaming the victim still doesn't let the spammers off the hook though.

      They're still responsible for giving the intertubes stress, hijacking people's computers, etc etc etc.

      And they did have enough electronic firepower to totally obliterate Blue Security.