Spammers Establish Fake URL-Shortening Services

Posted by timothy on Wednesday May 25, 2011 @12:07AM from the services-seems-a-strong-word dept.

Orome1 writes "Spammers are establishing their own fake URL-shortening services to perform URL redirection, according to Symantec. This new spamming activity has contributed to this month's increase in spam by 2.9 percentage points, a rise that was also expected following the Rustock botnet takedown in March. Under this scheme, shortened links created on these fake URL-shortening sites are not included directly in spam messages. Instead, the spam emails contain shortened URLs created on legitimate URL-shortening sites. These shortened URLs lead to a shortened-URL on the spammer's fake URL-shortening Web site, which in turn redirects to the spammer's own Web site."

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TinyURL by The+MAZZTer · 2011-05-25 00:15 · Score: 5, Informative

You can mitigate this on TinyURL by using this.
Re:Good news, no? by WrongSizeGlass · 2011-05-25 00:23 · Score: 3, Informative

Or am I missing something?
What we're all missing is the list of these fake URL-shortening sites. Neither the article or the full PDF listed them.