Viagra Spam Targets Twitter Users

Due to the huge amounts of spam being sent out lately, and the “smarter” spam filters employed by most, if not all, email service providers, email spam started to get less effective for its operators. That’s why spammers are always seeking and trying new methods to deliver their unsolicited messages to naive-enough users who would fall for whatever the spammer is offering. Social networking sites are becoming more trendy and popular, and such sites have started attracting the interest and focus of many spammers and scammers.

Recently, a blast of Viagra spam messages targeted Twitter users who received “get bigger and last longer” offers with a link to a “pharmacy” site selling herbal/fake Viagra. The spam messages were sent out from other compromised Twitter accounts that belong to innocent users. Twitter has warned its users about this issue and urged those of possibly-hacked accounts to change their password immediately.

Viagra spam has always been a huge problem and source of concern to end users (who get lots of annoying pill ads), website owners (who get hit by spammers), manufacturers of authentic medications like Pfizer (Viagra maker), and health authorities. As long as Viagra sells, spammers will try to do anything to push it to as many potential online customers as possible. So, educating Internet users and consumers about the dangers of spam would (in my opinion) be a better investment than trying to put roadblocks in the spammers’ way, because they can always find one byway or another.