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.
My Ever-Growing Spam Folder
Even though I am very careful not to post my email address publicly, each and every day I get tens to hundreds of spam messages. Most of it (probably more than 90%) is about Viagra, Cialis and other penis pills.
The titles of those emails usually range from funny to silly to stupid. It looks like spammers are coming up with ways to bypass spam filters. One of the stupidest and most detectable ways spammers use to try to fool email filters is using misspellings of the main keywords in their message. For example, I get tons of emails with titles like: Buy Viagara and Cialias, Cheaap Viaqra, Che@pest Viaggra, etc.
Only less than 1% of the spam gets through the filters into my inbox and the rest gets automatically junked.
I am still very amazed that some (or many) people are ignorant and naive enough to click on the links they get through spammy emails and actually buy whatever the spammer is selling. So, the question now is: who is more stupid, and whose fault is it, spammers or those who fall for it and pay the spammers (by buying the products promoted in spam emails)?