Symantec’s May 09 State of Spam Report has revealed that spammers are taking advantage of worldwide events, such as the swine flu and Mother’s Day to infiltrate people’s email inboxes.
The report highlights that spam levels increased with the swine flu outbreak, in particular concerning health related spam emails. The report noted that the spam emails talked about medicines that could be used to fight the flu with dangerous URLs directing to various pharmacy sites. Symantec also detected a number of emails being circulated with a malicious PDF attachment that promised to answer questions about the Swine Flu.
In a similar vein, Mother’s Day attracted the attention of spammers across the globe, who used the day as a way to distribute their spam wares.
Products that were spam-advertised included Mother’s day include flowers, photo frames, jewelry, gift cards, kitchen related products, and the ever-present weight-loss products.
Symantec have warned users to be extra vigilant when opening attachments or clicking on URL links.
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