Stock Spammers Look To Expand Service Aspect Of Their Business

from the poised-for-big-gains dept

Tue, Sep 5th 2006 8:22am — Carlo Longino

It was hardly surprising when a recent study pointed out that stock spam was pretty good at the old pump-n-dump scam, as enough suckers buy stock based on the messages to instigate a quick rise in the shares of companies they advertise. While oftentimes it's simply just spammers trying to drive up prices for their own benefit, a security company says it's now caught wind of spammers trying to drum up business by offering their services to companies, charging 30% of whatever profits they make based on the spam campaign. Unsurprisingly, the spammers advertise via spam, and promise to double share prices and increase trading volume tenfold. Given that there are still plenty of people gullible enough to buy stocks based on these spam messages, it seems pretty likely the spammers will find plenty of companies willing to break the law and take them up on their services. Many people already look at penny stocks with a skeptical eye; this sort of news doesn't do much to help the credibility of companies trading over the counter.

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Anonymous Coward, 5 Sep 2006 @ 9:05am

If its really that bad
Then I should be able to hire a spammer to inflate AMD's stock price, while secretly buying a bunch of intel stock when it gets lower, and that stock should jump in the days following as AMDs stock crashes... right?

So where to drum up the funds to pay the spammer... Ooh, I'll just sell some music on MySpace that I didn't have a license to redistribute.
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mroonie, 5 Sep 2006 @ 9:29am

Spammers still going strong.....
And it's because of us!!

...Lots of email certification companies have arisen due to the spam problem (such as Sender Score Certified). I heard even AOL is is going this route. But basically it means that people who want to send bulk email, but want to actually make it into people's inboxes will go through an application process where they get reviewed and then have to pay for this service. At first I was skeptical of this solution but if companies are really going to USE spammers to try to make a profit, I'm starting to think that maybe it isn't such a bad idea after all.

But still, I can't help but think that this is a just a temporary solution and that the real problems lies in those who fall for such scams. Obviously spammers are still in "business" because people are still falling for this stuff. People need to be more accountable and start taking necessary action to protect themselves. It's' ridiculous to think that people are still falling for this stuff.
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Mantis108, 5 Sep 2006 @ 9:46am

Stock Spam Getting Through Cloudmark
What makes this problem even worse is that the current crop of stock spam is using polymorphic JPG-based image spam messages, which have exposed holes in otherwise decent products such as Cloudmark. The server and client versions of Cloudmark don't catch these stock spam messages in time, and the company is apparently frantically running around trying to find a way to plug the hole. I used to get 2 spam messages a day with Cloudmark, and now I get those same 2 or 3 spam messages plus about 10-20 stock spam messages. These companies need to figure out a way to stop this, and soon.
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Sep 2006 @ 10:17am

Playing the market or going to the casio.....same thing; just a different payment transaction.
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Lay Person, 5 Sep 2006 @ 10:43am

Birth rate
It's sort of like a birth rate.

You have an X amount of newbie computer users constantly coming on the computing scene without any prior knowledge of anything related to spam or knowing very little or anything about computers.

These newly born computer users whether they're 13 or 113 years of age are the targets of these spams. They only need a small percentage of takers to be hooked by the spam.

This is what the spammers are after.
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Just Thinking Ahead, 5 Sep 2006 @ 10:46am

Re: Stock Spam Getting Through Cloudmark
As soon as "These companies need to figure out a way to stop this, and soon." the Spammers will jump ahead to their next plan. They are always leading in this technology. Why don't we just admit it and learn you to use a delete button.
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Joshua, 5 Sep 2006 @ 11:58am

Interesting that I only got it just that one day. None since the 28th. I posted a copy of the exact email. If you want to read it visit here
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Sep 2006 @ 12:18pm

Who are these losers?
For all those people actually reading spammed stock tips, I have a fantastic deal on penis enlargement pills. Wholesale prices on volume orders.
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Common Sense, 5 Sep 2006 @ 12:38pm

Re: Stock Spam Getting Through Cloudmark
Because the "just hit delete" solution is not a solution at all. How does hitting the delete button stop all the damage that spam causes from being done?
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Jim, 5 Sep 2006 @ 12:42pm

My Boss
My boss got one of these emails and asked me if we could just bypass the spammers and their fees and just send out a mass mailing from our own servers.

I had to explain how doing such things is illegal on multiple levels and then shook my head and wondered why the morons are always in charge of companies.
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Wondering, 30 Nov 2006 @ 3:08pm

Why Not
Why not use a program like Mailwasher or something like that? It allows you to bounce unwanted spam back to the origional sender as if the address it was sent to was bad.
Spammers will not continue to send spam to addresses that bounce. It's a waste of their time and time is money.
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