Pump-And-Dump Scammers Move From PDF Prospectus To Excel Spreadsheets Touting Stocks

from the does-anyone-click-on-attachments? dept

Last month, we wrote about pump-and-dump stock scammers creating and sending bogus prospectus PDF files to try to trick more people into buying shares. Apparently, they're now moving on to other attachments as well. Specifically, a few spammers are experimenting with sending spreadsheet files. It's not clear from the article if the spreadsheets just include text hyping the stock, or if it actually includes some sort of numerical spreadsheet analysis. The security firm that spotted this spam predicts (not unreasonably) that we'll soon see PowerPoint presentations for stock spam as well. Again, though, it makes you wonder why these stock spammers don't turn all that energy into actually becoming stock analysts. If you're going to go through all that work, why not be legit?
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: pump and dump, spam


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  • identicon
    Gordon Stewart, 30 Jul 2007 @ 4:29am

    stock spam

    It is sad to say that if people were not stupid and greedy, this spam would not exist. When I read the stats off our spam firewall, I am angered to see its identified more than a million spam emails in a few days.
    abusers should be jailed and fed a diet of spam

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Mark Grafing, 30 Jul 2007 @ 6:15am

    Stock Spam

    It is amazing at what length the spammers are hitting mail servers today. Though they can be heavily blocked using MailScanner and Barracuda SPAM Firewalls, the traffic generated is just plain wrong. I attribute this mostly to inept IT groups throwing a mailserver out there without securing it against open relays and adding checks and balances. Being a mail administrator is a full time job these days and it would be nice have some laws in place to "put the spammer in the slammer" I am thankful they are not snail mailing it to me at the cost of natural resources. I quote "The Tick" on this one..."Evil doers mend your wicked ways!"

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Matthew, 30 Jul 2007 @ 7:14am

    Not Corporate Servers

    This is not the work of a bumbling IT dept. This is the work of a widespread zombie-net. The average home users have to become more educated and vigilent against infections which allow their systems to pump out a couple thousand message before the respective Abuse dept can disable the modem. Then the scammer moves to the next batch of zombies.

    I would suspect the attachments to have viruses attached to claim even more zombies to make the next wave even bigger, and so on. The margin of suckers then increases even as the percentage becomes lower.

    Get your firewall up, antivirus up-to-date, and don't open strange email.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      mdm-adph, 31 Jul 2007 @ 6:56am

      Re: Not Corporate Servers

      Of course it's not corporate servers -- most of those are running on an actual well-made operating system like Unix, Linux, or AIX. Breaking the Windows monopoly on the home PC market might go a long way towards fixing this problem!

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2007 @ 8:32am

    Legit

    If you're going to go through all that work, why not be legit?
    Wait a minute, didn't you just suggest they become "stock analysts"?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2007 @ 6:28pm

    AC #4 has it exactly right - funny also.

    Come on Mike, do you really think that "all that work" is aimed at producing accurate material? Of course not. That's why they are scams. Mike strikes out on this one.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Bear, 31 Jul 2007 @ 1:10pm

    Stock Spam

    Anyone who accepts executable files (.xls, .pps, etc) in an email is a fool to begin with.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      ChrisH, 13 Aug 2007 @ 6:15am

      Re: Stock Spam

      xls and pps aren't executables they are MS Office documents, and most businesses would grind to a halt if they couldn't accept Office documents over email.

      link to this | view in chronology ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.