Balloon Boy Spam Drifts Through Town

It’s bad enough that we are subjected to apparently fake child-peril balloon shenanigans in the news–and I guess this was only to be expected–but it seems that spammers and scammers have latched onto Balloon Boy as a lure to sell pharmaceuticals. Given the amount of news the original story of Falcon Heene and the runaway balloon produced and the subsequent news around the possible scam, it was too attractive a lure to be ignored.

As usual, though, despite the novelty of the news event itself, the spams lead to the same types of stuff:

All leading to the same fake “Canadian” pharmacy sites. (The Chinese registrant info for this one was only a few days old!):

Common subjects to beware of include:

Little boy trapped in balloon
Boy-balloon-madness
balloon kid’s full story
Balloon boy died
Little boy trapped in balloon
Balloon boy died
balloon kid’s full story
Boy-balloon-madness
Drama with balloon(exclusive)

Be careful what you click, and mind the news. It is often the lure the spammers look for.

My thanks to colleagues Adam Wosotowsky and Sam Masiello for the samples.