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McAfee Labs :

The Month of Valentine's Spam

Monday, February 2, 2009 at 4:14pm by David Scharoun
David Scharoun

For those who think the holidays always start too early, guess what? It is time to get your Valentine’s on. Well, at least spammers think so. Avert Labs started seeing Valentine enticing spam on January 22, and it has been increasing steadily since. Currently we are tracking Valentine’s spam to be between 1 percent and 2 percent of the total email sent on a daily basis.

Typical subjects we are seeing include “Deeply in love with you,” “I knew I loved you,” and “I love being with you.” A sample email of the “Only you in my heart” spam is shown below.

Only you in my heart!

Once the reader opens the email a URL is available to click on. It’s not surprising that the URL points to a site that contains malware. The display seen below entices the viewer to click on one of the hearts. The binary file meandyou.exe is downloaded if a heart is selected.

Me and You Malware!

Spurred on by this new outbreak of Valentine’s spam, overall spam volumes continue to climb back to pre-McColo takedown levels. Spam in January of this year is within 10 percent of spam from last January, and within the last few days spam is within 20 percent of pre-takedown levels. Spam reached record highs last March and with spammers getting back online and the lure of love in the air, it may be a just matter of time until new record levels are set.

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Comments (4)

  • Diane Patrick February 15, 2011 7:44AM

    I received email [from Romania?] with
    Subject: “Someone sent you a Valentine’s Day card! “
    From: ” eCard. “
    Date: Mon, Feb 14, 2011 9:00 pm

    I accidentally clicked the screen, not a link, and it carried me to their link, anyway. They included this info at the bottom:

    Remove here
    Or reply to the address below:
    110-174 Wilson St
    Suite #348
    Victoria. BC Canada

    Reply
  • Claudine Seiberling April 27, 2009 7:10AM

    Blogroll links aint that great :P but i am not the admin :P Just Telling :P :D

    Reply
  • dongdong,tseng March 3, 2009 1:09AM

    Dear sir:
    Excuse me, I’m a student of university in china, i want to know image spam filter and the method to filtrate the image spam. I can’t get more information of them. i know that you have researched the spam filtering . would you sent some information and the data of the you have researched.
    Thank you !
    I’m looking forward to your reply.

    Reply
  • Jackie February 3, 2009 8:19PM

    This reminds me of the “12 Scams of Christmas” — an article on which I blogged right before the “holiday” season.

    (see it here: http://blog.mylaptopgps.com/2008/12/24/the-12-scams-of-christmas/)

    And it’s still just as relevant… You would think computer users might wise up.

    Reply