What's In All That Spam? While the Meat Product Might Be Good, Spam Email Isn't

It isn't always foreign attackers that send spam to our email accounts. According to research by Kaspersky Lab, nearly 17% of spam emails were sent from within the United States. So if we think we are over run with emails on a daily basis... we would be correct. Unbelievably, the proportion of spam in overall email traffic was nearly 67%!

What is in all this spam?  Often times the message is advertising for some product. It could be a legitimate product or an illegal medication (which is common), but also may be just scammers trying to trick people out of their money. These types of messages often come in the form of the popular Nigerian scam, where victims are urged to send money to help some alleged poor soul escape harm in a foreign land. Actually, these "poor souls" are the scammers. This particular scam was skewed in many ways in spam email messages in 2014 from turning their focus to the political events in Ukraine, to asking for money to help Africans infected with the Ebola virus, to exploiting Nelson Mandela's death. 

The spammers are tricky and go to significant lengths to make these messages appear to be real. In the case of World Cup scams, they actually purchased domains, created authentic looking web pages, and advertised merchandise for sale. They also asked for money to help "sports fans" rent accommodations. This is true for all major sporting or world events, so stay on guard. If you are inclined to help a charity or cause, do some research and then donate by going to their site directly.

Not surprisingly, in each case someone lost money for falling for the scam. Often, these type of messages contain malware that will wreak havoc on the victim, hold the computer hostage for ransom (as in ransomware such as Cryptowall), or steal online banking credentials (as in the recently discovered Dridex), or other sensitive data. Therefore, it's very important to know how to identify fraudulent email messages and not fall victim.

• Pay attention to the "to" and "from" lines. Often the names are strange and definitely not to you. That is an indicator of spam.

• If there is a link or attachment and it was not expected, it could be malicious, even if you know the sender. Check with the sender by phone before opening or clicking. Email addresses are surprisingly easy to fake.

• If the mouse hovers over a link, it will indicate where that link is going once it's clicked. If it's unfamiliar, unexpected, or just gives you a funny feeling, don't click it.

• Make sure antivirus and anti-malware are installed and updated on all systems that connect to the internet.

• Because the spam and phishing email messages often contain malware that takes advantage of un-patched systems, make sure all critical and security patches are applied as soon as they are available. Unfortunately, may vulnerabilities have been found in Adobe Flash, which is a great add-in tool for your browser. Make sure it's always updated and that you update each browser individually. You can check if you're up-to-date on Adobe's website.

• Never provide sensitive information via email or in unsecured websites. Financial institutions will not ask for it that way, but rather will ask you to update your details next time you log into your account directly.

Remember that spam messages don't have to be big files. According to the Kaspersky research, nearly 75% were less than 1 kilobyte in size. That is very small, reminding us that like the poison dart frog, big harm can come in small packages.