Buy Viagra Study

Complex Message Processing

The amazing prevalence of viagra spam in emails has greatly intensified the efforts of Spam Filters. It seems every week there are new variations of viagra email spam and every week new counter measures. Some of the same techniques used in email to filter out viagra spam are also used by interactive websites such as blogs that invite their readers to add their own comments.

However, it’s getting very easy to have your comment, (or your email message), flagged as spam and deleted; sent to the trash bin in the cyber hell forever.

According to wilsonweb.com, here is a list of the top words/phrases, (and their spam-weight), that could get your message flagged as evil viagra spam:

Use a combination of these in one message (email or blog comment) and your message might never be seen.

Ok, I admit, this story is a few years old, but I think plenty of today’s viagra-study readers never heard of it.

A social-awareness group called People Against Viagra Email Spam (PAVES) have collected 220 million signatures creating the largest class action suit in history brought against Pfizer, makers of Viagra.

The suit contends that Pfizer is at least partly responsible for billions of dollars lost annually in personal and business productivity as a result of the massive amount of unsolicited email, known as spam, advertising the Viagra drug itself or its generic incarnations.

While Pfizer is not blamed directly for the sending the spam, the suit demands that Pfizer crack down on the companies using its trademark. The suit also asks the court to enjoin Pfizer from selling, licensing, or distributing its Viagra product to any company that uses email to reach customers.

Pfizer declined to comment on the lawsuit.

An Australian man under investigation for illegal spamming sent more than 2 billion e-mails promoting Viagra in a year, an official said Wednesday. - usatoday.com

Evidently, the man (his identity has not been released) had rented 35 servers for around 14,000 Australian dollars per month from a small Internet service provider in the Netherlands to carry out the alleged spam campaign and it was officials in the Netherlands that tipped off Australian authorities.

“These 35 servers were used just for sending spam day-in, day-out for at least a year, probably longer,” Molenaar said Wednesday. “This operation probably sent out billions and billions of e-mails.”

Australia has some of the toughest laws in the world against spamming, the notoriously hard-to-stop practice of flooding as many inboxes as possible with unwanted sales messages in the hope some of the receivers will reply.

Under Australia’s Spam Act of 2003, it is illegal for Australian residents to be involved in the sending of unsolicited commercial e-mails, even if they are generated from outside the country.

“MANILA, Philippines — Apparently, spammers are getting better at what they do and they are not just trying to dupe people into buying Viagra or offering mail-order brides.” - inquirer.net

Email Spammers are moving from trying to sell a product in the email to getting the recipient to visit a certain website, it’s a more soft sell, (a website that contains a multitude of malware).

As the inquirer.net points out, in 2006 images were the big thing in Viagra email spam. In 2007, over 120 different attachment attacks were documented. In 2008, it’s being predicted that more and more social engineering will be the focus. Getting the email spam recipients to visit a website for “social” purposes.

The Viagra (Sildenafil citrate) email spammers are gearing up for the expiration of Pfizer’s patent on Viagra. At that time, all hell shall break loose!

* Email Spam Trends: IronPort’s Internet Security Trends Report (www.ironport.com) highlights today’s key security trends. The report estimates there are now more than 120 billion spam messages daily — or about 20 spam messages per day for every person on the planet. inquirer.net

“according to Brad Taylor, a staff software engineer at Google: The number of spam attempts — that is, the number of junk messages sent out by spammers — is flat, and may even be declining for the first time in years.” - wired.com

Many other experts agree. What’s interesting though is that each expert seems to take some of the credit for the declining email spam and they express it as across the board, all types of email spam.

BEEEEEEEEEEEEP! WRONG!

The real reason for the decline of email spam is casino and mortgage email spam has declined and that is due to the lack of monetary incentives to send the spam.

1. the public gaming industry ceased accepting online wagers.

2. “The mortgages market in the United States underwent serious economic changes with the sub prime mortgage collapse.” - zdnet.com

We hardly ever see casino or mortgage email spam nowadays. Those two industries accounted for a large percentage of overall spam. Prescription pill email spam such as Viagra, Cialis, Levitra, Ultram, etc are busy as ever.

My point is, the declining spam has little to do with fancy email filters and such.

Merry Christmas!

 

“Russian Viagra and Penis Enlargement Spammer Murdered

Posted on October 11th, 2007 by admin and filed under Uncategorized.

Wow, just saw this on TV, so I decided to translate this story into English so my readers will be first to learn this. Sorry for mistakes in my English, I’m doing this in a hurry :)”

Alexey Tolstokozhev (btw, in Russian his name means ‘Thick Skin’), a Russian spammer, found murdered in his luxury house near Moscow. He has been shot several times with one bullet stuck in his head. According to authorities, this last head shot is a clear mark of russian hit men (known as “killers” in Russia).”

Ummm, I think everyone calls them ‘killers’ dude. Nice idea, poorly written, not just the English, but it’s just poorly put together, imo. Made it to Digg. Circulating around the net quickly. Some people are happy that a big time email spammer was murdered: “Ha, he got what he deserved!” type of reaction.

The article at loonov.com also claims: “Tolstokozhev is estimated to be responsible for up to 30% percent of all viagra and penis enlargement related spam.”

Hmmm, 30% is quite a bit. Nice touch to the story, because people are already debating the impact on their Inbox.

Sorry, but the whole thing is a hoax!

Why am I saying it’s a hoax? Well, the article is dated October 11th, 2007 and funny thing is that the site that broke the story, loonov.com, was registered on, yup you got it, Creation Date: 11-Oct-2007.

Here’s what theregister.co.uk has to say about it:

“Unfortunately, the tale is a load of cobblers.

First up, the name Alexey Tolstokozhev doesn’t appear on Spamhaus’ ROKSO list, an odd omission for a supposedly prolific spammer. Perhaps he’s managed to dodge ISP takedown orders, if not assassins bullets.

Alexey Tolstokozhev fails to show up on any web searches either, except in the context of his supposed assassination. Informed parties, such as Sunbelt president and chief executive Alex Eckelberry, have never heard of him either.”

Oh well, better check my Inbox, I’m sure it filled up while I was writing this.

Bompa

Based on reports by wired.com, clickz.com, zdnet.com, and many other online news outlets, email spammers/hackers have infected thousands of corporate computers inside Pfizer, Bank of America, and Toshiba with malware called “zombies” or “bots” that act as email “relays” in order to anonymously forward their spam messages to the public.

In Pfizer’s case, the email messages end up in the Inboxes of the general public with fake return addresses, such as, the popular Google gmail.com, giving the emails an innocent appearance. The content of the emails vary, but many of them appear to have been designed to sell the Pfizer’s own erectile dysfunction product, Viagra.

According to zdnet.com “At least 138 of Pfizer’s IP addresses are being used to send the spam after being loaded with Trojan software”. However, security experts say that the real number of infected computers is impossible to determine because most of the computers are behind the company’s corporate firewall which obscures the computer’s internal IP address.

Some bloggers are taking a stab at linkbaiting by implying that Pfizer might be deliberately dragging their feet in the clean up process, since the “dreaded spam” is selling their most popular and very expensive product, Viagra.

Top 3 Blog Blurbs

Chris Gilmer, downloadsquad.com

“There is no word from Pfizer whether they know what’s going on inside their own computer network yet. Maybe they are keeping it a little hush hush for now until quarterly earnings prove that the hacker’s efforts are affecting their bottom lines in a good way.”

Michael Santo, Executive Editor, RealTechNews

“Viagra is a Pfizer product, so perhaps they’re not too upset about the spamming. Naah. PCs at Pfizer have been hijacked by trojans, which are using them to forward Viagra spam. What can you say? Hilarious.”

unkown author, noticebored.com

“…At least 138 Pfizer computers have been blacklisted for distributing spam for drugs such as Viagra, a Pfizer product, and Cialis, a competitor’s product. The computers have presumably been taken over as ‘bots’ or ‘zombies’, remotely controlled by the hackers and used to distribute spam…. surprisingly, Pfizer is not saying much about it.”

Personally, I understand Pfizer being quiet on this issue. After all, their company’s security has been breached, hundreds of their employee’s computers hijacked; there is really not much they can say in their own defense. Pfizer does take the offensive where they are able. For example, in the Netherlands, Pfizer has launched a radio advertising campaign to deter email spam warning consumers that 97 per cent of the pills offered via email spam are counterfeit and pose a serious health hazard. It’s a start, reportedly about 55% of men in the Netherlands say that they receive Viagra email spam.

Pfizer has also teamed up with Microsoft to file seventeen parallel lawsuits against two “international pharmacy spam rings”.