February 4th, 2009:

Two years ago, a new and sophisticated spam started to spread in the Internet. This spam is called the “Piggyback spam.” This spam takes the form of a regular spam email. Similar to other forms of spam, this contains advertisement of products, but it also contains something else more dangerous. When you open the spam email, there are links to external sites. However,  the links actually contain downloadable files. This files contain malware such as Trojan and Keylogger. The Piggyback spam also has the capacity to install spambot to your computer. The botnet that is responsible for this spam can actually disable your anti-virus software and remove rival spambots from your system.

Avoiding spams

Checking your computer regularly for botnet infection is among the best move that you can do to fight off different types of spams such as the Piggyback spam. There are filtering spam tools that you could use. One type of spam filtering tool is the “integrated” one. This tool is a common feature of email software. The integrated filtering tool gives you the option to mark spam emails for retention or deletion. You can also choose to block future messages that would be coming from a specific sender.

Then there is also the online spam filtering tool. This can be of two types, one for professional use and the other for home use. In the former, the spam is deleted from the mail server, so the spam does not reach the recipient anymore. The latter requires the authentication of the sender; if the spam mail is not authenticated, the email will fail to reach the intended recipient.

As Valentine’s Day is fast approaching, there is a group that takes advantage of this upcoming celebration to spread spam. According to reports, messages containing subject lines such as”I love being in love with you” and “I belong to you” started to invade various mailboxes last January 22. The spam email lured victims through its interesting subject lines. The spam email contains a link to a certain site displaying 12 hearts. When the victim clicks one of these hearts, a malware instantly infects the computer turning it into a an “electronic zombie.” Another interesting fact is that the group who is responsible for this malware is the same group responsible for the Obama spam that spread a few weeks ago.

Effect of this spam attack

Upon clicking one of the hearts, a malware is released and your computer’s processing capabilities will be significantly affected. When this happens, your computer will be accessible to hackers, so viruses, worms and other types of malicious software could disrupt your computer system. Computer hackers and those who want to perform malicious tasks online can then use your computer for their cyber crime so that they cannot be easily detected by the authority. They can also access your private information without you suspecting it.

How to avoid spam attack

The best thing that you can do is to prevent yourself from being victimized by spammers. To do this, you have to be very careful when opening emails from unknown sources. It is also helpful that you enable the anti-spam feature of your program. Another option is to buy a software that would protect your computer from malware and spyware.

There’s money to be earned in running a forum. However, keep in mind that your discussion site can give Internet users an unpleasant impression if it is filled with links to various external sites that are not related to the topics in your forum. They can even be turned off by your focum if there are links leading to sites with pornographic contents.

What is a forum spam

Similar to an email spam, a forum spam contains massages and links that are unwanted or that contain spyware and malware, which could potentially damage your computer or network system. Unlike the email spam, however, a forum spam is posted in a group discussion site. One of the main purposes of forum spam is to lure the Internet users to certain commercial sites to generate more traffic in the said sites. Usually, a forum spam is posted by a spambot or an automated program that is used to send spam. To evade spam filters, some forum spams have texts, though the content is unrelated to the forum.

How can you combat forum spam

Spam prevention can be costly and can actually require a lot of effort on the part of forum administrators. There are actually various ways to combat forum spams. One is through “flood control.” In this way, spambots are prevented from flooding unsolicited massages and links to the forum by making the users wait for intervals before they can post text  in the forum. Another method is by using the CAPTCHA. This is a sort of visual test that would ensure that spambots cannot register automatically. The moderator can also block posts that contains “blacklisted” words from entering the forum.