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Stock Junk On The Increase?


csouter

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Hi, all!

Has anyone else noticed an approximate doubling of the amount of pump-n-dump stock junk in their SpamCop.net Inboxes lately?

The fake watches, Rx junk, fake diplomas, warez and dodgy mortgages seem to have all but disappeared, only to have been replaced by a large increase in the amount of this stock junk, (in my Inbox, at least).

Is anyone else having the same experience?

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Has anyone else noticed an approximate doubling of the amount of pump-n-dump stock junk in their SpamCop.net Inboxes lately?

The fake watches, Rx junk, fake diplomas, warez and dodgy mortgages seem to have all but disappeared, only to have been replaced by a large increase in the amount of this stock junk, (in my Inbox, at least).

Is anyone else having the same experience?

My spam profile is still mainly mortgage, local dates and medications to help on those dates ;)

And I have not have anything slip by spamcop in about 2 weeks.

Once again, different spam profiles seem to affect the experience one has.

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And I have not have anything slip by spamcop in about 2 weeks.

Neither have I - not for many months, in fact (yay!!!); I was just a little surprised to see the doubling and then redoubling of the volume of stock junk. If it keeps increasing at this rate, I'll be getting about 5120 a day by this time next week!

It's now just after 10AM here in Sydney, Australia. I usually shut down at Midnight (local time) and restart at about 6:30AM or 7:00AM. When I restarted this morning, I noticed the amount of stock junk was approximately double what I got the day before, which was approximately double what I got the day before that.

Also, most of it seems to be arriving at the servers between 00:00 (local) and about 07:00 or 08:00 (local). I'm starting to wonder whether the spammers might be sorting their victims by time zones, in order to diminish the effectiveness of reporting by increasing the potential reporting time; i.e., arranging the spam runs so that each victim receives most of the spam in the middle of the night, which would result in many of the reports being several hours too late for any given ISP to do anything about it.

Just a thought FWIW... Opinions, anyone?

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...Once again, different spam profiles seem to affect the experience one has.
Exactly. Just saw 5/7 at work were stock pumpers (yes, I think that's a higher proportion than was evident a few months ago), my inpression re my home accounts is that this type is a minority there (don't take a lot of notice but the sheer repetition of the pump n'dump makes it hard to miss).

... It's now just after 10AM here in Sydney, Australia. I usually shut down at Midnight (local time) and restart at about 6:30AM or 7:00AM. When I restarted this morning, I noticed the amount of stock junk was approximately double what I got the day before, which was approximately double what I got the day before that.

Also, most of it seems to be arriving at the servers between 00:00 (local) and about 07:00 or 08:00 (local). I'm starting to wonder whether the spammers might be sorting their victims by time zones, in order to diminish the effectiveness of reporting by increasing the potential reporting time; i.e., arranging the spam runs so that each victim receives most of the spam in the middle of the night, which would result in many of the reports being several hours too late for any given ISP to do anything about it.

Just a thought FWIW... Opinions, anyone?

Hi Chris,

in my experience most of my home stuff comes in from 0200H (my time zone 2 hours behind yours), sent to an attglobal address. I think we're just seeing the working hours of the botherders reflected in this. They have their dingo's breakfast (about mid-day in their local zone) then fire off another set of instructions to their zombies.

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Exactly. Just saw 5/7 at work were stock pumpers (yes, I think that's a higher proportion than was evident a few months ago), my inpression re my home accounts is that this type is a minority there (don't take a lot of notice but the sheer repetition of the pump n'dump makes it hard to miss).

I guess it must be working, then. (The scumbags must be making money out of it, I mean). Otherwise, why increase the amount like this?

Also, if it really is working (bumping up the stock prices), then there really is "a sucker born every minute." What a depressing prospect!

What disturbs me the most is that the reason it's such a jungle out there is because the vast majority of users don't know what's going on, and, what is worse, don't want to know. :(

While ever there are users who maintain a "she'll be right" attitude (to use an Australian expression)*, towards their use of the internet, I, for one think that the problem will remain insoluble.

*Farelf, I know you're an Aussie; that aside was for the non-Aussies amongst us.

How can one help people who don't want to be helped, who don't even know they need help and who don't even WANT to know?

God, it's depressing, isn't it?

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This seems to belong in the lounge, definitely not email system & accounts, not even reporting. Link left to redirect.

I guess it must be working, then. (The scumbags must be making money out of it, I mean). Otherwise, why increase the amount like this?

Also, if it really is working (bumping up the stock prices), then there really is "a sucker born every minute." What a depressing prospect!...

How can one help people who don't want to be helped, who don't even know they need help and who don't even WANT to know?

God, it's depressing, isn't it?

Much conjecture, search these pages - rooster and others have delved into their former lives with the skills and knowledge of a mis-spent youth to try to puzzle out what might be "behind it all". But yes, there is one "born every minute," as the slanderous would attribute to PT Barnum. How can such people be helped? They can't, but fear not, Micro$oft and government regulators are addressing anticipated problems as we speak. No doubt they will move to the actual here-and-now ones once they've finished. For my part, I've tried my best to improve the gene pool Chris - but it is taking longer than anticipated.
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The question dares to be asked, the possible concepts brought up, on a day when I receive a couple of dozen copies of yet another variation on "This child is missing!!!" Damn !!!

The orginators get a link to Ashley Flores ..... the other countless victims are on their own, as I'm not about to "spam" all them ... on the other hand, as I state in my "nice" e-mail response, the social engineering involved performed flawlessly, hundreds of "known good" e-mail addresses out there floating around in all those FW: FW: FW: FW: e-mails, just looking to end up in the 'right' InBox ..... Damn!!!

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The Boulder Pledge needs more publicity.

Miss Betsy

from wikipedia

The Boulder Pledge is a personal promise, first coined by Roger Ebert, not to purchase anything offered through email spam. The pledge is worded by Ebert as follows:

Under no circumstances will I ever purchase anything offered to me as the result of an unsolicited e-mail message. Nor will I forward chain letters, petitions, mass mailings, or virus warnings to large numbers of others. This is my contribution to the survival of the online community.

During a panel at the University of Colorado at Boulder's Conference on World Affairs in 1996, Ebert coined the Boulder Pledge. He wrote the text which appears above and encouraged everyone to take the pledge. It was subsequently published in the December 1996 issue of Yahoo! Internet Life magazine in Ebert's column titled "Enough! A Modest Proposal to End the Junk Mail Plague."

The Boulder Pledge has become one of the basic principles of the anti-spam community in an attempt to make e-mail spam less profitable.

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What a great pledge! I wonder if it might be possible to employ a spammer to distribute several gazillion copies of it all over the internet? There must be at least one who would be stupid enough. ;)

I hasten to add that my authority for this last statement is: The Rules of spam #3.

Also, there should be a law passed in every country of the world, requiring all internet users to sign that pledge as a condition of internet access. I wonder if it would ever get up??

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Organized crime survived despite most oppressive forms of governments...and flourished in spite of them... No form of legal pursuit or authority has ever been capable to eliminate it. Internet gives these people enough anonimity so they feel safe. In a free society it takes all kinds of pressure and many voices to even get the laws in the books fully enforced.. So there is hope that our efforts may and will contribute to the cleanup if only slightly ... But as long as there is a profit in their criminal conduct, there will also be people willing to take that chance...

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  • 3 weeks later...

Trading Halted For 35 Firms Over E-Mails

The Washington Post again, Friday, March 9, 2007, Business section, page D01

"Securities regulators yesterday halted trading in nearly three dozen companies -- the initial salvo in "Operation Spamalot," a campaign to block e-mails promoting stocks to unsuspecting investors."

"Americans face at least 100 million spam e-mails hyping stocks each week, and the number continues to rise steadily, said Oxford University law professor Jonathan Zittrain, who has researched the issue."

That all?? I thought I got that many! :blink:

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The topolgy changes - Ron B. over in the NGs quotes from The Register Health, financial and product spam dominate the junk mail landscape with scam emails accounting for a mere eight per cent of junk mail traffic. - his Register link is Adult spam decrease. So Pr0n goes down (as it were) other stuff goes up. And the "profile" will keep changing as the battleground between quick bucks and competition and suppression shifts.

Trading Halted For 35 Firms Over E-Mails

The Washington Post again, Friday, March 9, 2007, Business section, page D01. ...

That has to make a difference - always seems to be the same handful of "stocks" at any given time, doesn't it? Suppression opens a new avenue of opportunity for the spammers so it may just change the focus/intent of the stock spams.
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Has anyone else noticed an approximate doubling of the amount of pump-n-dump stock junk in their SpamCop.net Inboxes lately?

Is anyone else having the same experience?

I'd estimate 9 out of every 10 spams I was getting at one address that was put on a website unmunged without permission were pump-n-dumps. I just terminated it. Prior to doing so, I was forwarding them to enforcement[at]sec.gov

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