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PARIS: Spammers have unleashed one of the biggest
online stock manipulation campaigns in history in the last 24 hours,
increasing global spam levels by 30 percent, a leading IT security
company claimed Wednesday.
Experts at SophosLabs have
detected about 500 million e-mails containing advice to invest in
Prime Time Stores Inc.—an obscure US-based retail company—in a
record-breaking example of the “pump-and-dump” spamming
technique.
“Pump-and-dump” is when
spammers buy shares, orchestrate a spam campaign promoting the
company, then wait for a share price to rise before selling their
stock for a profit.
“This particular campaign was
first detected 24 hours ago in Germany and has caused a 30-percent
rise in spam worldwide compared to typical levels,” Graham Cluley,
senior technology consultant for Britain-based Sophos, told AFP in a
telephone interview.
“This is staggering. It’s one
of the biggest spam campaigns we’ve ever seen.”
The e-mail cites a company press
release announcing the opening of stores by Prime Time Stores in
Puerto Rico and goes on to say: “Imagine if you had the chance to
buy a Wal-Mart franchise in Mexico right when it first opened its
doors there and all you needed was a small stake to get in.”
It adds: “Hurry, we see this
stock starting to make the turn NOW. Big watch in effect for August
8, 2007!”
Prime Time Stores was not
immediately available for comment.
Sophos said that
“pump-and-dump” stock campaigns accounted for about 25 percent
of all spam nowadays, up from 0.8 percent in January 2005.
The group has “spam traps”
designed to pick up and block spam.
--AFP
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