The spam mail in your inbox could be a terrorist's handiwork

Press Trust of India
Friday, February 06, 2009, (New Delhi)
Watch out! The spam mail that just hit your inbox could be a encrypted information from a terrorist to his companions.

With terrorists using Internet and other communication technologies to plan, plot and carry out their subversive activities, intelligence agencies reckon that some of the millions of spam mails that are sent out daily, could be the handiwork of these groups.

"Numerous software's and websites are now available through which one can easily send spam to numerous e-mail account holders. Terrorists, who are now more tech savvy than before are sending out encrypted messages to millions including the one actually it is meant for," a senior Home Ministry official said.

Explaining the rationale behind sending out a secret message to millions to avoid any risks, the official said, "99 per cent of the people don't even bother to check spam mails which usually get delivered in the spam box because of strong firewall of e-mail service providers. Usually people just delete them. Moreover, the message is in encrypted form and hence any ordinary person would not be able to decipher it."

Adding to spam mails, multimedia files like pictures, audio and video files are another source of sending coded information.
The spam mail in your inbox could be a terrorist's handiwork

Caution: One should not indulge in transmitting forwarded messages (Fwd). These messages constitute bulk of spam messages to hit our mailboxes daily. Unknown messages in the inbox should be treated as spam and deleted. Kindly have an updated mailing list and scrutinise every week as some spam addresses crawl into the mailing list, which in turn detects hundreds of addresses for spamming. My mailbox is filled with same mail from several sources. We need to exercise caution before hitting a send button. One must delete chain messages, which are real spam multipliers.
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This spam is just for you!

Spam Mail
SAN FRANCISCO: Yes, guys, those spam e-mails for Viagra or baldness cream just might be directed to you personally. So, too, are many of the other crafty come-ons clogging inboxes, trying to lure us to fake websites so criminals can steal our personal information.

A new study by Cisco Systems Inc found an alarming increase in the amount of personalized spam, which online identity thieves create using stolen lists of e-mail addresses or other poached data about their victims, such as where they went to school or which bank they use.

Unlike traditional spam, most of which is blocked by e-mail filters, personalised spam, known as "spear phishing" messages, often sail through unmolested. They're sent in smaller chunks, and often come from accounts the criminals have set up at reputable Web-based e-mail services. Some of the messages are expertly crafted, linking to beautifully designed websites that are bogus or immediately install malicious programmes.

Cisco's annual security study found that spam is growing quickly -- nearly 200 billion spam messages are now sent each day, double the volume in 2007 -- and that targeted attacks are also rising sharply.

More than 0.4 per cent of all spam sent in September were targeted attacks, Cisco found. That might sound low, but since 90 per cent of all e-mails sent worldwide are spam, this means 800 million messages a day are attempts are spear phishing. A year ago, targeted attacks with personalized messages were less than 0.1 per cent of all spam.

The latest attacks include text-message spam, e-mails trying to trick business owners into coughing up credentials for their Google advertising accounts, or personalized "whaling" e-mails to executives claiming that their businesses are under investigation or that there's a problem with their personal bank account.
More: This spam is just for you!