Deliver Your News to the World

SPAMfighter Alert: Spammers sending fake outbreak alerts from CDC and WHO


WEBWIRE

With the World Health Organization (WHO) raising its pandemic alert level for the second time this week to Level 5—with Level 6 being a full-blown pandemic, opportunistic spammers are seizing on the wave of panic by unleashing a flood of “swine flu” spam to email inboxes.

SPAMfighter, the company backed by the world’s largest spam fighting community, is reporting a dramatic spike in “swine flu” spam worldwide with a 10 million spam increase since the outbreak began, which only stands to intensify as more outbreaks are reported and computer users continue to search real time information.

“Initially, the reported swine flu spam involved relatively suggestive spam subject lines concerning celebrities such as Madonna and Salma Hayek contracting the virus. But now, with panic rising, spam emails have taken the guise of legitimate emails referencing the WHO or the CDC or from trusted sources such as WebMD on how to take preventative measures with links to statistics, online pharmacies or further information containing malicious malware,” states Martin Thorborg, co-founder and CMO of SPAMfighter.

Examples of current “swine flu” spam emails:

SWINE FLU: Special Alert
Sender: “Congressman Peter Roskam” peter.roskam@houseenews.net

Swine Flu Facts: Symptoms, How Humans Get It, More
Sender: “WebMD News Alert” webmdbulletin@health.webmd.com

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Healthcare Professionals’ Portal Update
Sender: “Centers for Disease Control & Prevention” cdc@service.govdelivery.com

WHO: Swine Flu Has “Pandemic Potential”
Sender: “Vonda” bproven@rcslogistics.com

WORLD HEALTH ORGANISATION RAISES SWINE FLU THREAT TO LEVEL 4
Sender: “FRANCE 24” info@news.france24newsletter.com

“We hope, as fear spreads, that computer users seek medical advice from professionals and search through trusted sites instead of opening up emails from unknown senders to receive real time information,” added Thorborg.

With over 6 million+ users worldwide in 224 countries, SPAMfighter uses the added arsenal of its community of users who with one-click alert the company of spam. In a matter of milliseconds, about .0505 seconds to be exact, spam is read for signatures and other identifiers and removed from the entire community worldwide.



WebWireID94020




 
 swine flu spam
 SPAMfighter
 WHO
 CDC
 pandemic


This news content may be integrated into any legitimate news gathering and publishing effort. Linking is permitted.

News Release Distribution and Press Release Distribution Services Provided by WebWire.