News Miscellaneous Spammers using social networking to dodge filters Spammers using social networking to dodge filters |
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| Written by Matt Chapman | |
| Thursday, 22 May 2008 | |
 Cybercriminals are avoiding spam filters by sending messages via a social networking site, according to security company Sophos. The firm warned those using the business networking website LinkedIn that scammers are using it to try and find potential victims.
Advanced fee fraud, also known as 419 scams after the relevant section of the Nigerian penal code, are a common sight in many computer users' email inboxes. Typically, they claim to offer a small fortune in the form of a lottery win or inheritance, in exchange for an individual's banking details or payment of a ‘handling charge’. Due to increasingly sophisticated anti-spam defences, fraudsters have now turned to sites like LinkedIn to try and lay traps for unwary business workers. Earlier this week, a 419 scam was sent via the LinkedIn website claiming to come from a 22-year-old woman living on the Ivory Coast, who had inherited $6.5m from her deceased father. “Before the death of my father on the 12th December 2007, in a private hospital here in Abidjan, he called me secretly to his bed side and told me that he kept a sum of USD 6.500 000 (six million five hundred thousand United States Dollars) in a bank in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire,” the message reads. “He used my name as the next of kin in deposit of the fund. He also explained to me that it was because of this money he was poisoned by his business partner, and that I should seek for foreign partner in a country of my choice where I would transfer this money and use it for investment purpose.” The message goes on to request bank account information, and implore the recipient and potential victim to reply to a Yahoo! email address within seven days. “419 scammers may be hoping that the typical professional on LinkedIn may have more disposable income than the archetypal MySpace or Facebook user, and is potentially a bigger catch,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos. “Web 2.0 sites like LinkedIn and Facebook give strangers the ability to contact you, without the defensive umbrella of your corporate anti-spam filter. Computer users should be on their guard against any unsolicited email as it could be from a cyber con man.” Sophos experts recommend that LinkedIn users who wish to reduce the chances of receiving spam change their communications settings on the site. “LinkedIn provides the ability to prevent people from sending you an invitation to connect unless they know your email address or appear in your 'other contacts' list,” explained Cluley. “That should cut out a lot of the junk mail arriving at your LinkedIn account and defend against scams such as this one.” |
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