New Flavour of Spam - MP3 Stock Scams

An anonymous reader writes "Spammers are back with a new trick, this time round sending messages with MP3 attachments that contain the latest pump-and-dump stock scams. One sample identified by Sophos was a heavily distorted 30-second MP3 file. A synthetic female voice was used to promote a particular stock. Says Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos: 'Although the spammers seem to have a fair bit to learn about machine-generated sales patter, some companies might consider blocking all MP3s in email as a matter of course. So many music files infringe copyright, and it can be hard for a company to establish which ones are legal and which are not after they have arrived. Blocking MP3s, or at least quarantining until requested by the user, can be a good way for a company to take a proactive stance against the use of email for illegal file sharing. It also has the benefit of neutralizing this sort of spam at the same time.'"

Ugh, please don't block file types...

[MightyYar]

I hate when a certain file type gets blocked. Just today I had to rename my exe files so that I could send them in gmail... even though they were zipped! Yes, gmail actually looked inside my zip file to see if there were any exe files...

So of course, now the instructions to use my script have to include renaming exe files after unzipping.

Re:Ugh, please don't block file types...

[Constantine XVI]

Use another archive format (like 7z, RAR, tar.gz, etc.), or rename your .zip to something like .piz. Foils it every time.

Re:Mail program

[Anonymous Coward]

It is possible to associate the MP3 attachments with mplayer or whatnot.

Pine doesn't do it as default, and I don't know anybody who would do that. It's possible, though.

Re:Ugh, please don't block file types...

[necro2607]

Easy solution, put a password on the ZIP archive. Be sure to check the option "encrypt filenames" as well, if available. :)

The RIAA is behind this...

[brundlefly]

Strap on your tinfoil hats, gents. The RIAA stoops to a new low... poisoning the well for all of us who love to email terabytes of illegal MP3s to our co-workers.

Re:Why are they really doing it?

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact, the WSJ once built a portfolio of penny stocks that were spam targets, and they didn't even see a "pump" in value, just a decline.

According to some analysts, that is in fact the intention. The Spam is not meant to artificially inflate the price for a short time, but rather to depreciate the stock. Not so much to ruin the target company, but rather because the spammers can short the stock and make a bit of money on the short-term depreciation.

I'm not sure if it's true or not... but I must admit that when I see Spam related to stock, my gut reaction is to value that stock less than I did before. If the average trader who sees the Spam has a similar reaction, then the stock will lose value at least for a short while, which is enough to make money off of.

Re:Why are they really doing it?

[larry bagina]

Not this shit again...

You can't short a penny stock.

Here's a dumbed down guide to how shorting works:

1. You borrow stock from someone else
2. You sell it
3. ???
4. Profit! (buy it back at a lower price and return the shares)

If you want to borrow a NYSE/NASDAQ stock, your broker will be happy to help (they charge interest and take the shares from another person's account). But if you ask about borrowing a penny stock, they'll tell you to fuck off.

Re:No one "falls" for it.

[jonbryce]

They pick small caps where there is very little active trade, and it can take weeks / months to sell the stock.

They buy a load of them at the normal price over a period of time, then sell them at an inflated price to the people they spam. By the time they send out the spam, the price has gone up, and it is already too late to profit from the upside.