Beware the “gift” of pharmacy spam on Valentine’s Day
The good news about e-mail spam is that Americans are becoming smarter about it. Thanks to technology that blocks spam from our inboxes and our own knowledge of what spam looks like, the vast majority of those who receive spam e-mails do not respond to them.
For example, a recent study by the University of California Berkeley and University of California San Diego found that 350 million pharmacy spam e-mails sent out by the Storm botnet resulted in only 28 visits to the offending pharmacy’s purchase page.
The bad news is, even with a miniscule response rate like that, spam is still profitable.
And as such, we’re seeing a new wave of holiday-themed spam around Valentine’s Day. In the case of online pharmacy solicitations, you can guess what that spam is promoting — Viagra, Cialis and Levitra.
As PC World reports:
It’s a time for romance, for Cupid’s arrow, and perhaps a male enhancement drug from a fake online pharmacy. Valentine’s day spam and scams are showing up in inboxes in anticipation of the upcoming holiday. The messages, with timely sales pitches like “Increase your length, the best valentine’s gift,” join a flood of other crap mail …
The publication says that, despite efforts to control it, spam currently accounts for about 79 percent of all e-mail.
