According to a recently published Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) survey, “half of email users in North America and Western Europe have opened or accessed spam and large proportions, representing tens of millions, have taken action like clicking on links or opening attachments”. Worse yet, nearly half of those did so on purpose “to unsubscribe, out of curiosity, or out of interest in the products or services being offered.”
We have to wonder if these same people would leave the keys in their cars to find out if there are really car thieves or would by a luxury watch from a guy on a street corner?
Probably not, as they would likely see the inherent danger in the physical world. However, in a world where most financial transactions are handled electronically, inviting strangers into your computer is an equally bad idea.
Opening spam is similar to allowing a pushy salesperson into your home. If you’re lucky they’re just a pushy salesperson, but it’s also possible that they’re scouting your home for a burglary or maybe it’s a ploy for a home invasion.
In spam terms the spam message you open or the link you click on may just try to sell you something. On the other hand, it’s quite likely that it’s a vector for a virus infection or a way for the spammer to turn your computer into a botnet zombie.
One of the reasons we find this survey horrifying is that we’re not talking about computer neophytes. The survey’s synopsis goes on to state that of the group surveyed “84% were aware of the concept of bots. Yet, most think that they are immune from these viruses “. This is not a case of what I don’t know won’t hurt me, this is a case of fingers in the ears and “la la la I’m not listening to you” behavior.
The only way spam is ever going to go away is if we all completely ignore it. That means don’t open it, don’t click on the links and most of all never buy anything from spammers. Giving them the least bit of attention only encourages them.
You might be thinking “How can opening a message encourage a spammer? How would they even know?” Let us count the ways:
- Most email clients default to viewing email as HTML meaning that if there are images in the email, the client will act like a browser and download the images from the Internet if necessary. At that point the spammer knows you opened the message.
- Viewing a message as HTML also allows the message to have access to various scripting languages which in turn allows them to execute code on your computer. This could be as simple as “phoning home” to let the spammer know somebody opened the message or it might be opening the door to some sort of malware.
- Clicking links immediately sends your browser to a site that is of interest to the spammer. It may be that the site is just counting hits from the spam message or, again, it may be there to plant malware.
The bottom line here is that spam should immediately go in the trash. It’s true that some if it may be interesting but that’s what they want to you think.
Always think the worst of spam and to avoid temptation, use a good spam filtering product. Don’t worry, you’re not really missing anything and you’re probably saving yourself a lot of grief.
If you really have some interest in get-rich quick schemes, discounted medications, replica watches, adult content or the latest “Hot Penny Stock” you can easily use any search engine to find more of all of them than you really need.
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