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Spammers' dirty tricks get you to open e-mail(Sacramento Bee, The (CA) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Apr. 14--You get plenty of spam selling everything from cheap Canadian drugs to magic pills promising you will be a "superman in bed." But just who is sending those blank e-mails, and why? Or how about the ones seemingly full of gibberish that clutter your inbox? Even the most innocent-looking message can be a sneaky spam technique, experts say. Some spammers send the e-mails to check whether an e-mail address is valid; if it doesn't bounce back, they'll know it's a real address and may sell it to others, says Rami Habal, an e-mail security expert from the Proofpoint Attack Response Center. Habal says it's effective and a relatively cheap way to obtain e-mail addresses. Ever get one of these e-mails? * Some e-mails appear blank but really are imbedded with a white picture, just one pixel in size. You would never spot it just by looking at the e-mail. But when you open the e-mail, the spammer logs a download. * Blank e-mails or those with mangled messages can also be the result of the spammer's buggy software. * Messages with random text, such as passages from a book, can have imbedded images. (Research scientist Dmitri Alperovitch said he often sees passages from one spammer borrowed from "Captain Blood.") Sometimes those images call on you to buy stocks or products such as, yes, Viagra. * Messages with no words, only an image, can get by some filters that are protecting only against text. Some such e-mails put text directly on the image and are able to make it past spam filters. Here are Habal's tips on protecting yourself against seemingly innocent spam: * Don't click, not even on "unsubscribe" links. * Don't fill out e-mail forms. * Keep an eye on your credit card accounts for unusual charges. |