Spammers Favorite Topic Now: FIFA World Cup

This was written by Camille Tuutti on Wednesday, June 30, 2010, 13:19.

In its June 2010 MessageLabs Intelligence Report, Symantec highlighted how the amount of spam related to the keywords of soccer and football since March 2010 has reached 25 percent of overall spam as the World Cup continues.

Holidays such as St. Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving, Halloween and Christmas are occasions that receive a great deal of attention from spammers. Newsworthy events, including celebrity deaths and natural disasters as well as major sporting activities are also popular themes, and the FIFA World Cup is no exception, the report noted.

While spammers often re-send the same spam emails, they include the latest news headlines either in the subject line or somewhere in the body to catch attention of the recipient and increase the likelihood of the message being opened.

Taking advantage of the FIFA event, spammers are using soccer-themed keywords to hawk pharmaceutical products or counterfeit watches and jewelry with subject lines such as “20-hour wait in World Cup ticket line” and “Inter Milan win Italian Cup.” The body of the email will often contain poorly worded sentences crafted to lure the recipient of click on the links embedded.

There are times when spammers spend more time on their campaigns and send out emails that are more individualized but with a touch of 419 scams. A recipient may receive an email saying, “Your email address has been selected as one of the winners of the Nelson Mandela Foundation/Fifa 2010 World Cup Lottery Draw. Kindly review the attached letter for instructions on how you will claim your prize.”

This method of composing somewhat personal messages is much more difficult, so spammers usually go for the simpler, highly automated, “insert subject here,” “or add some text here” approaches. For spammers, it is an easy task to create automated scripts to tinsert relevant keywords and include them in their latest spam campaigns. However, because 419-style spam is done manually, it can often be the most difficult to recognize as it is designed to trick, scam, steal, infect and deceive, Symantec warned.