Spam and Fraud: Dear Friend...

First off, that is not the personal assistant to the former king of Rwanda e-mailing you.

By Scott Berinato

April 01, 2003 — CSO — First off, that is not the personal assistant to the former king of Rwanda e-mailing you.

It's spam, of course, but fraudulent spam. What can you do about it? So far, just watch it grow out of control. The Federal Trade Commission reports that e-mail and the Internet have quickly become the media of choice for scam artists.

The FTC researched 380,000 logged complaints from 2002 and found a startling 47 percent were Internet related, up from 31 percent the year before. Additionally, 43 percent of complaints were identity theft related, up 1 percent from the previous year. But the number of ID theft complaints jumped from 220,000 to 380,000. (That number's not likely to come down in 2003, either. As this story went to press, news broke that hackers made off with approximately 5.6 million Visa and MasterCard numbers.)

Of course, much of this fraud comes through spam. The reason online fraud has taken off is the same reason spam marketing haswith distribution costs near zero, the perpetrator can easily increase the volume of attempted scams and the odds that someone out there will respond.

In general, spam is becoming a security team's burden, and security vendors have responded with all manner of appliances and architectures to filter the junk. None seems to work particularly well; or, put another way, none seems to keep up with the tricks of the fraud trade. Just look at the skyrocketing FTC numbers.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go apply for a free diploma.