The chances are, if you’re a regular internet user in 2017, that you have encountered a spam email or pop up in the last few days – maybe even hours. The online scamming “industry” is ever growing and ever evolving. The techniques and tricks these cyber criminals use to gain access to personal information is constantly changing.
Hitting the cybersecurity headlines recently has been the Dark Web “company” known only as All Base – the spam service that is charging you money to stop spamming you.
Although All Base is still relatively new, during the past three months the ‘spam for hire’ service has risen the top spot as the main source of all XMPP spam. The service has been scamming users at levels not seen from any other previous services.
According to Bleeping Computer “The All Base portal is run from the Dark Web and allows “advertisers” to spam four categories of users: those associated with carder forums, those associated with hacks and exploits, those associated with the underground world of drug sales, and all of the above.”
This criminal service works on two levels, the first more standard level is that they promise to send out global spam email campaigns for those that pay. This is not uncommon amongst spam email services. They claim to be capable of sending out more spam emails than any of their competitors. Meaning that their recipients can be victim to over 100 emails a day.
This is where the second level of the All Base “service” comes in… They will allow recipients to unsubscribe from their mail lists, for a fee. It costs $25 in Bitcoin to ensure you are no longer contacted by these scammers. Considering the volume of potential unwelcome messages the spam list may be receiving on a single day, this small amount of Bitcoin might seem like the better option. This particular project tries to make a profit by catering to both senders and recipients of spam emails.
So what’s the answer? As a necessity for any corporate operation, you can’t just stop using email, and indeed you shouldn’t have to. However, these sort of scam emails offer viruses, spyware and other harmful programs easy access to your business computers. Especially when received on such a scale as the newest Dark Web services are offering. Paying these scammers for the luxury of not being constantly harassed is not the only way out. Your first option is to be vigilant. Ensure all your employees are aware of the dangers of phishing scams and other dangerous spam messages. If it feels like a message isn’t genuine, don’t trust it.
As a business that depends on staying one step ahead of internet criminals we at MailCleaner keep an eye on all news different and dangerous spam techniques.
If you are interested in us providing your business with an anti spam gateway, installed between your mail infrastructure and the Internet, get in touch with our experts today. At MailCleaner we offer professional protection against viruses and eliminates up to 99% of spam.