Researchers Show Fake Medicine Spammers Infiltrating Twitter
A new study by the University of Akron shows Twitter is a new forum for spammers to reach potential clients in counterfeit medicine scams.
Say researchers Chandra Shekar, Kathy J. Liszka, and Chien-Chung Chan, “Spammers have pounced on this new opportunity for a fast and dishonest dollar, disseminating pornography, fake lotteries, fake inheritances, counterfeit watches, free software, and illegal or ineffective pharmaceuticals. Phishing sites and malware threats are now a fixed part of the Twitter-verse.”
While pharmaceutical spam accounts for 65% of all traditional emails sent, Twitter’s messages are not as heavily imbued with medicine spam, say the researchers, but it is still prevelant.
“[Medicine spam] does, however exist and pose a threat to people naïve enough to believe that they can purchase their medications cheaper through these scammers.”
Say the researchers, anecdotally, during a visit to the Twitter website a search query for “Viagra” produced, on average, one new tweet spam every 30 seconds.
Reports Securing Pharma, the changeover to Twitter and Facebook followed a decline in email pharmaceutical spam due to the take down of Spamit.com and Rustock, two botnets used to sell counterfeit medications via email.