Well, I don't often get to report good news on the security front, but just ran across an article on The Register that reported a significant reduction of spam (gasp!) specific to stock tips, penny-stock or "pump & dump". I wrote about this type of spam/scam in a previous post; Pump and Dump on PDF.
What's most amazing is that this reduction is supposedly in response to the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) tough anti-spam campaign that was initiated earlier this year:
I guess I shouldn't sound so surprised that a government campaign actually worked, especially when the SEC hits the spammers in their wallet. Let's hope there are other initiatives out there that can have the same impact on the rest of the spam."Spam related to financial services comprised 21 per cent of all junk mail in the first six months of this year, down from 30 per cent during the last six months of 2006, according to a recent report from Symantec. The drop came even as the overall amount of spam rose, said Doug Bowers, senior director of anti-abuse engineering at Symantec. He added that financial junk mail was just 13 per cent in September.
Symantec attributes the drop to the SEC's antispam initiative, in which the agency temporarily suspends trading of penny stocks that are the subjects of pump-and-dump spam. Since March, the SEC has suspended securities trading in 42 companies, agency spokesman Bruce Karpati said. The move effectively pre-empts scammers' ability to profit from the phony emails."
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