Pharma spam continues in 2010

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McAfee has released its first spam report of 2010, highlighting the old dominators and upcoming targets for the year ahead.

Some trends haven’t changed with Chinese pharmaceutical spam having a grip on the internet.

The security company pointed out the continued illegal use of Pfizer – a world leading pharmaceutical company name – to sell black market drugs online.

However, it also noted that tougher domain registration laws will make the country a less attractive destination for cyber criminals so there is hope that this will drop in the future.

Aim had also been taken by spammers on free hosting websites and McAfee thinks this trend is set to grow.

A statement from the company said: “These sites have proved profitable by spammers as they are harder for users to block, as most will have been associated with legitimate traffic in the past.”

“Indeed, spammers have such a grip on this market, this area of the web is becoming increasingly standardised, making detection of malicious content all the more difficult.

The report concluded on a more light-hearted note, listing the most spammed men and women of 2009.

Barack Obama was unsurprisingly the most spammed man with Angelina Jolie taking the most spammed woman’s title. Others on the list included Oprah Winfrey, George W Bush and Paris Hilton.

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