Words, in good advertising, pack a punch. Power words are meant to impact, to provide impetus for action, and not surprisingly, to engage your subconscious.
Spam, at its core is a form of advertising; advertising that works. Symantec Hosted Services security experts have detected patterns in spam word usage, identifying the most commonly used words.
Mathew Nisbet, Malware Data Analyst, Symantec Hosted Services, has written an instructive article in which he outlines, how word use helps spammers achieve their objectives.
Reading this type of article is certainly educational, and can be a major step in expanding that sense of threat awareness that active Internet users’ require.
From the MessageLabs Intelligence Blog:
There is a huge variety in the types of spam that are sent all over the internet, but there are patterns to be found in the chaos.
One way to see patterns is to look at the words most commonly used in spam. If we take a random sample of global spam over a one week period, then there is quite a jumble of topics, but even through all the noise you can see certain words still stand out, as illustrated here (the larger a word, the more often it occurs):
As you can see, the popular words are fairly generic but all seem to be geared towards encouraging an immediate reaction, trying to get some sense of urgency. This is further indicated by the fact that 5 of the top 6 words have an exclamation mark. Spammers like to create a sense of urgency in their messages, as the less time someone spends thinking about it, the less likely they are to realize it is in fact a scam of some type.
Individual botnets have different profiles from general spam though, they tend to have more restricted sets of words used…..
To continue reading this article go here.
Symantec’s MessageLabs Intelligence is a respected source of data and analysis for messaging security issues, trends and statistics. MessageLabs Intelligence provides a range of information on global security threats based on live data feeds from their control towers around the world, scanning billions of messages each week.
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Hi Bill,
These kind of spams are just too common these days and it is on our part to stay from these,though identifying what’s genuine and what’s fake can be difficult.People still do click for free smiley on many sites,which are obvious spams and may harbor some malware.
Speaking of Symantec they just acquired PC Tools,that means the support will stop for Spyware Doctor Anti-virus and Internet Security soon.
Hey Kingpin,
“identifying what’s genuine and what’s fake can be difficult” – absolutely. Spammers are very crafty people.
BTW, Symantec acquired PC Tools *back in 2008*, specifically to market anti-malware products (under the PC Tools name), to what they then considered “less well developed countries”. PC Tools, as a subsidiary of Symantec, is alive and well, and continues to operate as a stand alone company.
Best,
Bill
Hi Bill,
Thanks for the clarification about PC Tools.
The latest news I have heard is that the support for PC Tools products will stop soon,
there is a possibility that it could be integrated with main Norton product which is good for Symantec for better security.
Norton has improved over the years but there is still scope for improvement in terms of detection rate.
Russian Anti-virus software market has definitely doubled and growing steadily.
Hey Kingpin,
Thanks for the update – much appreciated.
Best,
Bill
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Hi Bill,
One of my favorite subjects, as I’m the one who manages and reports spam for the whole family (what a tedious work!).
So, I was very interested in reading the full article over at Symantec. I hadn’t noticed/ realized that depending on botnet, you get a certain set of words in the subject line – I’ll have to keep that in mind.
I’ve seen lots of various types of spam, even with text copied from publications over at Project Gutenberg.
But as I said on a similar topic a few weeks back, the headers never lie.
Thanks for this topic.
Regards
Hey Fathom Out,
Your advice, from several weeks ago (which I remember), bears repeating – *”the headers never lie”*.
Thanks for the reminder.
Bill
Hi Bill, thanks for writing on this – very interesting! It always amazes me, that even though I know some messages are spam, I still find myself reading the compelling headlines. Do you think if people use these tactics, like exclamation points and creating a sense of urgency in their normal correspondence, people will disregard it as spam?
Hi TuneUp,
Headlines are a hugely important component, and should be crafted to grab the readers attention immediately – whether it’s in a Blog posting, or Spam. All of us, including you and I, have been conditioned to respond favorably to well crafted headlines. That’s the point, after all.
You raise a very interesting question though, and I must admit, that in personal correspondence, I am particularly careful not to raise alarm by an overemphasis in an email subject line. I often catch myself changing this line to more accurately reflect the content.
Talking about content – you’ve had some very interesting content over on your site. I drop by often.
Bill
Thanks, Bill – glad you’ve found it interesting!