As crazy as it is to believe, spammers would not keep throwing out spam unless they got a return on their investment. So, while it might seem unlikely that someone would fall for the fake pill spam that has been going around forever, somebody must be falling for it or it would have died out a long time ago.
Of course, spam filters have gotten better at detecting these bogus fake pill emails, but that hasn’t seemed to deter really clever spammers. They must get one heck of a return on their spam to be this persistent. In the war against spam, and the never-ending sequence of move and countermove between spammers and those who don’t want to see spam, the spammers have started to think outside the box to slip their spam past your spam filter.
According to an article on Bleeping Computer, “Actors behind a pill scam campaign are trying a new technique, betting on unconventional representation of URLs in spam messages to keep them undetected by email protection systems and URL blocklists. The spammers are pushing anything from coronavirus face masks, anti-bacterial UV lamps, pills to improve concentration, for losing weight, for acid reflux, prostate, vertigo, vitiligo, or for correcting vision problems.”
It’s really a clever tactic. Rather than using a standard URL readable by humans, the spammers use a URL with a bunch of hex code instead which gets translated to an IP address. “While using the hexadecimal system to encode IP addresses is not a new technique, it is uncommon in pharma spam campaigns. Web browsers accept and decode this format along with others (octal, integer or DWORD). The chain of events after clicking the hex-encoded IP address goes through several intermediate HTTP 301 and HTTP 302 redirects before landing on the final page that integrates legitimate, third-party payment gateways to process transactions via credit card or PayPal. The researchers say that encoding the IP addresses in emails is an evolution in pharma related spam operations.”
So, what’s the answer if you’re determined to keep this type of spam out of your inbox? Enterprise grade spam filtering like that available from DuoCircle. Spam filtering from DuoCircle includes commercial anti-spam and multi-tiered anti-virus filtering, with customizable rules updated hourly. Those frequent updates are the key. With the spam landscape changing constantly, you need a spam filter that learns and updates just as fast. And that’s what you get with DuoCircle.
DuoCircle spam filtering is cloud-based, which means it integrates seamlessly with your on-premises or hosted email. It also means there’s no hardware or software to buy and no maintenance ever. One low fee gets you unlimited users and unlimited inbound messages. Try it risk free for 60 days and never see a fake pill email again.