Topic: New Spam Campaign Features Fake Steve Jobs Charity

[Pez]

The death of Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs is again being exploited in a spam campaign. A new rash of spam messages claims to be soliciting donations for a charity in Jobs’s name. The fund, says the message, was set up in his memory and will be used to provide scholarships to young and gifted programmers. In reality, the donations are sent to an account on an online casino site. In other words, people are being tricked into supporting someone’s gambling habit.


 
Apple is a popular target for spammers. Spam messages and sites offering free iPads are plentiful. Since it was announced on October 5th that Jobs had finally lost his long battle with pancreatic cancer, new spam campaigns exploiting his death have been increasing. Some include links that claim to offer proof that Jobs faked his death and is still alive, while others include links to supposed video tributes, iPhone 5 news, and exclusive info about his cause of death. Most led to pharmaceutical and other spam sites but some tried to deliver malware.
 
It’s standard operating procedure for spammers to exploit news stories, natural disasters, and entertainment and pop culture fads. Anything they think has a large audience is a target, no matter how tasteless. Some of the biggest of these types of campaigns includes spam exploiting the Haiti and Japan earthquakes and the sudden death of pop music icon Michael Jackson. When Steve Jobs died, there was a nearly unprecedented outpouring of grief and sympathy.

Orginaly Written by Sue Walsh on October 24, 2011
http://www.allspammedup.com/2011/10/new-spam-campaign-features-fake-steve-jobs-charity/

[Samker]

It's sad how some people try to profit from tragedy.