Adobe CS3 for $89?
New spam wave offers Adobe CS3 as bait to steal identity and scam unweary computer users... BEWARE...
How many people do you suppose fall for that headline in thousands of illegal email messages they received over the past week? The subject line is clear and unmistakable, though it changes from time to time. Sometimes it says "Photoshop" and sometimes it says "Dreamweaver" -- but they're all the same. These are the Photoshop "OEM" spam scams. They offer a $900 software package for just $89.This blatant attempt to steal identities feeds on people's greed to get the much hyped Adobe CS3 package at a ridiculously low price. Usually, Adobe crushes these campaigns quickly, but because of their clever techniques of masking the offer, few spam traps catch the spam in the first few waves.
The email is cleverly encoded to hide the message and link. Online crime knows that most Windows and Mac users run their browsers in the default "display" mode. So, the scammers know their marks will see a graphic promoting the product, offer and link to the web site. (Here's the picture) It changes slightly from message to message. The graphic asks you to "key" the URL into your browser, so no links are actually in the email for filters, watch lists or law enforcement to track. I've seen six different URLs in use, all leading to the same IP block.
Cleverly covering their tracks, the criminals go another step to evade detection. In the text of the ad -- something the spam filters will indeed see and track, they cleverly put an unrelated spam message. Check it out -- the content of one such ad, for those smart enough to have display turned off:
> really good prices on prescription meds.
> you can check it out here: http://caddial.com
> The poor dog, in life the firmest friend. The
> first to welcome, foremost to defend.
> The happiness of every country depends upon the
> character of its people, rather than the form
> of its government.
> ... Blah, blah, blah...
Pure gibberish, intended to throw off most spam filters. The little "caddial" link thrown in will send the spam hunters to Brazil, and another untouchable criminal down there running an illegal online drug scam.
In reality, the websites spamvertised in the spam email is a firm called: BEIJING INNOVATIVE LINKAGE TECHNOLOGY LTD. DBA DNS.COM.CN, who is actually an outlaw registrar. When the links go dead, they quickly come back on a different IP block -- something only an ISP or Registrar can do. Another 'version' of the same spam comes from New Zealand, under a "protected" and probably forged whois domain address.
I attempted to notify Adobe. But, unfortunately, Adobe's site is so complicated and automated, it's impossible to make a simple contact. I attempted to report the situation but the first form didn't work -- crapped out with some obscure error message. The second attempt took me to an email address -- which returned a canned "thank you for your suggestion" email. Duh, that was certainly intelligent. After that I gave up. If Adobe makes it that hard to report such theft, then they obviously don't want to know about it.
I did manually report the spammer through my anti-spam channels and the spam stopped for about 12 hours. But then it was back again -- same pictures, same offer, different IP blocks. This morning our spam traps were holding eight more since last night.
Protect yourself
If you think the offer sounds too good to be true, it probably is. In this case -- it definitely is.
* Never click links in email unless it's a known source.
* Never open email with deceptive subject lines. (By opening the mail, you've accessed the graphic and thereby tagged yourself as a 'live' email user.)
With such offers, the very least that can happen is you are marked for more scams from organized online crime. The worst that can happen is your online account information is stolen and you get nothing.
Be smart enough to avoid such scam artists by deleting the email before opening it -- or better yet, reporting it.
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