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Ugh:

Pump-and-dump stock campaigns work by spammers purchasing stock at a cheap price and then artificially inflating its price by encouraging others to purchase more (often by spamming "good news" about the company to others). The spammers then sell off their stock at a profit. Sophos experts report that pump-and-dump stock campaigns account for approximately 15 percent of all spam, up from 0.8 percent in January 2005.

A new "pump-and-dump" stock spam campaign uses an animated graphic to display a "subliminal" message to potential investors. Animated GIF graphics are composed of a number of frames, which are shown in succession. This is often used for animation on websites, but has recently been adopted by spammers in their attempt to try and avoid detection by anti-spam products.

In a spam campaign seen by Sophos researchers an embedded image attempts to artificially inflate the price of shares in a company called Trimax. However, unlike the many other similar scam emails the graphic briefly flashes up a message saying "BUY!!!" approximately every fifteen seconds.

I'm not impressed. Bob Pisani is down to 11 seconds.

In other news: "Suri Cruise Photos Expected to Fuel Stock Market Rally."

Posted by edelfenbein at September 7, 2006 3:41 PM