Viagra Increases Spam’s Staying Power   - 999 Views,

Ever wonder why there is so much spam for Viagra? Ever wonder “Who would ever buy this stuff?” Well, while the specific details of the “who” aren’t available, there are enough of them buying it to make spamming about Viagra and other similar meds very financially rewarding.

According to a report released by security firm Sophos, and one of their lead researchers, Dmitry Samosseiko, a Viagra spammer can clear as much as $1,600 per spam run per day!

The way this usually works is that the spammers, who are often (but not always) part of a vast network of Russians involved with spam and malware, known as “The Partnerka”, are taking advantage of the fact that Canadian pharmacies will ship to the states, and either don’t require prescriptions for certain medicines, or will let you talk with a “doctor” or pharmacist on the phone and then issue you a prescription.

Samosseiko found that one of the computer systems of one such spammer was left wide open, and so he was able to examine the orders that this particular spammer was generating.

Samosseiko found that the spammer’s Viagra spam was generating an average of 20 orders a day, that the average order size was about $200,and that the average commission fee that the spammer was getting was about 40 per cent, or $80.00 per order. At 20 orders, that’s a cool $1600.

Says Samosseiko, “This partnerka is open to the public but requires an invitation from another network member. Its main brand is the notorious ‘Canadian Pharmacy’, which is all too familiar to everyone through massive email spam campaigns that seem never to end. This spam is tied to a sister entity of GlavMed, called SpamIt (spamit.com), which is a closed private network of email spam affiliates that has proven hard to infiltrate.”

“The members of SpamIt are allegedly the group behind the Storm, Waledec and potentially Conficker botnets, responsible for email distribution and fast-flux hosting of the spam websites,” adds Samosseiko.