By now you should now that you should never open a file which comes through in email, particularly if you are not expecting it, even if you know the sender.

This certainly applies to the new rash of MP3 spam that is going around.

“MP3 spam?” you may ask – “What do you mean?”

It turns out that the newest rage among stock spammers – also known in the trade as “pump and dump” spammers or scammers, is sending an MP3 file with instructions to buy whatever their target stock de jour is.

Pump and dump scammers take a small, relatively unknown stock, buy it on the cheap, then spam everybody they can telling them to buy the stock, so that the price gets artificially inflated (that’s the ‘pump’), and then the spammer sells off all their own share sof the otherwise mostly worthless stock at a profit (that’s the ‘dump’).

Fortunately, even if somebody unthinkingly opens the spam, and opens the MP3 file, and even if they play it, the quality, tone, and wording of the file should tip them off that they shouldn’t follow the instructions intoned by the file. We mean, who would buy stock this way anyways?!

Here’s what the MP3 file says: “Hello, this is an investor alert. Exit Only Incorporated has announced it is ready to launch its new Text4Cars.com website, already a huge success in Canada, we are expecting amazing results in the USA.”