Spam in 2015 Q2 dominated by letters based on real events, says Kaspersky

One of the largest security companies in the world, Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab, in its latest report, has revealed that spam in the second quarter of 2015 was dominated by letters based on real events.

Some spam included fake messages asking the recipients to make a donation to help the victims of the earthquake in Nepal. In other mails, fraudsters tried to lure recipients with the sum of $2 million, which the newly elected President of Nigeria was allegedly ready to send the user as compensation.

Additional mailings included fraudulent notifications of lottery wins for tickets to watch the Olympic Games in Brazil, 2016, in an attempt to persuade recipients to provide fraudsters with personal data to receive their 'win'.

Tatyana Shcherbakova, an anti-spam analyst at Kaspersky Lab, said, "During Q2, 2015 we saw spammers use tragic events to trick users. It's a tactic that fraudsters have used before, but with events like the Nepalese earthquake being covered so widely in the world media, these messages are likely to resonate with sympathetic recipients. To protect themselves, users should not open emails from unknown senders and remember not to click links in these emails, or open any attachments. With some fraudsters trying to make the name and address of the sender look more legitimate, this is more important than ever.