The Sound of Spam

Receive an MP3 attachment over email? It could be spam in disguise. Ars Technica reports that MP3 spam is on the rise.

As anti-spam tools and e-mail users become more sophisticated, spammers are turning to new mediums to get their unwelcome messages through filters and into inboxes. One of the more recent developments is spam with attached MP3 files. One security software vendor, MXSweep, is reporting that MP3 spam now accounts for between 7 and 10 percent of all spam being sent.

The files are given innocuous-sounding names like elvis.mp3, oursong.mp3, smashingpumpkins.mp3, or coolringtone.mp3. The payload is disappointing: a voice recording touting the virtues of some corporate stock; in other words, it's pump-and-dump stock spam in a new format.

What does make MP3 spam unique, the article notes, is its size, noting that they consume up to 55 percent of email bandwidth, a big drain.

What to do? Configure your spam filters to block out MP3 attachments, or, if your email client supports rules-based filtering, set it to flag and delete messages with MP3s, advises Ars Technica.

In honor of TechSoup's fifth annual Stop Spam Today campaign and special Mailshell Promotion, we'll be blogging about spam topics through December 5. Check back weekly for new spam-related posts.

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