Google’s ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ Being Used For Email Spam
Friday, February 8, 2008 By Clay | Comments (0)
MSNBC’s red tape chronicles blog written by Bob Sullivan has an interesting piece on how Google search engine results pages and their ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ feature are being used by email spammers.
“With traditional spam finally losing traction among e-mail users, spammers have stepped up their pace of innovation. Last year, they adopted new techniques like image spam, .pdf spam and even audio spam. These disappeared as quickly as they came. But starting in January, spammers began flooding inboxes with a new kind of spam that uses a much simpler form of deception. In the body of these e-mails, recipients see what looks like a link to Google search results — and in fact, that’s what it is. There’s trouble, however, on the other side of that link.
The attack combines two tactics. First, spammers game Google so the Web site they want recipients to visit ranks at the top of the search engine results. Second, they alter the URL pasted in e-mails so users who click on the link go directly to the top result via Google’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” feature – bypassing a stop at Google’s Web site.”
Apparently using a legitimate Google link bypasses spam and phishing filters. Google, always on top of their game, said they’re already working on stopping this.
“A Google spokeswoman who asked not to be named said the company has seen “I’m Feeling Lucky” attacks, but added that help is on the way.
“Google began deploying a fix that should block most of these ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ redirects, and we will work to reduce such issues in the future,” she wrote in an e-mail.”
Full story, New Cyber Trick: Search Engine Spam.
Categories: Search Engine Industry News | Tags: google, spam | Popularity: 20% [?]
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