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Spammers Abuse Online Storage, File-Sharing Services
Posted by
January 11, 2008
3:00 PM
By Kelly Jackson Higgins
Senior Editor, Dark Reading
Spammers love free hosting, so it's no surprise that they continue to hammer free online storage and file-sharing services -- these sites are attractive to spammers because they have legitimate URLs and are typically immune to blacklisting.
Microsoft's Windows Live SkyDrive Beta was the latest such service to be victimized by spammers. Earlier this week, McAfee Avert Labs captured thousands of spam messages that contained links to SkyDrive. The links redirected you to an online pharmacy service. McAfee estimates that the spammers uploaded tens of thousands of files to the site.
Spammers are always looking for cheap and easy ways to distribute their unwanted traffic. "Any free Web host will be vulnerable to this in theory," says Richi Jennings, an independent consultant who specializes in spam and email technology. "Blogspot, for example. And spammers have used Geocities for years. I've seen them use Google's Picasa free hosting, too."
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