Pump-and-dump stock spam works, a pair of German researchers said Thursday as they presented findings at a security conference taking place in Vancouver, Canada.
According to a report posted on the Symantec-owned SecurityFocus Web site, the researchers snared 22,000 stock-related spams between November 2004 and February 2006, then traced prices for 93 of the nearly 400 stocks mentioned in the junk e-mails.
On average, said Thorsten Holz and Rainer B?hme, academics from the University of Mannheim and Dresden Technical University, respectively, stock prices climbed 1.7 percent the day the spam went out.
And the more spam sent out about a specific stock, the higher the increase in its price.
Pump-and-dump is a tactic used by unscrupulous investors to hype a stock in the hope that the price will go up; if it does, the spam senders quickly unload their holdings for a profit.
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