New Spam Trick: Shortened URLs
Shortened URLs, a service on many sites that turns lengthy Web addresses into shorter URLs, is rapidly becoming a popular way for spammers to reach unsuspecting readers. New analysis from Symantec's MessageLabs finds shortened URLs now account for 2 percent of all spam in inboxes.
The presence of shortened URLs in spam has skyrocketed just in the last few weeks, according to Matt Sergeant, senior anti-spam technologist at MessageLabs.
"We've been monitoring the use of short URLs in regular email spam for the past few months and noticed that it had been used in small spam campaigns. However, in the middle of last week, we saw it increase exponentially, said Sergeant. "It went from practically nothing to 2.23 percent of total spam today (July 8th)."
