Spim Preys on Obesity
Published:
February 26 2009, 09:34 PM
by
Hannah Mariner
This blog post was written by Research Analyst Kenneth Yu. Keep an eye out for his full profile, coming soon.
Have you seen spim before?
Spim describes a form of spam that arrives through instant messages, and recently we’ve received a lot of it. More concerning than the annoyance factor is that spim often contains links to phishing sites, like the real life examples below. Allegedly sent from people in your friends list, these spim messages advertise Acai berry pills that apparently allow miraculous weight loss:
- Ever since Dylan and I seen those Acai pills on Cnn and Oprah we have been taking them and losing so much weight so fast with no diet or excercise , we are living proof that it works like magic and they are only five dollars now to try from http://sizeday.com
- Wanna lose a lot of weight without diets or excercise? Kathy and I have both lost over 30 pounds in a couple weeks just by taking Acai pills daily, the same ones that Oprah talked about on her show. They are only five dollars to try, We get them from http://makelose.com
- Ever since Dylan and I seen those Acai pills on Cnn and Oprah we have been taking them and losing so much weight so fast with no diet or excercise , we are living proof that it works like magic and they are only five dollars now to try from http://slimsays.com
- This is like a dream come true for me and my Jenny. We both are living proof that Acai pills work to lose weight quick, we both lost over 30 pounds and still losing, no diet or excercise they just burn the fat off. Get them now for only five dollars at http://lowslim.com
Upon investigating the domain names, we found that they all point to the same IP address at 125.181.106.147. Clicking on any of the links in the spim examples above takes the user to a website that looks like this and offers a ‘free 14 day trial’ where you only pay for postage:
If a misled user takes the bait and clicks on the “Place Order” button, it shows the ‘Secure Checkout’ page below:
The supposedly ‘Secure Checkout’ is not presented in secure HTTP, which is an indication of a phishing site. Scrolling down this page, the user is asked to fill in their credit card details:
Clicking on the “Submit your order” button successfully sends out your vital information, so please, be wary of phishing attempts like these, and don’t be fooled by similar ‘free’ offers.