What's with these big stock secrets spam email?

I have been getting a ton of them lately. A superlow stock value is advertised as like an insider secret that it is going to get much bigger. Yet they don't specifically ask for my money so what is the catch, how are they trying to trick you?

I don't know what they are doing for certain, but I suspect that they get enough people to buy these penny stocks which are very sensitive to demand. Demand rises. The stock price goes up. The bad guys then sell their holdings for a profit at the higher, demand-induced price. The victims are left holding a stock that falls in value.

They may also just be making a market in these stocks, so they make a profit whenever someone buys or sells.

It means they have already invested in the stock (or hold options to buy at a set price) and are trying to get suckers to bid up the price. They hope to unload it during the bubble before it pops.

The only reason this can work is because there are a lot of stupid people (Gee, someone I don't know has sent me an "insider" tip, they must be looking out for my interests and it must be true!).

Generally, they take a penny stock, try to get others to buy it, and the spammers sell into the rising stock prices... They get out, the stock crashes and the new investors are left holding worthless (or near worthless) paper.

Pump and Dump (Google Search):

-Bill

I've been getting a lot of these recently too... weird

Hey thanks for the info. Totally makes sense now. I've kept my latest stock email and will see how it does on Monday if these stocks are listed anywhere.

I've been getting them for months. I can't figure out if I got signed up from registering for something (like a forum) or from my friend putting my name in that online 'deal or no deal' entry thing. I think it is ridiculous, but hey, if they're gonna enter me, why not let them. *shrug*

It's spam. Delete it and don't give it another thought. Even reading and giving spam the least consideration makes you an enabler and part of the spam problem.

Opening ANY spam verifies that your E-ail address is not only valid, but that you are foolish enough to READ SPAM.

Your E-mail address is a commodity that is sold over and over and over again.

And it's now the MOST VALUABLE E-mail address possible: by reading that spam, you have likely guaranteed a 10 or 20 fold increase in spam to your E-mail address for a very, very long time.....

Maybe I should just short about 50k of it?

When I first got my Verizon account, quite a few years now, I used the included email address only for personal correspondence. For web purchases, forum IDs etc., I always used my hotmail address. Until this past year or so, my email was relatively spam free, however it's now gone from a few a week to several a day. I try to figure out what could have done me in and I think one major contributor is the online cards unknowing friends have sent me therefore exposing my email to the card web site. I do my best to delete the spam at the server before downloading but sometimes some still get thru. Hopefully the stock tip ones will dry up. I used to get a lot of the ones where the rich person in the third world country needed you to help transfer his millions but I don't get those too much anymore so maybe the same will happen to the bogus stock tips.

havand said:

I've been getting them for months. I can't figure out if I got signed up from registering for something (like a forum) or from my friend putting my name in that online 'deal or no deal' entry thing. I think it is ridiculous, but hey, if they're gonna enter me, why not let them. *shrug*

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I have been getting pooploads of the stock spam and I have noticed a lot of them do not even have my email name correct just the ISP name correct and I get it, like my ISP routes all spam to me.

Someone has too much money and is signing up for all the money-management websites and forums.

Yep - pump and dump and it was on CNN recently I believe that in the last few months this type of SPAM is going off the scale. Big gangs of criminal (thats what they called them on CNN) spammers are pumping this junk out like crazy - I think they said it Has doubled in a few months - some say 90% of email they get is spam. It is crazy - something should be done about it (I know it's difficult) and in the past what little spam I got was easy to delete but my main email has been getting lots the last couple months for the first time in years. I do know that they are getting your email addresses from somewhere as I've got many others that get zero spam. So there is the option of changing your email address often - but that has its drawbacks too. I think what it's going to take to stop it is some headlines like 'Spammer beaten to a bloody pulp by P.O.'d Internet users'

I thought just opening an e-mail doesn't verify you 'got it' there is no delivery confirmation for regular e-mail, atleast that i know of? I thought you had to click on it or do something with it for that to happen. And deleting it gets annoying when i get about 10-15 messages a day that make it THROUGH the spam filter...

It depends on what was sent in the message and how your email is setup...

A simple email can have delivery confirmation, scripting, and/or embedded links:

Delivery Confirmation: Can be automatic email back or you OK--setup to require OK for DC's. Since many (most) emails don't have real return addresses, DC's are probably not used often for tracking real email addresses.

Scripting: Email programs can act like web browsers and execute scripts to do stuff--setup to disallow scripting.

Embedded Links: URL to image on another server (will give your IP address and computer type, can be encoded with number linked to your email address)--setup to disable embedded links.

I am using Thunderbird (companion to FireFox web browser) for email... Most of this is defaulted that you need to kick "OK" have anyone outside of your computer see you "reading your email"... Also, Thunderbird does not natively support Active X and I have scripting turned off... Pretty simple setup and works just like Outlook Express--install will copy (not change) Outlook setups, addresses, and email folders to Thunderbird automagically.

-Bill

When I first got my Verizon account, quite a few years now, I used the included email address only for personal correspondence. For web purchases, forum IDs etc., I always used my hotmail address. Until this past year or so, my email was relatively spam free, however it's now gone from a few a week to several a day.

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Yes, even email accounts that I have carefully guarded - using them only for communicating with a small group of friends and accounts where I don't think I have ever gotten an ecard are now getting a flood of these penny stock spams.

This is really getting to be a serious problem. The large ISP providers need to form a coalition to hunt down these spammers and find some way of stopping this.

I get something like 300 spam emails a day.
My spam filters take care of most of it.

havand said:

I thought just opening an e-mail doesn't verify you 'got it' there is no delivery confirmation for regular e-mail, atleast that i know of? I thought you had to click on it or do something with it for that to happen. And deleting it gets annoying when i get about 10-15 messages a day that make it THROUGH the spam filter...

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One of the most common ways this is done is by putting a 1x1 pixel image file in the spam email. If your email client is html enabled as soon as you open a spam email it confirms with the sender that you opened it.

I looked at some of those stock emails on a forensic computer. The ones that I had were coming out of France.

Your best bet with any email that you don't recongize the sender is to delete it.

I don't think these are stock tips- they are all unique and so are searchable. This lets the sender find computers with the email on them and so detect that the email address is real and valid.

I think this is how it works but am a complete amateur.