Dirty stinking tobacco spam

Graham Cluley
Graham Cluley
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@[email protected]
@gcluley

Smoking is a filthy habit.

It makes your breath smell, turns your fingers brown, and can make you more wrinkly than a Shar Pei puppy. So, I’ve decided to make a stand and declare the Clu-blog officially a non-smoking blog. Please don’t smoke while you’re reading the blog… unless you’re outside of course, in the designated area for choking smokers.

Smoking is also big business.

Tobacco companies around the world spend millions trying to get their dying customers to switch brands, attempting to convince them (bearing in mind the legal restrictions in the country in which they operate) that they look sexier, drive faster, will be more affluent, as a result of having a fag hanging from their mouth.

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Which leads me to the foul mundungus-related email I saw today, trying to encourage people to click on the link by claiming they are running a survey on smoking:

Tobacco survey spam

Spam emails asking you to click on a link to receive a “FREE* $100 Visa Gift Card” will almost always lead you to a website which will ask you for your name, address, and all kinds of other personal information.

Do you really want to hand your personal details over to people who are prepared to spam you? Take more care over your identity, never respond to unsolicited junk emails, and invest in an anti-spam solution to defend yourself against these kind of attacks.

If you haven’t already done so – isn’t it time to do something healthy, like take the Sophos Spam Pledge?


Graham Cluley is an award-winning keynote speaker who has given presentations around the world about cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. A veteran of the computer security industry since the early 1990s, he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows, makes regular media appearances, and is the co-host of the popular "Smashing Security" podcast. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, or drop him an email.

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