We used to see a lot of pump-and-dump stock spam.
Pump-and-dump stock manipulation works like this:
- Spammers purchase stock in companies trading at very low levels, at a cheap price
- The spammers artificially inflate the stock’s price by encouraging others to purchase more (often by spamming “good news” about the company to others).
- They then sell off their stock at a profit, often causing the stock price to slump for those who made the mistake of investing.
Global recession, jail sentences, and tighter regulation by the SEC seemed to largely kill off stock spam a few years ago.
So, we were interested when Naked Security reader Ivan forwarded us an unsolicited email he received, claiming to come from a user of LinkedIn:
Catarina Meadows requested to add you as a connection on LinkedIn:
Ivan,
You have to see this…
Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.
Found this article interesting? Follow Graham Cluley on Twitter or Mastodon to read more of the exclusive content we post.