There’s at least one group for whom the mortgage crisis and refinancing activity is nothing but a shady business opportunity: spammers.
And they’re making life even more miserable for legitimate e-mail users, especially those who have no choice but to use language that spam filters flag and snag.
Mortgage spam, which was only 2 percent of the spam stream in the fourth quarter of last year, accounted for 10 percent of total spam last week, according to Commtouch.
“Now that market conditions have created fervor among homeowners wishing to refinance their mortgages, cybercriminals are taking advantage by sending more mortgage-themed spam,” said Amir Lev, Commtouch’s chief technology officer, in a press release. “Loan officers and their customers need to be particularly cautious since some content-based email filtering tools used by banks and consumers may block legitimate email messages, disrupting the communication chain.”
That’s a serious ongoing concern for any organization that depends on the e-mail distribution channel, such as Network World. Yesterday I wrote a blog item with a headline that was so suspiciously spammy that I feared how it would be received by filters when distributed via e-mail newsletter. We’ll see today.
And the public relations person for Commtouch recognized the same risk when sending me their press release: “Hope this e-mail didn’t get caught in your spam filter.”
Not this time.
Of course, it continues to astound me that anyone would respond to an unsolicited e-mail when making life’s most important financial decision.
But they must … or else the vermin wouldn’t bother chasing them.
