The latest figures from the World Health Organization (WHO) say that there are at least 170 million diabetic patients worldwide, and that number will double by the year 2030. The chronic nature of diabetes means that these patients constantly need to control their blood sugar level using medicines. Along with medicines, lab tests are necessary to check on the disease that will become part of a patient’s routine life. With the ongoing financial crisis affecting all walks of life, recurring expenditures on medical care can be costly for an individual and his or her family. Obviously these patients will look for discounts or offers to help them through their situation.Online medical suppliers provide varying discounts or offers, one being a free glucose meter to visitors placing a supply order. Spammers have also read the picture well and are providing the same offer with the help of spam messages. They are using the name and look of a well-known medicine supplier in order to sound more authentic to the recipients. Users may be tricked into submitting their personal details such as name, email address, and phone number to the site in question. This website also bears the same look-and-feel of that of the original medical supplier site.Spammers ensured that the supplier name appeared either in the subject line or sender field of the message. Here are some of the sample subject lines associated with these spam attacks:
Example image of the message: When the users click for more information, they are directed to a look-alike website of the medical supplier and are asked to fill in their personal details. See the sample image below:On submitting the information, users are informed that they will be contacted in the next five minutes. However, spammers are collecting this information for their own gain. Needless to say, the submitted email addresses may be used or sold for future spam campaigns. Users can avoid compromising their data by simply typing the legitimate URLs directly into the browser address bar when ordering their supplies. Also, with so many fake products associated with such unsolicited offers, users can never be assured that the medicine (if it is actually supplied) is genuine.