In Memory of the Heroes, not of the Spammers

Spammers have declared open season on Memorial Day. Observed in the United States on the last Monday of May, Memorial Day memorializes those men and women who lost their lives in American military service. This year, it will celebrated on May 25.

Memorial Day spam made its appearance early last week. These emails mainly contained health-related spam and offers selling Memorial Day flags. Health-related spam has URLs that lead users to open online pharmacy stores. Spam emails linked to Memorial Day flags claim to offer the free home delivery of discounted rate flags. A few other spam samples have injected legitimate news articles related to Memorial Day in the email body as an attempt at obfuscation.

The following are a few of the subject lines used in the Memorial Day spam promotion:

Subject: Memorial day sale, 80% off all the prices.
Subject: Memorial Day Flag Sale - Complimentary Shipping
Subject: Dealers Price 60% off coupon
Subject: Happy Memorial Day from the Entertainment Book!
Subject: Memorial Day Patriotic Flag - 25% off & Shipping

There are various legitimate offers like these that are made available for users, so it’s not surprising that spammers are attempting to take advantage of this. Subject lines seen in these spam messages seem legitimate and are often the subject lines used in various valid promotional emails. So, users should take extra care while opening any email with this type of subject line/content.

Note: Thanks to Paresh Joshi for contributed content.