Sale! This Offer is Valid EVERY Week

It’s almost like the age-old marketing strategy: put up a sale and offer huge discounts to draw customers. But, while doing so, retailers will make sure to use the “limited time offer” tactic. There is cause for worry, because spammers are following suit.

The spammers mislead recipients with false news that a law (the “Internet Pharmaceutical Law”) will take effect in a few days. After the so-called law is in place, it is purported that medicines that require a prescription won’t be available online without a doctor’s consent. Therefore, users are told that they should immediately place a pharmaceutical order using the provided website. With respect to the marketing strategy, spammers are creating an imaginary situation to hustle panicky recipients into buying medicines from their websites.

A sample message:
 

Symantec has already observed similar spam attacks adopting the same deadline game. As shown below in the sample image, the spammers have listed the restricted medicines in the email. Spammers also do not forget to mention the deadline at least once in all the paragraphs to make sure users rush to buy products from the provided website.

 
For obvious reasons, the deadlines for buying these restricted products are always postponed to sometime in the near future. Symantec has been blocking these messages effectively from reaching their user’s inboxes. However, we still advise our users to treat such emails as spam and not fall for the claims and bogus information without verification from trusted sources.