Spam

A flaw in the comments feature of Google Docs is allowing attackers to target users with phishing emails.

Security researchers at email security company Avanan have observed what they call, "a new, massive wave of hackers" using the comment feature in Google Docs during December to launch attacks, mainly against Outlook users.

Despite the rising popularity of other communication and collaboration methods like Zoom and Teams, email remains at the core of business correspondence. However, it also remains a popular vehicle for delivering cyberattacks and other unwelcome material.

Secure email company Avanan has produced an infographic looking at email safety.

A favorite tactic of scammers is to invoke the name of a celebrity to get people to fall for their schemes. It's no surprise then that, given his known enthusiasm for cryptocurrencies, Tesla supremo Elon Musk's name often comes up.

Researchers at Bitdefender Antispam Lab have spotted two spam campaigns this month both seeking to cash in on Musk and Tesla's high profile in the cryptocurrency world.

The past few months have seen plenty of news surrounding COVID-19 vaccines, from the buzz surrounding roll outs to fears of possible side effects.

As always with a major news event cybercriminals seek to exploit the opportunity it presents. Cloud-native email security company GreatHorn has identified a new pattern of techniques being used to exploit the unease of vulnerable email users by spoofing critical vaccine information.

As always, spammers and cybercriminals seek to take advantage of the peak online shopping season covering Black Friday and the Christmas holidays.

The Bitdefender Antispam Lab has identified a series of campaigns impersonating online banking and financial organizations. In October six in 10 emails (58.84 percent) relating to the banking industry were fraudulent.

The Emotet Botnet has started spreading several new spam campaigns again after a three-month break, according to research from Check Point.

Researchers first reported the notorious botnet taking a break in June 2019, but that the infrastructure had become active again in August. Some of the spam campaigns featured emails which contained a link to download a malicious Word file, and some contained the malicious document itself.

Spam is something we've become used to in our email inboxes as well as via SMS, but it's certainly not the only way we can be pestered, harangued and irritated. Even Google Calendar can be used to spam you with ads.

The phenomenon is not entirely new, but it has been in the spotlight recently. Google Calendar spam takes advantage of a default setting that Google puts in place. By disabling this, you can protect yourself against unwanted intrusions... but there are side-effects to consider.

Spam may be something that's most commonly associated with email, but it's also something that blights text messaging. Google is trying to do something about the problem with a spam protection feature for Messages on Android.

This is a feature we learned about earlier in the year, and it is now starting to roll out to handsets. In order for the feature to work, "some" information about the messages you receive needs to be sent to Google -- something that it sure to raise a few eyebrows (and hackles) among the privacy-centric.