Pharmacy Spam Emails Purport to be From YouTube

Outline
Emails claiming to be from YouTube ask recipients if the sender can use their photos or videos on a YouTube home page or inform them that their video is "on the top of YouTube". Other versions claim that recipient's YouTube video has been approved.



Brief Analysis
The messages are not from YouTube. All links in the messages open a suspect online drug store website that tries to peddle pharmaceutical products.

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Last updated: 4th May 2012
First published: 6th February 2012
Article written by Brett M. Christensen
About Brett Christensen and Hoax-Slayer

Examples




Detailed Analysis
These emails, which purport to be from YouTube and include YouTube graphics and formatting, supposedly request permission to use the recipient's videos or images on a home page. Other versions inform recipients that their video is "on the top of YouTube". And yet more variants claims that the recipient's YouTube video has been approved. Various links in the messages are included so that the recipient can supposedly find out more information.

However, the messages are certainly not from YouTube. In fact, all the links in the messages open a suspect "drug store" website that tries to peddle a range of pharmaceutical products. Buying medicines from one of these spam outfits is a very bad idea. Even if you do actually receive a product that you order on one of these sites, you have no way of knowing if it is the real thing or some potentially dangerous substitute. And, such sites often use unsecure pages to process credit card transactions, which could certainly put your credit card details at risk. Moreover, any outfit unscrupulous enough to use such deliberately deceptive spam tactics is not someone you would want to trust with your credit card or other personal details.

Such sites have also been known to harbour malware that users may inadvertently download and install on their computer.

Spammers have employed similar tactics to target users of Facebook and Twitter. If you receive one of these spam messages, just delete it. Do not click on any links in the email.



References
Facebook Deactivated Account Spam
Pharmacy Spam Disguised as Twitter Emails

Last updated: 4th May 2012
First published: 6th February 2012
Article written by Brett M. Christensen
About Brett Christensen and Hoax-Slayer