Pictured above: Chris Pallet
Thousands of people across the UK are being inundated with spam
during a surge in poison links pouring into email accounts.
Chris Pallett, the chairman of the Chartered Institute of IT in
Shropshire who runs Bespoke Computing Ltd in Telford, today said
the spam is caused by a virus which accesses accounts and sends
email to all contacts.
He said: "Email messages can originate from anywhere and from
anyone, I could send an email pretending to be someone else you
know and if I wrote in the same 'style' as them then you would
never know the difference.
"Filtering email is not difficult and it doesn't have to be
expensive. We run a Cloud based email filtering service that costs
from £1 per month and in the last year has blocked more than
22 million dodgy emails.
"Criminals and fraudsters are looking for new ways to exploit
you for money. Free toolbars and screensavers often contain
malware. Some websites are comprised with scareware, pop-up windows
telling you that your computer has errors or viruses."
Rhea Alton, of Journalism and PR based in Roden, near
Shrewsbury, said: "An old email account began sending spam to all
of the contacts in the address book, people began emailing and
ringing to let me know they were receiving two or three spam
messages.
"Luckily for me it was an old account so I have been able to
cancel it but a client I was speaking to says his has done the same
but it is an account he uses on a regular basis."
Spotify recently apologised to users after an advertisement
containing a virus was displayed to some users of the
music-streaming service.
The advertisement, which appeared within Spotify's Windows
desktop software, did not need to be clicked on in order to infect
a user's machine.
The exploit would install a bogus 'Windows Recovery' anti-virus
program.
"Users with anti-virus software will have been protected,"
Spotify said in a statement.
"Downloading a free antivirus just doesn't step up to the mark
anymore, you need more substantial threat management," added Mr
Pallett.
"Unified Threat Management is a term used to describe solutions
that provide more comprehensive security. It combines security
functions into a single appliance, functions like: firewalling,
intrusion prevention, anti-virus, anti-spam, application filtering,
content filtering, and traffic shaping.
"These devices are very inexpensive and very scalable, costing
as little as one or two pounds per computer in some scenarios."
For more information contact Bespoke Computing on 0845 004 3025
or visit www.bespokecomputing.com