Are all spam comments from MySpace owned by phished accounts?

All those gift card and free ipod comments and the worst of all the penis enlargement pill. Are they all created by phished accounts? The spamming is getting out of control.

 

you can send comments from someone else's account without phishing it.

 

?? Well thats news to me, but basically it's not really their account anymore right? The reason I am asking is that all along I thought people were just really dumb enough to keep posting these spam messages because they thought they get something out of it. That's not the case is it?

 

Well, some are hacked accounts while there are some who created massive myspace accounts just for the sake of spamming.

 

I'd say most are phished accounts.

 

Does it count as "phishing" if you were stupid enough to give them your password?

Actually that's what happens a GREAT DEAL of the time. Someone creates a slideshow on some site. The site offers for them to post a bulletin to let people know the slideshow has been made, but just needs your password to do so. Then it's all down hill from there.

I've been hearing rumors that someone has figured out how to post bulletins without loggin in. This is still unconfirmed, but sources do seem credible.

 

Yeah, that's basically what phishing is.

Not much sense in complaining though, just change your password. Takes about 30 seconds and then you don't need to worry anymore. I don't understand what's so hard about that.

 

Many phishers operate off of lists with anywhere from 1k-100k jacked logins. Then there are programs available that automatically perform specific actions like commenting, bulletin posting, etc.. It runs through all the accounts, posting a message that you set.

As you can probably guess, posting comments from 100k phished accounts can be very powerful and effective, but only for the moment. It's kind of like spam email marketing almost.

 

don't forget the ever popular 'profile tracker'

Don't feel bad, I thought that too @ first - that people were just being stupid by posting all that crap and then someone clued me in.

what about their new Spam measures? doesn't seem to help much with their link filtering or has it?

 

Most of them are. I remember when my friend's account got hacked! The spams were quite funny (they were speaking "ghetto-like" pretending to be her), but it obviously wasn't lol

 

they'll stop @ nothing...the ones that start out "I hate spam too but..."

and wow, I haven't checked my account in over a week and I only have about 155 spams to report!!

 

I know a lot about this. An estimated 30-50 million myspace accounts where phished via xss exploits between 2005 and early 2007. Thats why you see so much comment spam. Every offer for a tracker, ringtone,handbag, etc is from a phished account. Phishers have amassed huge databases of stolen logins.

Accounts can also be phished by stealing the myspace users cookie via an embeded javascript link and then processing the cookie with another program to login into the account. This can be done without the victim clicking a link or filling in a form.

 

Holy S! scary stuff on the last part there. Doesn't surprise me that so many accounts were compromised either

 

What's really funny is, though most of us reading this thread probably read bulletins, most people don't (judging just from my *real* account). So a lot of people who have phished accounts don't even know it!!

 

its way out of control now. the people must be making millions

 

MySpace should have a solution by now to block this.
It's going on way to long.
A lot of people will turn away from Myspace because of all this spam.

 

that's probably very true unless someone tips them of in an email or something. I know I don't read mine!

they should have had measures in place 2 years ago..damage has already been done, I'm sure they've lost a good 20% of users IMHO.

 

Then I wonder what percentage of Myspace is spam? 10%? If it's more than 25% Im gonna give up.

 

so close 26%

let's just say that I was not very judicious with all the friends I have added to my main account...46K friends and I bet I get maybe 1 "real comment" for every 9 other spams!

messages are different of course and no idea about buletins since I don't even bother looking at those most of the time

 

Nah I dont think people were making as much money as they were in the earlier days when it was new... Now it's totally saturated and I'm sure the returns for the effort is much lower..