washingtonpost.com
War Sparks Flood of Spam
By Brian Krebs
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 8, 2003; 7:59 AM
The Iraq war has prompted a flood of unsolicited e-mail, as spam e-mail artists take their cue from the war to hawk everything from patriotic T-shirts to gas masks and water filtration systems.
War-related spam accounted for 10 percent of all junk e-mail compiled last month in the anti-spam database of Scotts Valley, Calif.-based SurfControl, an anti-spam software firm.
Most of the unsolicited e-mail contained solicitations for pro-American pride merchandise such as American flags, commemorative coins and discounted U.S. history books, the company said. Among the pitches were "Israeli Gas Masks in Stock for a Limited Time!"; "Show your Support with a US Lapel Pin!"; and "Honor our Military with Exclusive Collectibles."
The most common forms of war-related spam were variations on a theme. SurfControl said it counted 216 variants of a message selling gas masks in March, compared to zero in February.
John Mozena, a spokesman for the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail, said that spammers tend to take advantage of current events as ready-made marketing pitches.
"After Sept. 11 [2001] we did see a ... sort of bump, anecdotally," Mozena said. "My favorite was the World Trade Center commemorative calling card. It had the New York skyline before Sept. 11, and it became commemorative after that."
The Federal Trade Commission, which monitors unsolicited e-mail for fraud and other illegal activity, reported 2,469 spam e-mails containing the words "Iraq," "war" and "troops" in March, compared to 292 messages in February, said spokeswoman Claudia Bourne-Farrell.
About 40 percent of all e-mail traffic in the United States is spam, according to a late 2002 estimate issued by anti-spam software vendor Brightmail Inc.