Beware of ‘unsubscribe’ Spam Emails that Leads to Further phishing Scams and other Malicious Activity

Phishing never ends! Here come new inventions to the Scam world.  Fake ‘unsubscribe’ spam emails are sent out to verify valid email accounts which can be used in the future for phishing and spam campaigns.

Change in the Spammer’s history

Most of us would be familiar with the spammer’s practice of sending emails that ask if you wish to unsubscribe or subscribe.

The emails don’t even bother to give complete information about what you are going to subscribe to, it simply has any of these subject lines  “We_need your confirmation asap”, “Request, please confirm your unsubscription”, and “Verification.” This is one headlight that tells you they are not genuine, yes! Information is not completely given.

The emails have a standard colourful box that contains links asking whether you would like to unsubscribe or subscribe.

But in the new era, if you click on the embedded subscribe/unsubscribe links, it will cause your mail client to create a new email that will be sent to many different email addresses under the spammer’s control.

When users send the above email, they expect to be unsubscribed from further emails. However, they are verifying for the spammers that their email address is valid and being monitored.

Responding Leads to More Spam

With this test result, it is confirmed that spammers are using these subscribe/unsubscribe emails to enhance their mailing lists and verify email addresses vulnerable to these types of scams and phishing attacks. 

What is the Caution we can take?

This is the most important action we need to take after reading this security news. If you encounter receiving any of these emails which just ask you to subscribe or unsubscribe, kindly ignore them.

Keep in mind that a trustful, legit organization will not send an email without any information in the body of the email describing the change you are going to make.

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