You have the opportunity to acquire Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate edition at a cut-price. You can save $319 on your copy of Vista Ultimate. Considering that Microsoft has suggested a retail price of $399 for the full package product, and an upgrade price of $259, getting Vista Ultimate with a $319 discount sounds like a bargain.

It also sounds too good to be true. This because it actually is too good to be true. The offer to download Windows Vista Ultimate edition and concomitantly save $319.05 is an integer part of an image spam campaign. You must keep in mind that you will only be able to buy the latest operating system from Microsoft come January 30, 2007, when Vista will become generally available. All others by that date either involve pirated editions of Vista or some sort of a scam.

"This widespread spam campaign carries all the hallmarks of a typical image spam. The spammer has added random noise in the form of speckled pixels to make the graphic slightly different on each sending, and users are told to type in the name of the website rather than clicking on a link," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. "Approximately 30% of all spam is now using images to try and sneak past anti-spam filters. Computer users need to ensure that they have strong defenses in place or they will continue to be bombarded by nuisances like this."

Security company Sophos has issued a public warning advising email recipients of image spam, and those specifically targeted by the Vista cut-price spam campaign to avoid the bargain edition of Vista. However, Sophos failed to reveal if the spam campaign sells pirated versions of Vista, if it is a means to steal credit card information or a method to harvest genuine email addresses.

"The growth of image spam is one of the security stories of the year. Internet users should make it their New Year's resolution to make 2007 the time they got wise to internet threats," continued Cluley. "It's worrying just how poorly educated people are about web and email threats. System administrators and security geeks know about informative websites like GetSafeOnline but the average man in the street hasn't got a clue."