For the spammed users

Mar 27, 2007 14:09 GMT  ·  By

Spamming can harm your computer's security, that's for sure; but what if your personal health is also threatened? This is a matter of life and death so you should stay away from buying pills through the spam messages. An amazing case was reported in Canada where a 57-year-old woman died a month after she took pills bought using the unwanted email arrived in her inbox. It seems like the cause of death was poisoning, the medicines being prescribed for anti-anxiety and sedative.

According to The Register, the pills contained several chemical elements including uranium, strontium, selenium, aluminum, barium and boron. Although it seems like nobody will be prosecuted for her death, the security of our computers and even our lives is again threatened by the spam messages.

"Self-prescription can not only result in you buying medication that you don't need, but more worryingly there's no guarantee that the pills won't be just a cheap concoction of whatever minerals the sellers can get their hands on, designed for the sole purpose of earning them money," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, according to the same publication.

Sophos sustained in a security research conducted some time ago that almost 60 percent of the spam messages sent to millions of inboxes from the entire world are concerning pills and medication so you should stay away and go to see a doctor if you really need it.

Nowadays, the authorities from the entire world are trying to fight against spammers and the unwanted messages but it seems like their efforts are useless unless the security companies manage to design a powerful solution able to protect the computers. At this time, there are a lot of antispam utilities but only some of them are really useful but they're still not able to block 100 percent of the unwanted messages.