14 DAY TRIAL // As expected, the death of Paul Walker, the actor famous for his role in the Fast and Furious movie, is leveraged by scammers and spammers. Experts have come across a spam campaign that uses the “Word Salad” technique.
The spam emails spotted by Symantec have nothing to do with Walker’s death. They advertise cheap cable TV, Internet and phone services.
Word Salad is a technique used by spammers to bypass Bayesian filters. The method involves the use of various keywords inserted into the email’s HTML code in an effort to break up URLs and make them more difficult to track down.
According to experts, the latest trend in the use of the Word Salad technique is to insert keywords related to highly searched topics – in this case, the death of Paul Walker.
Symantec says it has also observed fake news posts which claimed that Walker survived the car crash.
As with all major events or incidents, scammers and spammers will likely continue to exploit Paul Walker’s death until the topic is no longer of interest. That’s why it’s important for users to be on the lookout for any suspicious emails or social media posts on this topic.