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October 5th, 2007, 11:03 GMT · By Alexandru Dumitru

YouTube Sending Out Spam!

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Now, that's pretty bad! A group of researchers has disclosed the fact that YouTube servers have been used to send spam. Of course, this has nothing to do with the company. Spammers have tapped into YouTube and are now having their way with the servers, sending out huge quantities of unwanted
messages!

Now, we get spam daily, and to be honest, it's quite annoying, regardless of who is sending it. According to the Marshal Trace team (the ones who have discovered this), all the messages come from "service [at] youtube [dot] com". This means that people will pay more attention to spam, open it and perhaps even believe what those crooks have to say! I for one would surely open a message that comes from YouTube, because they're known for being serious an honest. And they (YouTube) continue to be, it's just that spammers are exploiting the great image they have on the market just to make their spamming activity more efficient!

"YouTube users have a facility where they can invite their friends to view videos that they are looking at or have posted. This effectively allows them to email to any address from their YouTube account. This is the functionality that the spammers are exploiting", says Bradley Anstis, Marshal's Director of Product Management.

"Spammers are doing this to defeat spam filters and to lower the recipient's guard by making it look as though the messages are coming from a perfectly innocuous email address. YouTube's own Help Centre suggests that you exclude the service [at] youtube [dot] com email address from spam filtering. The spammers are keenly aware of this" Anstis added.

So, bottom line: spammers are exploiting YouTube to send out spam, therefore you are advised to ignore such unwanted messages.
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