14 DAY TRIAL // Spammers are capitalizing on the upcoming royal wedding between Prince William and his fiance, Kate Middleton, by promoting replicas of the engagement ring.
Prince William, the second in line of succession to the British Throne, proposed to Ms. Middleton in October, giving her Princess Diana's famous engagement ring.
The ring, consisting of an 18-carat blue sapphire surrounded by 14 diamonds, was chosen by Princess Diana herself in 1981 when she became engaged to Prince Charles.
"This was my way of making sure that my mother didn't miss out on today," William told reporters about his ring choice following the official announcement in November.
The ring is so popular that some people are interested in buying replicas of it, and there's no one better at promoting replicas than spammers.
Security experts from Symantec warn that a wave of spam emails advertising fake Princess Diana engagement rings started hit inboxes for the past several days.
The emails bear a subject of "Own a piece of British Royal History" and read: "In celebration of the most anticipated wedding of the century between His Royal Highness Prince William and Miss Chatherine Elizabeth Middleton, you can now own the Royal Heirloom Ring, a limited edition replica of the timeless heirloom ring that Princess Diana received as her engagedment ring from Prince Charles nearly 30 years ago."
Symantec's Amanda Grady says that unlike most spam campaigns, this one does not use botnets. Instead, the spam emails come through a mail server operating on the same IP as the replica website.
"This spammer has registered many different domains across a range of IPs in a technique that is sometimes known as snowshoe spamming'," Grady explains, noting that people behind the website probably bought spamming services from others.
Users should be advised that buying goods from spam websites not only results in poor quality products, if any at all, but can also lead to their credit card details being abused.