E-mail spammers have become frighteningly adept at using familiar Internet names to give deceptive legitimacy to the billions of messages they send. For example, between 5 and 10 percent of all spam appears to originate from Gmail accounts. Gmail’s message style, as well as others like PayPal and Facebook, is being used frequently by cybercriminals as templates to prompt action by their targets.

Earlier this year, a phishing attack directed at Blogger and Google users was based on a template that effectively downplayed the phony seeming nature of most “phishing” e-mails. Another attack used CNN.com as a stopping point on the way to a work-at-home scam. Spammers and cybercriminals use experimentation to reach their goals. They are always testing new techniques to lure their victims, from using familiar formats and domains to creating entirely new ways to entice action. Whenever you are in doubt about the safety or legitimacy of an e-mail message on your network, contact your Responza support team immediately so we can neutralize the problem before it becomes a serious threat.