Are Spam Redirects Malware??

Discussion in 'Majorgeeks Welcome Center' started by pipling, Aug 30, 2011.

  1. pipling

    pipling Private E-2

    I’m new here, and I’d like to start off with a general question. Do spam redirects constitute malware?

    I receive spam email from people I know who have unfortunately had their computers enslaved by some kind of malware bot that sends out spam to their address lists. Those bots are evil malware, no doubt about that, but they use sites to redirect to spam websites, which apparently are considered “safe”.

    An example. I received an email with this link: <snip>


    If I check google safe browsing, it finds nothing suspicious. The unmaskparasites.com site also says it is fine. Wepawet also says it is benign, but somewhat more helpfully shows that it redirects to<snip> , home of all manner of little pills to aid your sexual inadequacies.

    I don’t know if this is malware, but it all looks like banditry to me. Sites that do nothing but redirect to drug vendors seem pretty suspicious to me. I also find it hard to believe that this Canadian pharma flogger is blissfully unaware that an malignant piece of software has infected the PCs of innocent victims in order to drive traffic to their site. Yet all these online tools to detect suspicious sites give these sites a clean bill of health.

    Am I missing something here? Is the definition of malware really that narrow?

    I look forward to your opinions on this matter, and if this is too specific a question for the welcome forum, I apologize in advance and please redirect me to the appropriate forum for such a question.

    Thanks.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Sep 1, 2011
  2. pipling

    pipling Private E-2

    Oops, looks like this might be the wrong place to post this question. Any suggestions what would be more appropriate?
     
  3. TimW

    TimW MajorGeeks Administrator - Jedi Malware Expert Staff Member

    If you are getting redirects, please go to the malware forum, do the Read and Run First instructions and when you have the requested logs, attach them to your first and second posts. ;)
     
  4. LauraR

    LauraR MajorGeeks Super-Duper Administrator Staff Member

    Hi...also, in the future, please don't post links to questionable sites as we don't want people clicking on them out of curiosity and possibly getting malware.
     

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