Shady pharmaceutical spammers are cashing in on the popularity of YouTube to help sell their knockoff drugs.
The spam campaign uses messages purporting to be from "YouTube Service" titled "YouTube Administration sent you a message: Your video on the TOP of YouTube." researcher Suyog Sainkar from the security firm Symantec wrote in a blog posting.
Other emails advertise the "Best Unrated Videos to Watch," or tell recipients their "video has been removed due to terms of use violation."
Within each of these phony emails there is a link with which to watch your supposed video or fix your terms-of-service violation. The URL, however, redirects users to the "Canadian Family Pharmacy" website, which attempt to shill Viagra, Cialis, Levitra and other prescription pills.
[Abuse of Prescription Painkillers Soars]
There is even a link on the pharmacy Web page to "report spam," but clicking it takes users back to the same page.
The IP addresses associated with this spam messages "are part of botnets and have been blacklisted for their past involvement in such spam campaigns," Sainkar wrote.
