Spammers deflate Pump and Dump spam tactics

According to the security provider Marshal, pump ‘n dump spam has dropped significantly. Stock spam now represents five percent of all spam compared to 50 percent in February. With North American headquarters in Atlanta, worldwide headquarters in the UK and several regional offices worldwide, Marshal reports breaking spam and security trends regularly.

Over the past quarter, pump ‘n dump spam levels have fluctuated, but averaged around 30 percent. In just the last four weeks, the Marshal Threat Research and Content Engineering (TRACE) team observed a rapid decline in the volume of stock spam to the lowest point it has seen in 10 months — 5.1 percent.

Pump ‘n dump spam is a form of financial fraud that involves artificially inflating the price of a stock through untrue or exaggerated promotion in order to sell stock at the inflated price. Once inflated, the spammers sell their stocks to make a profit which usually leads to the stock price crashing, leaving real investors with major losses.

Earlier this year, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) suspended trading of more than 30 companies targeted by pump ‘n dump spam, which can be partly attributed to this decline.