Viagra spam irony
Lots of people will already know that a lot of spam is sent from machines (sometimes called zombies, but mostly people using them are quite unaware) that have had a virus installed on them. This is common because it makes it harder for anti-spam software to spot which machines are sending what spam, and because sending lots of spam takes lots of computing power. Writing viruses that create zombies that send spam is a lot cheaper than buying lots of machines.
Lots of people are probably also aware that much spam is concentrated on the sale of drugs that help with sexual performance, including the famous Viagra tablet. For some reason, cheap viagra (which is mostly fake anyway, I’ve read) sells better than other things that spam emails are promoting.
Viagra is made by Pfizer, and a report just out (thanks to the Register for the story) has shown that a lot of the Viagra spam is coming from zombie machines inside Pfizer. They don’t even know they’re sending it, apparently. Though I guess they do by now. So the guys that make Viagra, have had their machines taken over by criminals, who are using them to sell Viagra
The Internet really is all about unintended consequences, isn’t it?
