Heavy gambling spam as UK industry locks down tv advertising
Publication:
Sat, 09/05/2020 - 05:06
There's a question mark over the sense of allowing tv advertising and - worse - actual gambling on TV. In the UK, it all goes back to Labour's Gordon Brown who decided that the UK's economy would be served by a massive relaxation of the laws on gambling, especially casinos. Suddenly, gambling was cool - after all "Cool Britannia" was Noo Labour's central policy, chummy first names and all.
The end result was an explosion of gambling of many kinds. And that meant competition in an expanding market. Late night, drunk or sexually frustrated TV watchers were offered a choice - soft (sometimes not so soft) porn, often masquerading as documentaries - and games in which telephone customers bet on televised casino games - or phoned a woman who appeared on their screen, her g-string being her...
While the totty has now, largely, disappeared, the gambling has expanded out of its late night slots to an ever-increasing range of lotteries and online games advertised, not played, to advertising across the entire day.
Last week, some, but not all, gambling companies agreed to cease advertising during the period of lockdown. Although most disappeared, adverts for bingo continued to appear.
But, within days, UK internet domains started to issue spam promoting gambling. Then almost immediately, the addresses used were scattered around the world.
For the avoidance of doubt - it is likely that most or even all of the domain listed below were spoofed by criminals not associated with the businesses to whom the addresses are registered.
In the past few hours, in one mailbox, we have received mail from the following - tapl.co.uk, insightbuilder.co.uk, wounded.co.uk, woick.de, tropikal.com, wahshing.co.hk, cspl.cz, vrchy.com, tq.cz, blabolnik.cz, eb.boo.jp, ambientac.co.uk, neratovice.cz
The spam is unlikely to be for honest gambling - it's far more likely to be a phishing or malware download site.
It clearly demonstrates that criminals will jump on an opportunity when it is presented.
ALSO
Taking account of the fact that many people are shopping on-line, criminals using the domain troublealertaccount0014.com have distributed a spam with the sender shown in mixed standard and bold in the font style known as "small caps" "Amazon" headed "Fwd:[Account ID - #216120][Important] Please verify your account before 24 hours or your account will be permanently locked. Friday, May 8, 2020 (GMT) . Don't click the link. It's dodgy.
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