Several years ago on a now defunct blog I followed the money trail back to a spammer who through some rather clumsy semantics suggested he was selling a cure for Aids. He engaged in some bitter commenting on the blog after I published his details but eventually gave up.

It was an indication of the way in which these snake oil salesmen exploit common fears to peddle their useless wares.

The current outbreak of Swine Flu has resulted in an increased level of spam containing links to websites peddling anti viral drugs and malware of one form or another, including one site that tries to install a trojan.

The greater percentage of this spam currently originates from Brazil, followed by the United States and the United Kingdom.

Typical subject lines include “Madonna caught swine flu” “US swine flu statistics” and “Swine flu in USA”

Just like Swine Flu, this spam outbreak is cause for concern, but not panic. Stay safe, and try to stay healthy.