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Security Research

Amazon Profiles Used For Spam

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THREATLABZ
November 30, 2010 - 1 min read

ImageAmazon's online store-front has a social networking component to it, where people with accounts can create user and seller profiles to share their interests, what they are reading, listening to, selling, etc. For the most part, anytime a site allows user-driven content to be published on the web we have seen some kind of abuse (for example, LastFM, Google Code, Adobe Groups). Amazon's profiles are no different- most appear to "profile spam" advertise various pages on the adult sites:

 

  • adultmediareviews.com
  • redspacetube.com

Some of the advertising language for redspacetube.com suggests illegal / child porn content. Language take from Amazon's site:

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Google searches for both of the above domains show other sites hosting these similar "profile" spam advertisements. For example, Google Groups:
ImageThe redspacetube.com domain has been identified as redirecting users to Trojan malware (FakeAV) in the past (reference 1, reference 2). There are a lot of these Amazon profiles:

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The Amazon profile abuse is not limited to porn and malware spam, but also includes pharma spam:
ImageThere are thousands of these profiles:
ImageI have notified Amazon via their online abuse form and am in the process of trying to obtain a more direct contact for their abuse department.

 

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