As I mentioned in my last post, a visitor to this site named some of those that he believes are responsible for stock spam. He also wrote:

... I heard that a massive spam by [spammer] is about to take place on [symbol] ...

I have now started to see spam advertising the stock that he named. The fact that he called this one correctly means that I'm inclined to take what he told me about the senders and sponsors of recent spam runs more seriously. Until I have independent confirmation, however, it would not be wise for me to name names or point fingers.

My correspondent asserted that the people that he named were major forces in the world of stock spam, leading me to hope that he might have identified some of the people behind the recent deluge of image-spam, much of which probably comes from just a few senders. Unfortunately, the spams that I have seen so far for the symbol that he named don't resemble the image spams I've been seeing. In fact, they are quite strikingly different in appearance from any other stock spam I've seen to date, making it hard to link them to any previous spam campaign. He also described the coming spam run as 'massive' and so far I have only seen a limited number of spams for the stock in question.

So I'm not sure what to make of this. He clearly has good information and I won't be surprised to see the names that he gave me featured in news reports in the future. However, I don't think he's fingered the Maximum Stock Spammer, the shadowy Dr Evil of the smallcap spamming world.

Such a person might not even exist. I think there's stylistic evidence to suggest that there may well be a single person or group providing (and constantly refining) the technology used by the stock spammers, but whether they have a few clients or many is almost impossible to say. The SEC might have an idea, but as yet they're not talking either.