A couple of readers of the site pointed out that stock spam advertising EXTO.PK is now being sent in the form of MP3 attachments. I hadn't actually spotted these, but a quick check of the chaff bucket revealed a number of files with names like 'bspears.mp3', 'santana.mp3' etc. The files are low-quality, 30-40 seconds in length, with a synthetic female voice reciting a message about EXTO.PK and promising the usual imminent gains.

I had somewhat flippantly predicted MP3 spam in an earlier posting about attachment spam formats. The problem with multimedia spam (and we'll probably see WMV and QuickTime spam in due course) is, of course, the size of the attachments; the MP3 spams weigh in at anything up to 160K when encoded. For this reason, I predicted — wrongly, as it turned out — that spammers would link to files hosted on websites, rather than sending attachments.

Again, I suspect that this will be a short-lived tactic. Aside from the size issues, the quality of the recording is so poor that you really need to strain to hear what's being promoted. The harder the spammer makes the recipient work to decipher their message, the lower their return and it will take a spectacularly naive investor to believe that a stock is a good bet just because a scratchy robot voice pretending to be Carlos Santana told them so.