McAfee warns for island-hopping spam

Some spammers are using the domain names of small islands for Web site links in their junk e-mail campaigns, the security company said. McAfee has traced spam activity related to the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea and the tropical island of Tokelau, amongst others.

Traditionally, spammers have used well-known top-level domains such as .com, .biz or .info in their campaigns. By using top-level domains from small island countries, they attempt to avoid detection, as these domains are typically unknown to spam filters.

Using a lesser-known top level domain makes it harder to distinguish spam from legitimate e-mail by examining the links in the messages, according to McAfee.