Thumbs up for Bit.ly to block shortened URL in “Coupe du Monde de la FIFA 2010″ spam

Emails with regarding FIFA World Cup are going around the world now and persons who have less good intentions are on the lookout to create some mayhem. A recent example is the email “FIFA World Cup South Africa… bad news” but the traditional spam messages are also going around on the internet.

MX lab intercepted some emails with the subject “Coupe du Monde de la FIFA 2010″ from World Cup <207peugeot@menara.ma> that are obviously spam and here is the body of the email:

bonjour ,

est ce que vous voulez voir les matchs de la coupe gratuitement ?
si oui n’hesiter pas a telecharger ce logiciel :

http://bit.ly/worldcupe

cordialement

=========================================

The message is in the French language but translated it offers you an option to get software to watch the soccer matches of the World Cup for free.

When using the bit.ly URL shortened link we arrive on the FLV web site http://www.flvpro.com/movies/?aff=4749_movies.

While this is all great, a free download of such a tool, getting your message in this format out to the world is not the way to do it. I refer to the use of bit.ly for the URL, no unsubscribe options and no clear indication who has sent this message. Very bad marketing if you ask me.

MX Lab reprted this to bit.ly, which is something we usually do not do but we thought why not, and bit.ly responded within 10 mintes with a reply that the shortened URL is blocked for further use. Thumbs up for such a fast response.

Now, this is completely off topic, but notice the counter ‘Downloaded 2358755 times’ on the web site http://www.flvpro.com/. This is just a Javascript ticker that increases the counter.

<script type="text/javascript">
var num = 2358754;
function IncCounter() {
num = num + 1;   // increment counter by 2
document.getElementById("cntr").innerHTML = num.toLocaleString();
t = setTimeout('IncCounter()', 2000);
// change 1000 to 60000 to update once per minute
}
</script>

When you refresh the page, the counter is back to 2358755.
Very nice marketing!