UNLA Pump and Dump Spam

By TFB

In the last week or so, I received a series of spam e-mails promoting a stock. Peculiarly these spam e-mails were sent to an e-mail address I only use with Vanguard. I have my own domain name; I issue an e-mail address for each place I do business with.

Because these e-mails are targeted at investors and Vanguard is the only financial institution that has this e-mail address, it’s likely that a spammer got hold of a list of e-mail addresses of Vanguard customers. Other people on the FatWallet Finance forum also reported the same problem. The common theme seems to be Vanguard: not all Vanguard customers received the these spam e-mails, but those who reported receiving the spam e-mails are Vanguard customers.

That’s not good, to say the least. I expect Vanguard to guard customer information more carefully. Of course if Vanguard customers’ e-mail addresses were obtained by the spammer, the compromise doesn’t have to happen at Vanguard itself. It could be that a marketing vendor Vanguard uses got hacked.

Here are the spam e-mails I received. They come with different from-addresses but they all promote the same stock Unilava Corporation (ticker UNLA.OB).

Date Subject
3/22/2010 Have you made any money with our doubling stock pick yet?
3/24/2010 Substantial short-term market gains possible with this stock!
3/29/2010 We alerted you to this stock last Wednesday and it’s tripled!
3/30/2010 The train left the station but it’s not necessarily too late to look at this stock!
3/31/2010 Investors Take Profit After 300% Gains; More Upside to Come!

Can you check your spam folder to see if you got the same spam? If so, are you a Vanguard customer? Is the to-address the same address you have on file with Vanguard?

Software picked, likely related posts:

Posted on March 31, 2010 under News.

Leave a comment

Comments

17 Comments on UNLA Pump and Dump Spam

  1. Matt on March 31, 2010
     

    Yep, I got those same spam messages. I use Vanguard for some of my investments, but I use the same email address for all my investment accounts.

  2. tarnation on March 31, 2010
     

    Yes, I received the UNLA spam today at 8:15. It did come to an account I use with Vanguard, but I have used it at some other places as well. However, it is not one I give out to suspicious spam like places. For those places, I also have a domain and give out unique email addresses.

  3. TFB on March 31, 2010
     

    @tarnation – Yes, one more follow-up spam today. I’ll add it to the list.

  4. Chuck on March 31, 2010
     

    UNLA.OB 3/22 – 0.50
    UNLA.OB 3/29 – 0.38

    I’m not surprised that they’re lying, but when they said it tripled, it was actually down 24%. So it wasn’t even plausible when the mail went out.

  5. Amit on March 31, 2010
     

    Yup, I have all of those emails, but they were in my gmail Spam folder and I hadn’t noticed them till I specifically searched for them.

    Sad… We need to take this up with Vanguard.

  6. RDT2 on March 31, 2010
     

    I did not receive any emails from them. I’ve been with Vanguard for just under a year now.

  7. Mdub on March 31, 2010
     

    I have received 3 or 4 emails about the UNLA stock. I’m a Vanguard customer.

  8. nickel on March 31, 2010
     

    I have 14 messages related to UNLA in my spam folder in the date range of March 17th-30th. Yes, I am a Vanguard customer, and yes, I use that address with them (though I use it a lot of other places, too).

  9. TFB on March 31, 2010
     

    I sent a secure e-mail to Vanguard and asked them to investigate. I suggest you do the same if you are also affected.

  10. Stuart on March 31, 2010
     

    I’m not a Vanguard customer and I did not receive the spam, although I’m subscribed to more stock related services than I should probably be.

  11. Random Poster on April 1, 2010
     

    Vanguard customer (for about 9 years), but did not receive the e-mails.

  12. Another spammed vanguard customer on April 5, 2010
     

    I am also a Vanguard customer and have received 2 spams now for UNLA, on 3/31/10 and 4/5/10. I have my own domain that nobody else uses, which is hosted on my own server that nobody else has access to, and the address was specific to Vanguard (but didn’t contain ‘Vanguard’ in the name) and never used for any other companies or email interactions. I’ve been using this setup for more than 5 years, and I have never seen dictionary attacks to random email addresses. The only spam I see is to addresses that were made public, or addresses that were used with just one company but got into the hands of spammers somehow (rare, but it does happen occasionally).

    I sent Vanguard a secure message a few days ago, including the email with full headers, and they sent me a form letter that said “sorry for any difficulty” and “your message has been sent to the appropriate departments for review”. It looked like an auto-generated response, since it didn’t mention any of the details I provided. I responded asking for more of a response and an explanation, but haven’t heard back from them yet.

  13. AJ on April 6, 2010
     

    I don’t think I am a vanguard customer unless they are partnered with fidelity investments. However I have received the same messages the past weeks and today’s email prompted me to investigate who UNLA is. The email addy they send to is my work email. I never associate my work email with any personal forums or follow up contacts, so I’m puzzled as to how I started getting these emails. I’m just going to mark them as JUNK email.

  14. TFB on April 6, 2010
     

    I expected no more than a canned reply from Vanguard to my inquiry. They matched my expectation. Here’s the reply:

    “Thank you for contacting us about this matter.

    Vanguard takes this issue very seriously, and is investigating it
    thoroughly. We have not found any compromise of Vanguard’s security
    systems, but will continue to monitor the situation closely.

    Malicious software is prevalent on the internet. It is possible that your
    internet service provider or your PC could have been compromised. Please
    check to make sure that your anti-virus software is current and your
    firewall is active.

    For more information on Vanguard’s security precautions and
    recommendations, please visit:

    https://personal.vanguard.com/us/help/SecurityCenterOverviewContent.jsp“

  15. mcspel09 on April 9, 2010
     

    Yep, got 2nd one today. Thanks for info share – particularly Vanguard’s canned response. Sent to work address with contact limited to a few including Vanguard, Schwab, AmEx, AT&T & Experian. Finance spam – probably Vanguard or Schwab. May setup dedicated contact address for just Vanguard.

  16. Thomas in PA on April 11, 2010
     

    I have accounts with Vanguard, yes, and received bulk emails with uber-praise for UNLA stock.
    Possibly could have been a couple other financial organizations as well that leaked; I don’t know definitively. I use one dedicated email address for sensitive financial information only, coming from about 4 institutions, including Vanguard and Fidelity, and this is what has been compromised. Thank you for pointing out the possible leaking source.

  17. Ted Valentine on April 13, 2010
     

    Vanguard customer a long long time. Have NOT received any of that spam.

    Its a mystery.

Tell me what you're thinking, but please don't spam. See comments moderation policy.