There appears to be a new type of spam attack, the focusing of an email blitz for a limited period of time – with a potentially high return for the spammer.
An example of this occurred this Saturday where we received over ten emails encouraging the cashing in of Life Insurance over a few hours, indeed, in less than one hour, we received seven into our various email accounts.
Life Insurance?
Life Insurance isn’t an area we know lots about, but we’d imagine that selling it is something you do when you pretty desperate for cash, and it probably isn’t a great idea.
Back in 2001 there were reports that “consumer advocates urge policyholders to be cautious, because a number of the companies operating in the industry have murky histories, possibly involving fraud.”
Spam messages like the ones this weekend aim to prey on people in their weaker moments, hoping to catch and exploit them.
New spam approach
This approach — focusing the attack to a specific time and particularly a weekend — has the advantages of getting lots of the emails past spam filter, before people can mark them as spam.
By getting these mails through, there’s a high chance of getting them in front of people who might be tempted to take up the offer – no matter how bad it might be for them.
The life insurance settlement industry is not all bad, but there are a lot of companies out there trying to take advantage of people.
The positive side of the industry is that they buy old policies from people that either don’t need their life insurance anymore and were just planning on terminating the policy for nothing and people with terminal illnesses that need the cash for medical bills and living expenses before they die.
I can almost guarantee you that any reputable company will not be contacting you through email blasts and spam. Many of these companies will convince people to sell their policies for very low amounts or get them to enter agreements where they are forced to invest their settlement into crazy financial products with high commissions and fees.
There are also companies that try to convince people to purchase life insurance just for the purpose of reselling it. Most people that get involved in these deals end up paying crazy amounts of fees and suffering unexpected income tax consequences.