A massive new spam attack is hitting free web services such as YahooGroups, LiveJournal and GoogleGroups. Over 1 million spams an hour are being sent through these services using fake Hotmail accounts. Security experts say the Hotmail accounts were most likely created via an automated process that included cracking the webmail provider’s CAPTCHA. Spammers like to use services such as Hotmail, GMail and Yahoo! Mail to send their messages because the domains have a good reputation and are less likely to be blacklisted or caught in spam filters.

So far the spams are not malicious in any way. They advertise various pharmaceuticals and online pharmacies. While the deals look tempting, the sites are almost certainly scams. Some will send fake products, others black or grey market drugs from India, and a growing number won’t send anything at all but will be glad to take your credit card number and personal information.

Yes, a growing number of online pharmacies, while looking very legit, are actually fronts for phishing schemes. Visitors can add items to their shopping card and go through checkout but their items will never be sent and their financial info will be stored in the scammer’s database where it will either be used to make fraudulent purchases, commit identity theft or be sold to the highest bidder.

Overall spam levels have increased sharply in the last few days with an average of 17,000 spams being sent every 60 seconds.