Now arriving: Swine flu spam

It's bad enough that we're all in a panic over the threat of a freakish pig-human-hybrid virus that could kill us all. Now it gets worse. Give your inbox a once-over: Swine flu spam is on its way and picking up steam.

McAfee's Avert Labs is reporting that spam activity using "swine flu" as a keyword phrase is way up. Subject lines are all over the map, but carry a familiar theme. Some of the common subjects currently being used include:

> First US swine flu victims!
> US swine flu statistics
> Salma Hayek caught swine flu!
> Swine flu worldwide!
> Swine flu in Hollywood!
> Swine flu in USA
> Madonna caught swine flu!

The spam messages contain links to (irrelevant and unrelated) medical sites, takesvisitors to fly-by-night companies that simply harvest credit card numbers, or, frequently, simply carry garden-variety malware in the form of Trojan horses you are encouraged to install.

One source at McAfee says that "swine flu" spam was now comprising more than 2 percent of all spam being sent.

The scammers are also targeting the web of course, registering "swine flu" domain names by the dozen in the hopes that web searchers will land on these sites in search of advice about the budding pandemic. Right now the sites I've looked at are mostly harmless repositories of web stories about swine flu, but eventually they're likely to be switched over to keyword-laden ad/spam farms and delivery vehicles for even more malware.

My best advice is that if you're looking for information about swine flu, remember that anything with the phrase "swine flu" in the URL is, ironically, unlikely to be very credible or useful.

Up next: Expect to see an increase in email and web spam using the words "Oseltamivir" or "Tamiflu," an antiviral drug touted as a possible defense against the swine flu virus.