According to Kaspersky Lab, an anti-virus and malware firm, spammers have included links in emails that appear to point to YouTube in the past, but this is the first instance of the link actually connecting to a spam video. The clip is a Russian ad promoting industrial real estate.
Darya Gudkova, head of content analysis and research at Kaspersky Lab, said as the technique catches on, Gmail users will be particularly hard hit, as Gmail automatically embeds YouTube videos in emails containing a YouTube link.
"Naturally, this type of advertising is more interesting and gets more hits," said Gudkova. "Two years ago spammers used the YouTube name and the promise of interesting videos to lure users to advertising sites. Now the links really do lead to this popular video-hosting site which is being used to store unsolicited advertising content."
YouTube, meanwhile, is going from strength to strength and now records more than one billion video views a day.
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