Some of you may recall that I recently pointed out the value of Spam in relation to the promotion of penny stocks

 http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/security/?p=169 

This is just an update to let you know that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has today moved to suspend trading for ten days in 35 notorious penny stock companies often mentioned in spam and has reached agreements with several countries to help track down and prosecute those actually responsible for sending the spam.

Stock Spam is thought to be responsible for about 100 million messages each week. 

For more information see the CNET News.com story and the International Herald Tribune report. 

There are no reports yet indicating that the companies or their officers were actually complicit in the Spam operations – there is always the opportunity to make money off stock manipulation without the knowledge of anyone in the company.