Porn Gets Less and Less Attractive for Spammers

Not so long ago, porn was the undisputable spammer's favorite subject and also the most wide-spread topic to fill users' inboxes worldwide. But, according to the latest statistics published by AOL, porn spam has been knocked out of the junk email top ten for 2005.

Instead, messages that claim to offer extraordinary business opportunities or emails which mention the name of the real estate tycoon Donald Trump are used more and more frequently to spam users. Porn is definitely passé in junk email rankings and spam authors are now more sophisticated and use less vulgar and obvious catch phrases and subjects to lure users to specific sites. Most of the spam messages now sent deceive receivers by claiming to be from a friend or a legitimate agency or display subject lines such as "Your Mortgage Application is Ready".

AOL announced it blocked an average of 1.5 billion spam emails per day throughout 2005, while last year the total was up to half a trillion. Basically, eight out of every ten emails which turned up at AOL's gateway were "blocked as junk".