In a recent study made public by CipherTrust, it has been revealed that the oldest trade in the world, revolving around satisfying human sexual instincts, is a veritable success as spam campaigns are concerned. It seems that sexual references are more likely to attract the attention of a user and convince him to view a spam message in the mail box. Pornographic materials are the right incentive for a great share of recipients, as the analysis shows. It seems that porn spam is 280- times more effective in convincing users to click on them than the messages advertising pharmacy drugs.

"Successful spam is about impulse purchases," said Francis deSouza, a vice president at Symantec. "Things like home mortgages have a lower success rate than things you'd buy on impulse. Things like Viagra, porn. If you're contracted by a company that sells watches or drugs, you might be perfectly happy spamming about watches or drugs," he said.

Runner-ups in effectiveness to porn spam are advertisements concerning pharmaceutical subjects. Only in third places is spam that references Rolex watches. In this context pornographic spam messages are 280 times more effective(5.6 percent) than messages that advertise drugs (0.02 percent).