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Story URL: http://www.silicon.com/research/specialreports/thespamreport/0,39025001,10005099,00.htm

RE: Information you asked for
Sound familiar? That's because it's the most popular spam subject line

By Jo Best

Published: Friday 11 July 2003

Spammers are always looking for new ways to get you to open their mail and the use of deceptive tactics has increased more than 50 per cent so far this year, so it's no surprise that they are the theme of a poll to find the spam subject lines that crop up most often.

The survey of over 1,200 businesses, conducted by email protection company FrontBridge Technologies, gives an insight into spammers' favourite ways of tricking gullible users into opening the email and, if they're having a particularly lucky day, parting with their hard-earned readies.

According to the research, the most commonly occurring subject lines and the reasons people open them are:

1. RE: Information you asked for - Implying you've requested something 2. hey - Most common friendly intro to an email 3. Check this out! - A popular intro to a forward from a friend 4. Is this your email? - It's almost like an old friend wants to get in touch! 5. Please resend the email - Suggesting you were the original sender 6. RE: Your order - Insinuating you've bought something 7. Past due account - Designed to worry recipient about a theoretical unpaid debt 8. Please verify your information - Implying a sign-up or previous order 9. Version update - Look, it's a software update by email, honest

And finally…

10. RE: 4th of July - That'll be one for the US users, then….

Another favourite technique of the spammers is to get mask their original email addresses with others containing popular first names - Bob, Mary, Jenny, you know how it works - to hide the sender's original email address.

Combined with text that contains the lines '---Original Message---', the unwanted email is even making its way past well-known dedicated spam filters.