By Jo Best, 26 May 2004 17:15
NEWS The amount of spam featuring pornography has fallen dramatically as spammers turn to more profitable products to flog and email less likely to meet with resistance from filters.
According to statistics from mail-filtering company Clearswift, the percentage of all spam flogging porn has dropped to just five - financial spam picked up the slack with a 27 per cent rise since June 2003.
The other hot property in spammers' must-sell list is dodgy digital TV descramblers, which supposedly give users the chance to get a look at channels they're normally barred from and are, obviously, illegal.
The change in emphasis from porn to financial spam could be down to several reasons, according to Alyn Hockey, Clearswift's director of research.
One is potentially the tendency for email applications like Outlook to block images and people setting their filters particularly to block words that pertain to porn. The fewer emails that get through to users, the fewer sales they make.
That's precisely why spammers are ditching the porn, said Hockey. "You have to remember these are businesspeople and if one avenue of opportunity is cut off, they will look for another... Spammers are quite switched on in terms of what products they market," he told silicon.com.
Switched on they are. Clearswift's Spam Index noted a rise in healthcare junk email think weight loss and anti-anxiety tablets - just after Christmas and toys such as remote-controlled helicopters just before the Christmas shopping was due to start.
Comments
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1. anonymous
I don't understand where spammers come from (mentally that is). If I'm not going to buy something the first time I get an Email about it, what makes them think I'm going to buy it after the 5th or 10th or 50th Email? They're as sick, and as thick, as the people who generate viruses
2. Jamie
The problem is that there are enough people out there that the spamming still works. Also, since it isn't an actual person that is doing the spamming, but it is an email harvesting program, or email generating program, the owner doesn't actually have any control over the emails that the spam is sent to. The price to spam still makes it an efficient source of business for many businesses. And for many people the idea of money outweighs the cost of loosing a good business image due to spamming.
3. anonymous
Porn spam isn't dead, it's now a mojor part of my junk mail, offering me teen porn, I've had about 300 in 2 days, so what are they talking about