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By Joris Evers, 7 March 2007 08:09

NEWS

There's still plenty of spam going around but 'adult' spam has been on a steady decline and hit an all-time low in February, according to a new Symantec report.

Of all the spam filtered by Symantec's email security tools last month, only three per cent could be classified as 'adult', the company said. Adult spam, according to Symantec, contains or refers to "products or services intended for persons above the age of 18" and is "often offensive or inappropriate. Examples: porn, personal ads, relationship advice".

The top spam categories are healthcare or other general product ads, which combined account for 48 per cent of all junk email, Symantec said. Other top categories include advertisements for financial services (21 per cent) and internet services (15 per cent), according to the Symantec report. Of all junk messages, eight per cent is fraudulent or part of a scam such as phishing, it said.

Spammers continue to tweak their approaches to get past filters. Symantec noted in its study that image spam now includes "slanted text", which refers to an image with embedded spam text rather than plain text in the email. "This technique may decrease the detection capabilities," Symantec said.

Joris Evers writes for CNET News.com