Pornographic Spam Showed Sliding Trend in January

For years pornography has been the favorite subject of spam messages surpassing 'get-rich-quick' scams and Britney Spears. But now, a sliding trend is being observed in pornographic spam.

Symantec found a push in the volume of image spam in January 2007, according to its recent 'State of Spam' report. However, it came down by the month end. Similarly, there has been a decline in adult spam.

Symantec's report reveals a small 4% adult or pornographic spam of total spam dispatched in January this year. This is noteworthy in comparison to 22% of adult spam over first six months of 2006.

Symantec circulated its latest report on the Internet to point at the consistency of spam activity during January 2007 in relation to trends that existed during December 2006.

For several years past, pornography has shuttled to and fro with messages promoting Viagra and spoof mortgage deals to be on the top of spam topics.

Spam continues to loom heavy on the inbox. Symantec said the good news was that spam dropped to nearly 69% at the SMTP layer, while image spam reached a height of 45% of the entire spam in January, but declined to 30%.

Occupying a top spot in spam topics is 'financial spam'. Product pitches and topics relating to health followed closely, said Symantec. Financial spam in the first six months of 2006 was 15% of all mails, which increased to 25% in January 2007. Product spam and health spam together accounted for 23%.

A decline in the volume of adult spam that Symantec rates at 4% from a measurement of global spam over a 90-day period perhaps is a sign of low-profit earnings for spammers of adult content.

According to Doug Bowers, senior director of anti-abuse engineering at Symantec, spammers are probably shifting tactics. While money on the Internet is possible through various means, spammers are quite smart in determining what suits them best. Adult spam is rather traditional. Today, people are getting acquainted with it and they know better ways to avoid it. Conversely, new kinds of attacks are likely to draw their interest in opening the mails.

Related article: Pornography, No More Favored By Spammers

» SPAMfighter News - 2/19/2007