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Porn Dominates the Spam Battlefield

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the bus-plunges-off-ravine dept.

An anonymous reader writes "New York Times has published an article that explores the economics that control what type of spam shows up in your inbox. The study was done by CipherTrust and shows that porn spam is 280 times more effective than spam advertising pharmacy drugs. Paul Judge offered the following towards an explanation: 'If you look at some of the oldest and most successful forms of business on earth, they revolve around sex.'"

3 of 183 comments (clear)

  1. how to stop 99.99% of spam in the r.o.t.w by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting


    simply filter the $ symbol, i did this at home and spam disappeared overnight never to return and as my company has no dealings with anyone using that currency it didnt stop any legit mail from getting through

    now if only Gmail would let me do the same we will be onto a winner

  2. Basic Human Needs by aymanh · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Porn spam is common and effective because sex is one of the basic human needs, so it's natural that more people are attracted to porn spam than Rolex watches for example. This is what first came to my mind when I read the title, and it turned out the article revolves around this idea.

    The article requires login by the way, and BugMeNot comes to the rescue.

    --
    python>>> q="'";s='q="%c";s=%c%s%c;print s%%(q,q,s,q)';print s%(q,q,s,q)
  3. No kidding about porn... by TomTraynor · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I have been keeping tally on one of my 'freebie' accounts since June last year.

    2005:
        Porn = 651
        Legit = 1,017
        Spam = 302
        Phishing = 59

    So for for 2006:
        Porn = 1,587
        Legit = 870
        Spam = 1,713
        Phishing = 74

    --
    Panic now, beat the rush!