The Top Spam of 2005 (Ugh)

By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

As long as it’s the end of the year, and we’re going through our lists of top items, let’s discuss one of our least favorite topics: spam. AOL on Wednesday released its annual top ten most commonly sent junk e-mails, and it appears (not surprisingly) that spammers are getting more sophisticated. They also indicated there was an upsurge SOS, or special order spam.

Special order spam differs from traditional unsolicited e-mail in the way that it attempts to trick a user by pretending to be from a friend, or as part of a legitimate transaction. In fact, six of the top 10 spam messages fall into this category. This compares to two last year, and none in 2003.

“What we’re seeing is that spammers are far more organized and professional than ever before,” AOL Postmaster Charles Stiles said. “Spam gangs on the internet engaging in ‘hit-and-run’ spam attacks in 2004 have turned into a tightly-knit, controlled, web-based spam mafia coordinating sustained attacks on netizens in 2005.” Source: Betanews

Top of the list: “Donald Trump Wants You - Please Respond.” This was followed by ads for a “Patch” for a part of the body I won’t mention and a “Body Wrap” that promised a loss of six to 20 inches in one hour.

The good news: complaints to AOL over spam have declined 75 percent since peaking in late 2003. The bad news: 80% of email is blocked as spam (correctly blocked, I hope).

We Say: So spammers are professional and the Mafia, now? Heh. Anyway, the majority of spam that’s getting past my Gmail spam filters right now is “Be a Copy” or get a free “Razr”. I haven’t been looking in the Spam Folder, though; maybe that’s where all my Donald Trump spam is going. One thing’s for sure, despite what the FTC may say, I’m not seeing less spam … more likely, more … and definitely more getting past the filters.