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AOL releases 2005 spam list
AOL has released its third annual Top 10 Spam messages list. No surprises here that the most common spam messages for the year included counterfeit e-mails offering a chance to work for Donald Trump, new medical products for improving one's sex life or losing weight and so forth. Sexually-oriented spam and phony personalized messages also were present on the list.
Media reports state that a disturbing trend tracked by AOL in 2005 was an increasing sophistication on the part of spammers, who appeared to be using more targeted and devious schemes to try to convince users to open their messages. The company said six of the top 10 e-mail campaigns it battled over the last twelve months fell into the category of "special order spam," or e-mails that went beyond the messages of previous years in trying to mislead potential recipients.
Media reports state that a disturbing trend tracked by AOL in 2005 was an increasing sophistication on the part of spammers, who appeared to be using more targeted and devious schemes to try to convince users to open their messages. The company said six of the top 10 e-mail campaigns it battled over the last twelve months fell into the category of "special order spam," or e-mails that went beyond the messages of previous years in trying to mislead potential recipients.
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User Comments (10)
Post a comment| shounen on January 2, 2006 7:10 PM | I found some stuff on that really funny.... esp trumps viagra
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| 2old on January 2, 2006 7:25 PM | 1.5 billion spam messages blocked PER DAY by AOL alone.. That is just staggering particularly when you consider the Earth's population is approx 6.5 billion.
Now if I can just find a way to make a single cent every time a spam message is sent..........
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| cyrax on January 2, 2006 8:24 PM | kids Spam is like drugs.just say no. 1.5 billion?it frightns me to think what 2006 will bring.Or maybe spam filters will get better.Take yahoo mail for instance, works so perfect i can't complain.
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| otmakus on January 2, 2006 10:49 PM | They should invent a way to punish spammers. 80% of all emails are spams and that is a staggering number. Fine them 1 cent per spam email they send, and the number will decline dramatically (and we can live happier).
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| MonkeyMan on January 3, 2006 2:44 AM | ppl say the craziest things nowadays. At least AOL is giving us the heads up on things. Most companies don't even come close. Great job AOL.
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| rahuls on January 3, 2006 5:13 AM | How about employing this people to design spam filters
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| mentaljedi on January 3, 2006 6:51 AM | Hopefully this list will get the government to do something. This is a rather big issue, and i think anyone who sends spam that's unwanted should be fined. Don't care how much the cost is, but its just the principle of fining that will reduce these outrageoius numbers.
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| Bartzy on January 3, 2006 9:19 AM | No goverment will do anything. You need enormous resources to stop spam, and no country will get involved in that. The power is in our hands. If you get spam with a phone number, call it. Ask for the manager. If they send it to a million people, and 50,000 call them, they will collapse. I started doing that, but I saw it doesn't help so I stopped. Spam filters imporoved a lot at the past few years, but I still get quite a lot of spam to my mailbox.
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| Rhianntp on January 3, 2006 11:36 AM | well, give aol credit for trying. pretty smart idea they have to lauch ads and so forth to alert their customers to how secure they are.
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| DragonMaster on January 3, 2006 5:35 PM | I never got a single spam when I still was on Netscape Mail(AOL). Their spam filter DOES work. The thing is that there wasn't any spam filtering options and it was doing everything by itself and I didn't miss a mail. Unfortunately, I couldn't send any mails to Hotmail users using any SMTP servers. (M$'s fault)
A good way to stop spam would be to destroy Hotmail. Every time I send a message to an Hotmail user(About 5 times a year), I receive 3 spams, even if I use an address which is not known to anyone on the Internet apart from people that receive the mails(Even if it uses my website's domain name).
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