Pornographic Spam Hits All-Time Low

Pornography, long the flagship of the spam industry, continued to lose some of its stature in February, with fewer spam messages than ever relating to porn.

Symantec's State of Spam report for last month shows that pornographic spam reached an all time low of 3% of all spam. The security company reported in February that pornographic spam accounted for 4% of all spam sent out in January.

By contrast, in the first half of last year, adult spam made up 22% of all spam messages.

Health-related and product-related spam tied for the two categories that accounted for the most spam flying around the Internet last month. Both came in at 24%. Health-related spam generally shills products and services such as pharmaceutical drugs, medical treatments, and herbal remedies. Viagra and hair-loss remedies have been big health-related spam generators. Product-related spam generally entails general goods and services, including devices, clothing, and makeup.

Financial-related spam dropped from 25% in January to 21% last month.Another recent report showed that if a renewed surge in spam continues on its current track, 90% of all e-mail will be spam by the end of the year. A flood of spam coming out of China and South Korea fueled a 30% jump in spam levels last month, according to the Australia-based Marshal's Threat Research and Content Engineering Team. It reports that spam volume is at its highest peak ever, increasing 280% since just last October.