Porn Dominates the Spam Battlefield

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.'"

how to stop 99.99% of spam in the r.o.t.w

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Combo Ads

[insideyourhalo]

Better still is when the ads geolocate and give you a nice personal message refering to a town that doesnt even exist outside of a dot on a map. I have seen many ads to a local "town" that is literally a post office.

Basic Human Needs

[aymanh]

Porn spam is common and effective because sex is one of the basic human needs [wikipedia.org], 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 [bugmenot.com] comes to the rescue.

Porn vs. Medicines

[acoster]

They also forgot to consider a few points: 1. Someone who wants prescription drugs will either buy on a pharmacy (usually cheaper), or probably ask someone they know before taking into account that weird email that sells X4N4*, z0l0f7 and other medicines. 2. Most people tend to ignore those spams (from pharmacies), as most of the people don't care about that, whereas when it comes to porn, well, one always get a freebie on the website... and everybody loves porn ;)

A very simple reason

[Opportunist]

With naked boobies, you can send a sample. Most people are already quite happy to LOOK at some of those milk bars, they needn't swallow to enjoy it.

It's different with pharmacies.

And, don't forget, there's always the hope that you might get free pr0n. Maybe just one or two pics, but hey! Free v14gr4, that's unheard of. Not even a pill.

Not that I'd need it, I just recently enhanced my malehood! I got a new sports car...

No kidding about porn...

[TomTraynor]

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

Re:porn spam

[Mister Whirly]

"It probably won't take very long to figure out who's working in syndicate on this SPAM scheme. They're going to get hurt pretty hard. I mean.. after a while they will be able to figure out who is buying just before these SPAMs go out and start putting together the syndication."

Well, the NSA has their - emails, phone records, and bank records - it shouldn't take them too long.

Re:beauty and sex

[Registered Coward v2]

Does human beauty always allude to sex?

In general, yes because as a species we are wired to reproduce; beauty is one signal that the other person is healthy and will be able to produce healthy offspring. We seek signs that a prospective mate will help be able to reproduce and provide desirable traits in our children. Beauty is one part of that; and what is attractive in a male to a female is different than what a man finds attractive in a female; a good bit of that is driven by the economic factors in a relationship (and I mean fundamental principles not money). A women is investing at least 9 months in giving birth plus generally shoulders much of the child rearing burden; an man needs about an hour and he's done - why do you think signals that say "will commit" and "can provide" are valuable to women?

And before someone goes off on a rant (hope springs eternal on /.) I am speaking in broad terms that apply across our species and not to specific relationships; which have other factors as well; but even then the underlying economic forces are at work.

Beauty is a broad concept. And appeals to us in many different ways.

Yes, but in humans there are some standard things that imply beauty which can be traced to health and reproductive ability. Amongst them are symmetry and body fat.