News Munchies
Email Porn Heats Up as Spam Soars
Originally Posted
Updated
Do you think you're getting more spam in your email diet? You're right. And it is getting raunchier and raunchier.
Mass-posted, invasive, unsolicited commercial email (UCE) has increased 450 percent in the past year, according to data from Brightmail, Inc., a San Francisco spam-filtering software company that monitors spam traffic on the Internet.
Mail-Abuse Prevention Systems LLC says the figure is even higher. Their data show that, in the second quarter of 2002, 600 to 700 percent more spam was sent out than in the second quarter of 2001.
And pornographic junk email has doubled as a percentage of total spam, Brightmail says. Of the 4.8 million spam attacks that occurred in June, eight percent were pornographic junk email -- hard-core, explicit images of graphic violence and sex, fee-based porn sites, bestiality, child pornography, and other voyeuristic viewing in the finest high-resolution, 16.8-million-bit color.
An "attack" may involve millions of email messages sent as fast as the servers can spew them onto the Internet.
The volume of highly profitable pornographic spam is expected to continue to increase, Brightmail says.
In the interest of journalism, we've reviewed several hundred of these images, and we are impressed with the quality of the camera work.