Spam Slayer: 2003 Spam Awards
Top spam trends, tricks, and tips that have surfaced in the past year.
Tom Spring, PC World
Monday, December 15, 2003

Tip of the Week
Blocking porn. If laws can't do it and your spam filter won't, you can use Outlook Express to keep your in-box smut free. Here's how: Reconfigure your Outlook Express in-box to display all messages as plain text by going to Tools, Options, selecting the Read Tab, and checking the box labeled Read all messages in plain text. By selecting this option you'll block offensive images, and as a bonus you'll also block Web beacons and hostile scripts from being activated. (Thanks to Cliff H. for this tip--and keep them coming.)

Send gripes, questions, and tips for the spam wars to [email protected]. Return to the SpamWatch page for more articles.



Seven billion commercial e-mail messages crossed the Internet daily in 2003, easily breaking all previous spam records. And despite new laws, and ISP suits against spammers, the amount of junk e-mail transmitted daily is forecast to hit 9 billion in 2004, according to antispam software maker Brightmail. Today about half of all e-mail is spam, the firm reports.

For those of you keeping score in the spam wars, let's take a look back at the spam-busting year of 2003 and hand out a few Spam Slayer awards.


Worst Worm
The Sobig e-mail worm that clogged in-boxes in August was the most prolific virus of 2003, according to a top ten list of viruses published by antivirus software vendor Sophos. The UK-based firm says the Sobig worm accounted for almost 20 percent of the virus reports it got this year. Coming in second was the Blaster worm, with 15 percent.


Fastest Worm
Sobig was not only the most prolific, but spam-busting firm Postini says it was also the most nimble worm of 2003. On one dark day, Postini tracked the Sobig worm as infecting 4.5 percent of all e-mail that the service had filtered. That was a 2000 percent up-tick from Postini's routine e-mail infection rate of 0.3 percent.


Most Common Pitches
The junk e-mail equivalent to death and taxes are pitches for pharmaceutical supplements, male body part enlargement, Viagra, sexually explicit porn, scams, and mortgages. According to Postini these categories are the most common spam subjects.

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