Spam, spam, spam, spam …

I had 374 in my in-box this a.m. This is insane.

Of course, I also had these blogfodder gems:

• The Holidays are Coming – Email 3,000,000 People — Uh, no thanks. I’ll settle for sending cards to about 75.
• Dreaming of working at home? — No, dreaming of sleeping at home.
• B.reak Walls A.part With Your Hum.ungous Knob — You know, this just doesn’t sound appealing to me.
• Be more fulfilled, and make women scream! — “Get that thing away from me! It’s breaking my walls apart!”
• Effectively Spam Detecting — Why, look, it detects one right now …
• What is GEN.E.R-I-C V.IA.G.R.A? — Probably the same rip-off as the G.E.N.ERIC VI.A.G.R.A I was offered in an adjoining spam.
• Italian-crafted Rolex – only $65 – $140 — And worth every 35 cents!

Since I have such a large sample (ack!), some distribution, based on subject lines:

• 34%, over 1/3, were for online meds/pharmacies/etc., almost all of them flogging Vicodin, Xanax, and Viagra.
• 11% were for size increase meds/patches/techniques/secrets. Only 3 of those were for women.
• 9% were for debt reduction, mortgage rates, money earning schemes, etc.
• Only 5% was for pr0n, remarkably enough.
• Other big draw were spam/virus protection and e-mail distribution lists, inkjet ink, cable descramblers, cheap insurance, and weight loss methods. Oddball repeats included cheap gasoline, electric scooters, RC cars, and diploma mills. Amazingly, only one Nigeria 409 add.
• 16% could not be figured out from the subject line — either because it was too vague what was being sold (“A great deal!”), it was a deceptive draw (“I waited for you Friday”), or a random string of misspelled words (“dimond sufix vondle”).

Interesting.

Note that we do actually have a filtering gateway, that supposedly strips pr0n from the mix, which probably leads to that category being underrepresented. Though given some of the subject lines, there’s a good reason why it’s being replaced.