The online pornographers may have been the first to use spam as an annoying and invasive marketing tool, but pornographic spams are not among the most common in people’s inboxes these days. A content filtering company called Clearswift monitors and measures spam and has established what they call the Clearswift Spam Index. This measurement breaks down spam emails into categories based on what industry they belong to. When the index was first calculated porn accounted for around 22 percent of all spam email. Since then, this figure has been steadily decreasing, and last month it hit an all time low with porn spam accounting for less than 5 percent of total spam emails. I was rather shocked when I first read these statistics, as I was still under the impression that porn spam was still a major contender for the spam heavyweight title. To prove these statistics, I immediately went into my Yahoo bulk mail folder, where I receive hundreds of spam emails per day, to check out the amount of porn spams that I was receiving. Much to my surprise, my junk mail folder only contained about one adult spam for every twenty-five regular spams, which is a figure pretty close to the statistics found by Clearswift. The obvious question on my mind was, why are we seeing this decrease in pornographic spam?

It seems that there are no longer large profits in adult orientated spam. Experts believe that the decrease in pornographic spam must mean that there is no longer money to be made from unsolicited porn email and therefore spammers have moved on to more profitable spam models. Spammers could have also given up on porn because all of the regulations regarding pornographic spam recently imposed by United States lawmakers. So, if pornographers are no longer the biggest spammers, what group is? According to Clearswift’s statistics, 39 percent of all spam email is Finance related, making this industry the current spam leader. Examples of this type of spam are emails offering things like cheap loans, low mortgages, credit cards, insurance, stock tips, etc. My junk mail folder is inundated with all sorts of financial offers, with my favorite one being “Debt Consolidation With a Christian Perspective."

In second place is healthcare or pharmaceutical spam, which accounts for close to 31 percent of all unsolicited email. These are the wonderful emails that we receive which promise to deliver us Viagra at rock bottom prices, or offers for bottles of Vicadin without a prescription. My junk mail folder contained countless emails for online pharmacies, discounted healthcare, and pills that could change my appearance.

Financial and healthcare spam may be the largest categories in the Clearswift Spam Index, but there is another group that is swiftly growing as well. Direct products spam (not including adult) has seen large increases in recent months and now makes up about 10 percent of total spam. Examples of direct products are things like cell phones, DVD’s, and software.

It is nice to see that this industry is finally cleaning up its act with regards to spam. Our reputation has been tarnished for too long and part of the reason for this was because of our love for sending people unsolicited pornographic emails. Society despises spam, but they especially dislike sexually explicit spam. They find it offensive and potentially harming for their children. In a recent survey conducted with spam receivers, 91% of participants admitted that they found pornographic spam the most annoying, even though it is not the most popular spam category. As long as we keep on the path of righteousness, and keep the adult spam on the decline, we may see some of the criticism of our industry, alleviated.