AOL Cites Top Spam Topics

AOL released the list Wednesday to tout its claim that it stopped a half-trillion pieces of spam from reaching its members in 2003, and to encourage users to set their spam filters to reject messages with certain words in the header.

"The spam fight roared louder than ever this year," AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham said.

AOL said its list of the most common spam subjects was neither scientifically assembled nor ranked by volume. Graham also pointed out that spammers often attempt to evade filters by using asterisks, spaces or numbers to slightly obscure the words in the message subject lines.

Those caveats aside, here's what AOL says are the 10 most common spam topics:

id
unit-1659132512259
type
Sponsored post

-Viagra and other drugs, like Xanax, Valium and Celebrex

-Online pharmacy

-Get out of debt

-Sexual enhancement

-Online degree or diploma

-Low mortgage rates

-Low insurance rates

-Work from home/be your own boss

-"Hot XXX action" and lots of porn variants

-"As seen on Oprah"

Copyright © 2003 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.