mediajunk

Commtouch has produced a revealing analysis of email spam that provides some informative statistics and many insights.

The top products pitched in spam messages in the first six months of 2004 included:

Drugs - 29.53%
Mortgage/Refinance - 9.68%
Organ Enlargement - 7.05%
Shopping - 6.86%
Software sales - 6.11%
Financial - 5.87%
Work from home/jobs - 4.06%
Dating - 3.15%
Porn - 3.1%
Weight Loss - 2.62%
Beauty products/Health - 2.53%
Debt solutions - 2.48%
University Degrees - 2.43%
Vehicle Warranties - 1.86%

Attempts to sell prescription drugs account for almost a third of all spam, then. This statistic may be better understood by another fascinating article -- an account of the current state of the pharmaceutical industry in the US -- that appears in the current edition of the New York Review of Books.

"The fact that Americans pay much more for prescription drugs than Europeans and Canadians is now widely known. An estimated one to two million Americans buy their medicines from Canadian drugstores over the Internet, despite the fact that in 1987, in response to heavy industry lobbying, a compliant Congress had made it illegal for anyone other than manufacturers to import prescription drugs from other countries"

Attempts to sell Viagra (sometimes along with other drugs) account for a staggering one in seven spam messages.

Most spam, according to the report, originates in the U.S. -- but is delivered from accounts hosted in China.

I was surprised to see that Nigeria didn't figure anywhere on the spam charts. Surely our Nigerian friends deserve some points, if only for effort and creativity? (If you agree with me, please send me your bank details IMMEDIATELY.)