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NEW YORK: Ads mentioning real estate tycoon Donald Trump and those hawking "Penis Patch" body enhancements were among the top 10 junk emails in 2005, according to America Online.
Noticeably absent? Porn.
"Porn is passe when it comes to spam," Nicholas Graham, an AOL spokesman said.
Sexually suggestive emails took another tumble this year after slipping in popularity last year.
More than a half-trillion junk emails, known as spam, were blocked by AOL filters, slightly above 2004 levels, the company said. The number of junk emails reported by AOL's 26 million members worldwide has declined about 75 per cent since 2003.
Emails using more sophisticated tactics that attempt to deceive recipients by purporting to be from a friend or a legitimate agency or bear subject lines such as "Your Mortgage Application is Ready" are also beginning to replace blatant product promotions, AOL said.
Spammers "are (employing) 'back alley' tactics, and they are doing it with a specialised team that's working overtime to hide the source of their spam by employing zombie PC's, bot-nets and using other nefarious tactics," Charles Stiles, AOL's postmaster, said in a statement.
In 2005, AOL blocked an average of 1.5 billion spams per day. Approximately 8 in 10 emails received at its gateway were blocked as junk.
AOL is a division of media conglomerate Time Warner.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3525641a4560,00.html
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