Porn spam tripled in May, hitting just over 14 percent of email tracked by security company Clearswift, a rise from 5.6 percent in April.
But the good news is that the porn spam wasn't even close to the highest volume of spam the company detected during that month's reporting. Healthcare-related spam continued to hold the top position, showing itself to be 45 percent of the spam Clearswift detected in May.
As a matter of fact, Clearswift said, one unusual uptick in the month came from spam related to entertainer Michael Jackson's child molestation trial—and a lot of that spam came with a little extra and malicious surprise. The Clearwsift index showed a small volume of Jackson spam came with links to malware that would be installed at once on the victim's computer.
One such message in particular seemed to have the most to do with that, the company said. "Entitled, 'News from Neverland Ranch,' the mail claimed Jackson, since acquitted, had attempted suicide in advance of his trial," Clearswift said, announcing the latest results. "Clever social engineering meant that many email users, intrigued and shocked by the news, clicked on the Web link enclosed in the email and inadvertently downloaded a Trojan which secretly installed malicious software onto their PC."
“Email threats come in all guises,” said Clearswift director of product features Alyn Hockey in a formal statement about the report. “Antivirus is a good start towards protection but it’s nowhere near enough. Companies must ensure they deploy intelligent content filtering software which is capable of blocking executable files in order to provide the most robust defense possible.”
The Clearswift results arrived as Microsoft hit a German company, whom it did not name, in a lawsuit alleging the company to be the "linchpin" of a spam gang flushing porn, online casino, Web design, and other spam through its email services.
The complaint alleges that this company's managing director ran spam-for-sale websites and bulk-mail server rentals to spam companies, charging only $625 per month to let a spammer buy enough server space to flush as many as 74 million spam messages. Microsoft reportedly had to sue under German anti-competitiveness law, since that country has no anti-spam laws yet.
