AOL Releases Top 10 Spam Subjects Of 2003

AOL has compiled a list of the most widely recognized junk email subject lines of the last year.

Dubious education offers, pharmaceuticals, body enhancing hormones, and shady finance-related offers ranked as the most widely recognized junk email subject lines of 2003 by AOL ’spamwatchers’ protecting the service from spammers on behalf of its members.

The AOL Postmaster team in northern Virginia has calculated the Top 10 most widely sent spam email subject lines – or ‘headers’ – on the AOL service in 2003 after reviewing data forwarded by AOL members during the year, much of it collected in the aggregate via use of the popular ‘Report Spam’ button in AOL.

“We want to encourage AOL members and all online users to take this important data and use it to improve their online email experience,” said Charles Stiles, Manager of the Postmaster Team within AOL’s Anti-Spam Operations group. “Taking this Top 10 list of most often-used subject lines in spam emails and placing them in AOL’s ‘Custom Word List’ is a great online New Year’s resolution to make – and it’s much easier to tackle than a lot of other resolutions people feel compelled to make in the offline world!”

AOL’s ‘Top 10 Spam Email Subject Lines’ of 2003:*

1. Viagra online (also: xanax, valium, xenical, phentermine, soma, celebrex, valtrex, zyban, fioricet, adipex, etc.)

2. Online pharmacy (also: ‘online prescriptions’; ‘meds online’)

3. Get out of debt (also: ’special offer’)

4. Get bigger (also: ’satisfy your partner’; ‘improve your sex life’)

5. Online degree (also: ‘online diploma’)

6. Lowest mortgage rates (also: ‘lower your mortgage rates’; ‘refinance’; ‘refi’)

7. Lowest insurance rates (also: ‘lower your insurance now’)

8. Work from home (also: ‘be your own boss’)

9. Hot XXX action (also: ‘teens’; ‘porn’)

10. As seen on oprah

* – Source: AOL. This list is unscientific, and is not in any specific order. The cited email subject headers are not ranked by volume.

Read the whole press release at AOL.com.