Adult content spam includes elements of a pornographic nature, such as undisguised images or verbal descriptions, etc. and links to pornographic sites.
Sometimes adult content spam includes offers for products designed to increase or enhance sexual potency, such as Viagra or sex toys. However, Kaspersky Lab’s spam analysts place mailings offering Viagra and other medications to enhance sexual potency in the medications, health-related goods and services category, which includes all types of pharmaceutical advertisements found in spam.
Adult content spam differs from other spam messages. The content of these messages is very specific.
Spammers use attention-grabbing and rude words (ie shocking, absolutely forbidden, violent, hardcore) as well as sex-related words, or they mention the names of Hollywood sex symbols (Jennifer Anniston etc). To bypass spam filters, spammers often distort these words – deliberately making spelling mistakes, doubling the letters needlessly and inserting different symbols (for example, se><, RA’PED, Extr-ems-ex).
To distribute adult content spam, spammers register a great many domains on free hosting sites, and set up several of them as mirror sites. Registration is automatic and that is why the second / third level domain name can be a random combination of numbers and letters (for example, https://dkg84gu8gu5.info).
URLs included in the body of the message are usually the links that redirect users to a different site once they click on the link.
Pornographic spam offers a lot of things free of charge. In reality, once a user clicks on the link they understand that only the first picture is free and that they have to pay if they want to see more pictures or videos. Sometimes the sites contain links to other pornographic sites and state that the new site has ‘Free Access’, which also usually proves to be untrue. After visiting several sites the user finds that they have gone full-circle and will ultimately have to pay if they want to see anything.
In 2003, the share of pornographic spam in the total volume of spam messages was quite considerable. But from the beginning of 2004, the quantity of pornographic spam has decreased drastically. One possible reason for this being changes in the legislation of different countries that have introduced responsibility under law for the distribution of spam (the USA in particular).