Obama and Hilton and Spears, oh my! Angelina and Paris and Britney, oh my! Celebrities are the hottest spamlines going, and a new study shows which rich and famous (and infamous) names are A-list on the spam hall of shame, and which ones are slipping.

Keith Ferrell, Contributor

August 6, 2008

2 Min Read

Obama and Hilton and Spears, oh my! Angelina and Paris and Britney, oh my! Celebrities are the hottest spamlines going, and a new study shows which rich and famous (and infamous) names are A-list on the spam hall of shame, and which ones are slipping.Secure Computing breaks out the Top 10 Celebrity Spam Subjects in its latest Major Spam Trends report, and the list spams, uh spans the gamut from Angelina Jolie (Number One!) to Michael Jackson (Number 10), with a Hillary Clinton/Jessica Simpson/Osama Bin Laden/George W. Bush sandwich in-between.

Angelina Jolie's racking up Dark Knight-sized numbers, at least as far as spam goes. According to the Secure Computing report, an astonishing 2.28 percent of the world's total daily e-mail volume included Angelina's name in the subject line, along with variations of naked, nude and, well, you get the picture -- unless you actually fall for one of the spams. Do that and you won't get to see Angelina the way Brad Pitt does, you'll get malware. It's spam, folks!

Paris Hilton held onto the Number Three slot (the survey was presumably taken before the latest Paris Hilton "My hat's, like, in the ring" political bathing suit video.)

Britney Spears and Hillary Clinton wrestled for fourth and fifth place respectively, if not respectfully.

George W. Bush placed sixth, not bad for a second-term lame duck, I guess. That put the president in position just above Jessica Simpson, who was tailed by Bin Laden (Number Eight.)

Do celebrities suffer from spam-line spouse envy? Ask Brad Pitt, who came in at Nine, far below Angelina Jolie's top spot. Then again, Brade didn't have to carry the twins for all those months the way Angelina.

Tenth place went to Michael Jackson, which is in it own way a bit of a shock. Then again, maybe the spammers are so busy sending spam they don't realize the Michael Jackson train has long since left the station.

Take a glance -- just a subject-line glance; don't open this stuff: it's spam, folks! -- at your own junkmail or delete queue and see how your celebrity spam stacks up against the statistics.

Mine appears to be right in line with the Angelina and Britney and Paris stats, Obama and the president too. No Jessica Simpson, but at least three Jessica Alba spams in the past week.

Bin Laden and Brad Pitt are leaving me alone altogether, and I haven't seen a Michael Jackson subject line in years.

That last wasn't a complaint.

The complete Major Spam Trends, August 2008 is available for download here.

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