YNOT EUROPE – Security products developer Trend Micro’s latest threat report says Europe has taken over from the Americas and Asia as the world’s foremost source of unwanted email — and only a small percentage is porn spam.

According to Trend Micro, a veritable buffet of free porn on the web may be the reason porn spam currently composes only a paltry 4 percent of all unsolicited commercial email. Instead, spammers seem to have found more profit in besieging consumers with health and medical offers. As much as 65 percent of the world’s spam now hawks libido enhancers, diet aids and supplements, the Trend report notes.

Spam’s format has changed, too, the report warns. During the first half of 2010, most spam was delivered in HTML, allowing it not only to annoy, but also to infect. Much spam points users to infected websites, the number of which increased from 1.5 billion in January to 3.5 billion in June. Trojans are far and away the most common payload, comprising 60 percent of the total, followed by “backdoor” malware and spyware.

Public and private schools and universities are the most common victims of infections caused by spam, the report notes, accounting for about 50 percent of the total. Government offices and technology companies followed with an infection rate of about 10 percent each.