AOL Says it Blocked Half a Trillion Spam E-mails in 2005

America Online blocked an average of 1.5 billion spam e-mails a day last year for a total of 556 billion in 2005, the company announced yesterday.

The figure represents a slight increase over 2004, the Internet-service-provider unit of Time Warner reported.

AOL also said that about 80% of the e-mail sent to its users is blocked as spam, and that spam reaching its users’ inboxes has decreased 75% since its peak in 2003.

Spammers in 2005 increasingly used so-called “special-order” subject lines, or subject lines purporting to be from a friend or business with whom the recipient has a relationship—“your mortgage is ready,” for example, AOL said.

Also, Donald Trump was a top-10 subject-line topic, the company said.