Google's "I'm feeling lucky" button was designed to save web searchers time by automatically opening the first page of a query. It turns out the feature, and similar ones from other search engines, are increasingly helping junk mailers get around anti-spam products.

That's one of the findings from a January Intelligence report from MessageLabs. The IT security firm found that so-called search engine spam, which only came to light in the past few weeks, accounted for 17 per cent of all the spam the company saw in January. The emails include links that work like this one. When a recipient clicks on them, they frequently lead to destinations hosting malware or phishing sites. But because the links make no mention of the naughty URL itself, many anti-spam filters don't catch them. Anti-phishing protections built in to browsers and browser plug-ins also fail to catch them, in many cases.

To change things up, spammers frequently use different regionalized search engine sites, such as google.com.hk and google.co.uk.

The new technique is "probably more a manifestation of the ebb and flow of the good-guy versus bad-guy arms race," says MessageLabs Chief Security Analyst Mark Sunner. "There really hasn't been a necessity until this point for the bad guys to raise their game with this technique."

Also in January, MessageLabs saw a spike in spam pitching get-rich-quick and other financially-related services. Coming amid a wave of news articles reporting problems with the US and global economies, the spam is playing off of people's anxiety about their finances, Sunner said.

MessageLabs saw declines in other types of junk mail. Spam touting stocks fell to just two per cent in January, an all-time low since MessageLabs began keeping count. Company researchers said the decline could be related to the arrest of notorious spammer Alan Ralsky, who according to federal prosecutors, was engaged in a sophisticated pump-and-dump operation with 10 other individuals until it was shut down almost four weeks ago.

While MessageLabs made no mention of an initiative implemented in March by the Securities and Exchange Commission, this is likely also to be responsible for the drop. Under the program, penny stocks that are the subject of pump-and-dump email campaigns are temporarily suspended immediately following the issuance of the spam - preventing the architects from being able to profit from the scheme. Remove the profit and chances are you'll remove the crime, too. Indeed, both Symantec and the SEC have reported declines in stock-related spam following the new rules.

MessageLabs also said the amount of image spam fell in January to just two percent of all junk mail. That compares with a high of 20 per cent last summer.

The company provides email and web filtering services for more than 16,000 business customers. It processes more than 2.5 billion email connections and one billion web requests each day. ®