I am not sure if you remember this, but in the last 20 years of the 20th century there was a lot of talk about subliminal messages in TV commercials being used to program people's minds, to buy some Ham (pun intended) or a new type of dishwasher liquid. There were also some speculations about army and secret services (Nikita, MI5, NSA, James Bond, KGB - you name the rest), using subliminal messages to program individuals to do horrible things.

Well, although subliminal messaging was never proven very successful, the new breed of spammers resorted to using this old trick. Panda Antivurus company has recently caught one spam e-mail containing the subliminal message:

Subliminal advertising techniques have been used for a long time and are based on composing images that users perceive, even though they are not aware of it. In the case of this email message, the word Buy appears on screen for a maximum of 40 milliseconds, and in some cases, for only 10 milliseconds. By doing this, although the recipient is not consciously aware of the Buy message, the subconscious levels of perception receive it and store it, influencing the recipient.

Watch out for these new spams, and remember that subliminal messaging is illegal almost everywhere in the world. So, if you live in a country where spam is not yet banned by legislation, you can hopefully have your spammer visit a prison or pay a high fine for using subliminal messages.