It’s no secret that legitimate Canadian pharmacies despise so-called “Canadian pharmacy” spam — those illegal missives you receive in your inbox promising you can buy drugs like Viagra with no prescription.

The reality is that these so-called Canadian pharmacies aren’t Canadian at all (and in many cases aren’t pharmacies at all). They are criminal operations based in places like Russia or various Third World countries. They are scam artists — and they give legal, licensed Canadian pharmacies a bad name.

Fortunately, these spammers are increasingly being forced to use words other than “Canadian pharmacy” in their e-mails. The reason is simple: people are wising up to the scam.

According to BitDefender, which offers weekly reports on e-mail spam trends:

It seems like medicine spammers took a more discrete approach this week, advertising their products without using the keywords “Canadian Pharmacy.” The Canadian Pharmacy spammers take various approaches such as using various mail subjects to make the message look as if they had been sent by friends to make users open the messages.

The words appearing most in spam e-mails, according to BitDefender, include “click,” “email,” “news,” “please,” and “privacy.”

Every week, BitDefender analyzes about seven million spam messages collected through a worldwide network of “honey pots.” A honey pot is an e-mail address that is only used to collect spam. The large number of analyzed messages and the global distribution of honey pots ensure reliable results, the company says.