Within hours of the death of pop star Michael Jackson, spam trading on his demise hit in-boxes, a security firm said today as it warned that more junk mail was in the offing.

Just eight hours after news broke about Jackson, Abingdon, England-based Sophos PLC started tracking the first wave of Jackson spam, which used a subject line of "Confidential -- Michael Jackson." The spam wasn't pitching a product or leading users to a phishing or malware Web site. Instead it was trying to dupe users into replying to the message in order to collect e-mail addresses and verify them as legitimate.