How the Spam Industry is Sustained 371
mOoZik writes "The BBC has an interesting article about spam and why it's still around. According to a survey, nearly 1/3 of users have clicked on spam messages and 1/10 have bought products advertised therein. "If no-one responded to junk e-mail and didn't buy products sold in this way, then spam would be as extinct as the dinosaurs.""
1 in 10? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:1 in 10? (Score:5, Funny)
BTW, I would like to make the public announcement that I have a basement filled with cases of VI@AGRA. If anyone wants any, please reply to this post, I'll be more than happy to ship some to you at a reduced cost.
Re:1 in 10? (Score:3, Funny)
50% voted for Bush.
Re:1 in 10? (Score:5, Funny)
50% bigger?? (Score:3, Funny)
These are Americans we are talking about. If they got 50% bigger, most of them would collapse under their own gravitational pull.
250m American blackholes in Blackburn, Oklahoma. Now they know how many American blackholes it takes to fill the Albert Hall
Re:Hey (non-)fucker (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Hey (non-)fucker (Score:3, Funny)
Re:1 in 10? (Score:2)
There's always going to be that one jackass who responds to spam.
Even if a spammer's bandwidth costs are more than income, they can use the millions of friendly bots to do their bidding.
go to spam island! (Score:2)
Why do they have to constantly try to get around filters, steal resources, forge headers etc?
Ideally there would be an isolated island or small rock in the depths of outer space that these people could go and do their 'business' on, and leave the rest of us alone.
bah.
low sales resistance (Score:5, Insightful)
It's scary and sad and unfortunately true.
Re:go to spam island! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:1 in 10? (Score:2)
Re:1 in 10? (Score:3, Insightful)
I would hope that this 1% represents a portion of each year's internet newbies . . .
However, like most statistics quoted in the press, there isn't really enough information to draw a very d
I met a spam customer once (Score:5, Informative)
Re:1 in 10? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:1 in 10? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:1 in 10? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's 10% of users having ever responded.
So if you get 123456 spams and respond 3 times,
you are counted in the 10%. If you never respond,
you are in the other 90%.
Re:1 in 10? (Score:4, Interesting)
Just thought this was funny (Score:4, Interesting)
"The list of words most commonly hidden by the spammers from anti-spam software reveals that most spam is about the old favourites: money, drugs and sex," said Mr Cluley.
Re:Just thought this was funny (Score:2, Funny)
The people buying that junk should get a Cluley.
Re:Just thought this was funny (Score:2, Interesting)
Whatever happened to my Rock and Roll?
Appols to Ian Drury and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
Re:Just thought this was funny (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Just thought this was funny (Score:2)
"People" may, but I sure don't. So why am I getting spam? Why don't they send it to people who want it instead?
so shut up and deal with it
Part of "dealing with it" is discussing the problem and potential solutions. So which is it? Are we to "shut up", or "deal with it"?
I replied to the spam (Score:5, Funny)
So did I (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So did I (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So did I (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So did I (Score:3, Funny)
Definately.
1 in what? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:1 in what? (Score:2)
It never ceses to amaze me what sort of people fall for that gag or one of its variants. I recently saw a news show on CBS about the victims of these scams. The list included and Engineer a Doctor and a Schoolteacher. You would think people with that level of education would know better? I suppose it puts some weigh behind the old adage: "...educated beyond their intelligence".
Re:1 in what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Would you like to take a survey? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Would you like to take a survey? (Score:2)
Re:Would you like to take a survey? (Score:3)
From all aspiring web sites out there that must use some sort of ad scheme to stay alive thanks you as well. X10.com thanks your service. GoogleAds, Party Poker, Amazon, Gratis Network and the rest thank you...
Some of us just filter out ads, and for that I thank evolution. We filter out near-IR along with other "colors" [tinyurl.com] and evolution has produced specimens such as myself that don't notice that OKI advertisement at the top printing messages to me...
Joking aside, I s
1/10 have bought products advertised therein. (Score:5, Funny)
The clue by four is gonna get a workout tomorrow.
In other news.. (Score:5, Funny)
duh (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, duh. That could be said for any type of advertising.
1 in 10 slashdotters? (Score:3, Interesting)
This is an average of course. Slashdot obviously isn't the average, but it's still likely SOME of you have bought something from spam (even if it's 1 in 100 slashdotters).
So fess up. Whose being buying stuff from spam?
Re:1 in 10 slashdotters? (Score:3, Informative)
Regardless, I haven't bought anything from spam. Even if something interestd me, I would be worried about getting ripped off. That said, nothing so far has. Yes, not even "enlargement" offers.
Re:1 in 10 slashdotters? (Score:2)
I replied to the spam
and my mortgage has never been longer or harder.
Re:1 in 10 slashdotters? (Score:2)
I was pissed that they called, when I was on the do not call list.
They claimed a prior business relationship for a hotel I stayed at in NM a few years back.
I now think that was a bogus connection, as this time share thing must use my specific credit history to rope people and get close to them. While putting up with four hours of hard sell, they made strange references to Virginia Tech (where my wife recently made purchases at a conference). We thought nothing of it un
Most users just aren't very smart (Score:5, Insightful)
These are people with multiple master's degrees and I'm amazed every day by their lack of techno-savvy. If very bright highly educated people don't recognize pop-up windows as advertisements then how can we expect the "average" person to recognize the bigger issue surrounding spam?
I think the fact is that most people really don't care that much. They just accept spam the same way they accept junk snail-mail.
Re:Most users just aren't very smart (Score:5, Interesting)
So they throw it out? That doesn't sound like what you're saying, but that's what people do with junk mail. This article is about people paying attention to it instead just because it's online.
-N
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Most users just aren't very smart (Score:3, Interesting)
So they throw it out? That doesn't sound like what you're saying, but that's what people do with junk mail.
Depends what the junk mail is. I've signed up for at least one credit card after getting junk mail advertising it. I'd probably do the same with junk e-mail, except for the fact that junk e-mail is pretty much universally a scam by some company I've never heard of.
If I'm offered a good deal, I'm not going to pass it up just because it was offered through junk mail. Of course, Discover Card (that
Stats breakdown via country (Score:4, Insightful)
The vast majority of spam that I get is targeted at Americans, and hence completely irrelevent to me.
I wonder if the number of people that "have clicked on" and "have bought from" is much higher in the US than in other countries.
Re:Stats breakdown via country (Score:2)
Re:Stats breakdown via country (Score:2)
That would be nice wouldn't it? Then it would fit into your obviously biased current view of Americans seamlessly.
Re:Stats breakdown via country (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Stats breakdown via country (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Stats breakdown via country (Score:2)
Talking to friends about this has confirmed that it's similar for them, and some have pointed out the pervasiveness of broadband connections in South Korea as an explanation.
So it's quite interesting that most of your spam is targeted at (US-?)Americans. How much do you get per day, on ave
Re:Stats breakdown via country (Score:2)
Sigh... (Score:2)
Re:Sigh... (Score:5, Insightful)
They are secret to the people who haven't heard of them. Unfortunately, they don't teach much critical thinking in school. (I think it would be great to require a semester of media literacy in high school, where students learn all the classic propaganda techniques and how to spot them...)
bought? (Score:4, Insightful)
.
Re:bought? (Score:2)
That can't be right... (Score:3, Funny)
Questionable Survey (Score:5, Insightful)
If it gave an accurate and easily understandable description of SPAM (e.g. "email from someone you had not contacted in any way or did not know how they got your email address"), it would be fine.
But I have a feeling (having taken a few surveys in my day) that it was something more along the lines of "How many times in the past year did you buy a product after receiving an email about the product?"
The problem there is that it covers legitimate email offers, like from Amazon, ThinkGeek, or whatever. People might even have thought it counted when they were emailed a confirmation for their purchase.
I wish these articles would include a link to the survey.
Re:Questionable Survey (Score:3, Funny)
2) Need help with your m0rtg@ge?
3) Would you like to help a persecuted stranger in a foreign country to make money?
Longevity of spammers != "clicking" in emails (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Longevity of spammers != "clicking" in emails (Score:3, Interesting)
then identify test messages, to let them through and let spammers believe that my honeypot is in fact an open proxy
How'd you manage this one? I'd be too afraid of letting the messages through to the wrong person.
I have never let it out of my box, but it definitely gave the spammers adrenaline enough to keep them around for longer ...
If a bunch of us ran something like this, wouldn't it greatly increase the costs to the spammers? In fact, if you hacked around with the raw IP packets, sending ACKs pr
No bloody way (Score:2)
Exactly (Score:2)
Re:Exactly (Score:2)
That's fucken it. (Score:5, Funny)
It will randomly generate mortgage/penis enlargement/teen sluts/housewives/OEM Software spam.
It will have a "Click here to respond" link.
If you click the link, it wipes your hard drive and somehow sets your computer on fire. I need to work out how to kill the CPU fan or something...
These people who are responding to spam need to have their computers confiscated, for great justice.
That is all.
Cheers
Stor
Re:That's fucken it. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:That's fucken it. (Score:4, Interesting)
I actually tested this once. I was talking to a friend of mine in the smoking area about how people pick up bits and pieces of other people's conversation, and then spread them on. We came up with a juicy, scandalous, and completely ficticious event and discussed it at an excited volume.. not enough that we drown out other people, but loud enough that anyone who wasn't talking could probably hear us. We didn't have to keep a straight face, because he story we came up with was something you'd laugh at anyway. We repeated it a few times, and the next day I went on vacation and forgot all about it.
When I returned a month later, the first thing I heard from a co-workers was, "Guess what happened while you were gone!" Yeah, the same story we made up in the smoking area. Had a good laugh over that one.
Granted, the rumor was probably isolated to, at most, the 1100 people I worked with, but that's because it was only relevant to those people. Your idea about spreading rumors that are relevant to the population at large might actually work.
Re:That's fucken it. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:That's fucken it. (Score:5, Funny)
All you need is a little assembler and you'll be set.
HCF - Halt and Catch Fire
HCF [brighton.ac.uk]
Re:That's fucken it. (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, several other microcontrollers had similar instructions - they activate the pull-ups and pull-downs in the IO ports at the same time, thus shorting the power rails through the IO port.
This can be relied upon to release all the magic smoke that powers the processor.
Re:That's fucken it. (Score:3, Informative)
1 out of 10?! (Score:5, Interesting)
I really have to disagree with TFA on this one. I don't think it's "bad email behavior" keeping spam alive (viruses are a different matter, but lumped in together).
It's the stupid and unethical businesses who will pay a spammer $100 for a 200,000 user spam blast. The spammer doesn't give a rat's posterior whether or not the victim buys or clicks. All he cares about is not getting bounced. Then he gets paid.
Re:1 out of 10?! (Score:2)
Re:1 out of 10?! (Score:4, Insightful)
cite at the moment, as I don't expect someone who's never dealt with them to take Steve's(Spamhaus), Rich's(Spamblocked), or Bill's(theclub...) word for it.
The entire game of advertising has become one of infintesimal returns, in no small part because advertisers,like spammers, seem to think that forcing someone to view thier spew, will them or nil them, will make them more positively disposed towards the product/service/company being advertised.
[0] +/- an order of magnitude. I'm bad at remembering the exact number of zeros.
Per-Message vs. Per-Recipient Percentages (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:1 out of 10?! (Score:3, Interesting)
I know there are holes in this i
Not completely true (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a very simplistic view. It assumes that people measure their results carefully, and that it's the same people who keep selling. There's plenty of marketing channels out there that have a poor return on investment, but they keep alive for other reasons. Such reasons include: people don't measure the success properly, there's a new sucker born every minute, or other less financial reasons.
For instance, I had a friend who used to sell sponsorship to big golf tournaments. Companies would pay huge somes of money, and there was plenty of data around that there was a lousy ROI. They kept doing it because they wanted the perks - the premium positions & champagne, etc. He said in his few years, only saw one company actually utilise their investment well by tying it in with other promotions.
In the case of spam, it may possibly be true that it is profitable - it does appear to be the same people advertising all the time - but don't assume staying in business = good medium.
I'm sure my father did a few years ago... (Score:2)
He won't admit that he bought anything; we're at the "Do not ask"/"Do not tell" level now. Nobody wants to admit they were an idiot. Kind of takes the edge off of being the wise old parent role.
Oh, there's an easy way... (Score:5, Interesting)
Credit: Some MS guy I talked to. Unfortunately Hotmail-management was kinda opposed to that idea...
death to spammers, and people who buy from them (Score:2)
My favorite old chestnut (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm usually not in favor of the death penalty. However, not only am I in favor of the electric chair for spammers; I'd replace the switch with a dial. After rigourous (and fun I might add) trials on the many spammers it would be marked like this:
1. Mildly painful
2. hurts
3. really stings
4. excruciating
5. probable fatality
6. likely fatality
11. human boooowwwwbeeeecue
There's hours of fun to be had as mail admins take turns lovingly sweeping the dial from 1 to 4. The mail admins will of course charge admission to mail recipients.
The child porn purveyors can get the special wire that goes in the pants.
soo gullible (Score:2)
you actually believe that the dinosaurs are extinct?
oh man, no wonder people are such suckers for spam.
Still no excuse (Score:2, Interesting)
1 in 3 in the whole history of spam? Not bad. (Score:3, Interesting)
So, given the thousands (tens of thousands?) of spam I've recieved, I've clicked on the link from one. Suddenly 1 in 10,000 doesn't look as good as 1 in 3.
Of course, the real way that spam is funded is through scams (which only need a minute click-through rate) and by convincing one company after another that the click-through rate isn't minute. The recipients aren't the only ones being scammed.
beat them at their own game? (Score:3, Interesting)
don't beat them at their own game. There is
more of us then them, so if only 10% of us
would carpet bomb them with fake requests,
calling their 800 numbers, whatever they
want back, wouldn't that piss them off.
In fact, you start with one company
(my current favorite is Gevalia Coffee,
who can't stop mailing me despite repeated
phone calls and email requests, they hired
a 3rd party to "spam"), and work you way down
slowly and methodically. THat will teach normal
companies to stop doing it.
There probably are a few hard cases to crack,
but it seems there aren't all that many companies
around who do it.
They have a right to click/buy if they want (Score:2)
It's very true (Score:5, Informative)
producttestpanel.com is a good example. Spams for discount cruises from travel companies. Spam for free movie tickets (yes, I worked for the company that did that!) and spam for other free/discount products. It's not all porn & pills. in fact, the spammers I worked for adamantly refused to send out mails for porn or pills, but "$50 Gift Cards!" and "Try our coffee samples!" were ok.
This is a *huge industry* - some of these companies were sending us checks for $60,000 per month to blast out emails.
CAN-SPAM definitely has NOT helped. I believe that it has made the problem much worse, and it's just going to get worse until that POS law is repealed.
Alternative ways (Score:2)
Alternatively, if we just buy everything they can offer, they will have nothing to sell no more, the spam will go extinct too.
1.21 Gigawatt News (Score:2)
GOD, ISN'T OBVIOUS BY NOW??!?!?! Was I somehow teleported back to 1990 when this was actually news or am I reading slashdot?!? HELP MEEEE!!!
Wow! (Score:2)
Wow! These brits are geniuses!
Bad behavior? (Score:2)
Only an idiot would think that v1agRA or home mortgages should be bought through email.
Dividing by zero continues (Score:4, Interesting)
Spam is an economic problem and requires an economic solution.
This story focuses on one side of it, but the amount of profit is *NOT* the problem as long as the spammers think they can divide by zero as far as the costs are concerned. Email is not and never has been free, but by designing SMTP to pretend email is free, spam is the inevitable result. If the spammer thinks another 10 million spams cost nothing, but will possibly find one more sucker to send in $39.95, then the RoI looks infinite. BROKEN economic model!
The only option that will solve the spam problem is a sound economic approach that puts a non-zero cost on each email message. I think that could be done by requiring prepaid postage. I don't know about you, but I would certainly opt in for a system that was absolutely guaranteed not to get any mass-of-stinkage spam. (This could be done transparently and compatibly with the existing SMTP email system.)
Once you have a real economic model, then you can add all the bells and whistles, and actually I have nothing against legitimate advertising from legitimate companies--as long as I control the flow and especially if I can target what I receive. In particular, I'd like a system that would let advertisers bid for my time. Something like "I'll accept a small amount of advertising email, and I'm interested in these products. What's it worth to you to reach me?" By small in this context, I'd be measuring it in terms of time, say 15 minutes per day where each worthwhile ad will probably take 1 minute to read.
The email service provider would have some of my personal information to help "market" my valuable time. However, it would be strongly in their interest to carefully safeguard my anonymity, since leaking my personal information would destroy their own value. Also, since they would be getting a percentage of the take, it would of course be in their interest to maximize the advertising-related revenue I'd receive for those few ads.
However, none of this is possible without a REAL economic model underlying email.
Re:Dividing by zero continues (Score:3, Informative)
Your post advocates a
(x) technical ( ) legislative (x) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
(x) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
(x) No one will be able to
Re:Dividing by zero continues (Score:3, Informative)
Posted by the phone.. "Never buy anything from anyone that calls you. It may be a fraud."
Posted by the computer.. "Never buy from anyone that mails you. It's probably a fraud."
If you want something, search it out. Find the reputable dealers. The real suppliers are in the yellow pages or can be found with a Google search. Don't buy anything from an unknown supplier without finding out about the BBB complaints and web suc
It's all my fault... (Score:5, Funny)
Mortgage spam economics are little different (Score:5, Informative)
In the course of my pre-suit investigation, I did several canary traps [wikipedia.org]. Just one response to one piece of spam resulted in calls from over 40 mortgage brokers. These brokers had paid between $30 and $50 dollars for that lead. They had purchased it from a "lead generator" company who had paid between $20 and $30 dollars, and these companies had in turn bought it from another lead generator company! And I haven't even reached the actual spammer yet.
So, one response to one piece of spam funded an entire chain of companies selling leads, generating well over $1000 in income for various persons. The consumer had parted with no cash...
Re:Hang them! (Score:2)
Re:Hang them! (Score:2)
Re:No-spam registration sites (Score:2)
(1) Why would spammers voluntarly reduce the size of the audience they reach out to when not legally enforced?
Because even though spamming is lower-cost advertising compared to traditional marketing channels, there is still a per-email cost associated; there is no point in advertising to someone who is not interested, if it is costing money. See also Targeted Marketing and One-to-one Marketing.
(2) The site is likely a dupe and serves the opposite purpose: to let spammers know about your e-mail and, mo
worrying, or just wanting? (Score:2)
You'd have to a total idiot to believe you could get one without painful scars or cancer-causing drugs, sure, but even a self-confident and intelligent man can want to be way beyond average.
Look, wives don't stay virgins for long. Sometimes wives even give birth. Yeah, that's right, a giant 10-pound (4.5 kg) baby might streach the love hole to cosmic proportions. After she's streached to over 4" (10 cm) diameter for a respectably-sized baby, a MASSIVE PENIS starts looking us