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.""
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.
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:Just thought this was funny (Score:2, Interesting)
Whatever happened to my Rock and Roll?
Appols to Ian Drury and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
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.
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...
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.
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
Re:1 in 10? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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.
Re:1 out of 10?! (Score:3, Interesting)
I know there are holes in this idea, but it seems like a starting poitn anyway...
Re:Dividing by zero continues (Score:2, Interesting)
The most amusing thing i seen working on help desk (Score:2, Interesting)
Its amazing to me that people compare spam to snail junk mail, and they think its something simiple like a 'no junk mail' sign could suddently make them not receive spam. I recon these are the same people who are buying stuff they receive from spam.
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 prematurely to make the spammers think you received the data even thought it was dropped, you could trick them into using up much more bandwidth than you. Sort of like a DDOS, except they're the ones initiating the connections.
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 "at least one" credit card company) is losing money from me. I transfer the max balance whenever they offer me 0%, and then pay it back before the offer expires.
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:Most users just aren't very smart (Score:2, Interesting)