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Spam

Spam Doesn't Work? 545

Posted by CmdrTaco from the so-why-do-people-do-it dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Businesses who believe the hype that spam works should read this article. It seems that the more recipients that you spam, the less likely they are to respond (startlingly obvious, but this seems to prove it)." Somehow I doubt this. If Spam didn't work, why do I get a hundred pieces of it every morning? Someone is buying.
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Spam Doesn't Work? More

Spam Doesn't Work?

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  • Spam works! (Score:5, Funny)

    by pieterh ( 196118 ) on Monday July 22, 2002 @10:37AM (#3930398) Homepage
    My penis is 12" long, and I have never run out of laser toner. Surely this proves it!?

    • Re:Spam works! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by purpledinoz ( 573045 )
      Spammers should be shot.

      The people who buy stuff from companies that spam should also be shot. This behaviour encourages spammers. If you're going to buy something from a spammer, at least go to the website manually, not by clicking that link in the e-mail. But most of the world is stupid, and does not know this.

    • Re:Spam works! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Monday July 22, 2002 @12:25PM (#3931337) Journal
      My penis is 12" long, and I have never run out of laser toner. Surely this proves it!?

      Yes, but it started out 13" long and you only have an inkjet, which never draws upon the laser cartrigdes.

      You've been suckered, dude. Take your spammers and your shortened wanker to court.

  • Faulty conclusion (Score:5, Insightful)

    by maiden_taiwan ( 516943 ) on Monday July 22, 2002 @10:39AM (#3930411)
    The study was about asking informational questions, not about hawking products to the masses. The "bystander effect" doesn't apply here.

    • Re:Faulty conclusion (Score:5, Informative)

      by kiwimate ( 458274 ) on Monday July 22, 2002 @10:57AM (#3930596) Journal
      Someone who read the article -- will wonders never cease?

      You're correct. The "researchers" in question sent out an e-mail to students, staff, etc., at the Technion technology institute (where they work), asking if the institute had a biology faculty. This is rather different from someone sending out an e-mail to 10,000 random addresses, offering... well, you know what they offer... and hoping for a bite from a small percentage.

      The methodology utilized, the fact they were seeking information rather than selling something a la normal spam, etc., etc. -- I just don't think there's any way you can legitimately extrapolate this to apply to spam in the accepted sense of the word.

      • Number of Recipients (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Bilbo ( 7015 ) on Monday July 22, 2002 @01:14PM (#3931784) Homepage
        Also, their conclusion was based on the fact that the recipients knew how many other people were included in the CC: field. The more people there were, the less likely they were to respond. All pretty intuitive, but hardly applicable to email that is addressed to hundreds of thousands of people.

        Gee... I'd hate to see the CC: field for that test message...

  • Obvious? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Geeyzus ( 99967 ) <mark_madej@yahMENCKENoo.com minus author> on Monday July 22, 2002 @10:39AM (#3930418)
    the more recipients that you spam, the less likely they are to respond (startlingly obvious

    How is this obvious at all, or even correct? The people you spam have no knowledge of how many others get spammed by the same person/company. Although your odds of getting a bite have to be ridiculously low, they most certainly have to go up with every mailbox you hit. Basic statistics!

    Mark

    • Re:Obvious? (Score:5, Informative)

      by gmack ( 197796 ) <<gmack> <at> <innerfire.net>> on Monday July 22, 2002 @10:47AM (#3930514) Homepage Journal
      Actually having 2 diffrent past employers experiment with it I can tell you first hand that is exactly correct.

      The smaller lists are more likely to be a list of previous customers or otherwise targeted.

      The larger lists on the other hand are likely to be spidered off websites and ripped from newspostings then minimally cleaned to find the easy to spot bad addresses.

      The larger lists are also more likely to get people so pissed off about spam that they are likely to do something about it that involves a loss of resources on the spammer's side.

    • Re:Obvious? (Score:4, Funny)

      by jdreed1024 ( 443938 ) on Monday July 22, 2002 @10:48AM (#3930521)
      Basic statistics!

      14% of all statistics are made up on the spot. Besides, statistics don't mean anything. 32% of all people know that.

    • bcc: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Knacklappen ( 526643 )
      How is this obvious at all, or even correct? The people you spam have no knowledge of how many others get spammed by the same person/company.

      100% Ack. Very often I get spam mails to an address like "info" and my address has been included in the "bcc:" field, preventing me from seeing how many others have got the same mail.

      But in my case, the theory is valid: the more spam mails I get, the less likely I read them to determine if there is actually something useful among them. I just mark all mails, deselect my personal friends and hit "Delete"... Well if there was a reminder mail of my library... sorry guys... ;-)
    • There's presumably a mediating variable: if you're spamming more people, it's probably because you're selling something people are less likely to want and you're probably using even more slimy tactics, and you chase off anyone who actually might buy your product.

      In order words, if you send to only a small number of people, you're likely to have a product that people actually buy. Spam that goes to everybody is for products that nobody wants, and nobody buys them.

  • Yea right. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Neck_of_the_Woods ( 305788 )
    This is like saying that if I use a sniper rifle I can get more kills than if I use a Nuke. Sure I can narrow cast what I kill, maybe be more effective at getting a target, but if I drop a bomb I get my target and my just maybe a couple hundred thousand more. Please if spam did not work they would not do it. You might be able to prove that it's usefullness is falling off, but they just see that as less of a return. They don't care because the cost is next to nothing. "I only got 2% return, send out more it is pretty much free anyway."

    • Maybe you should READ THE ARTICLE (Score:5, Informative)

      by A nonymous Coward ( 7548 ) on Monday July 22, 2002 @10:51AM (#3930544)
      What they say is that the more addresses on the Cc: header, the less likely each recipient is to respond. Nothing to do with how many people actually get the same message, only how many other addresses each recipient actually sees.

    • Re:Yea right. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by gmack ( 197796 )
      Spam is _NOT_ cheap. It only looks that way at first glance. Sending a large batch has the very expensive consequence of having your internet connection terminated.

      The only successfull spammers need to have employees dedicated to keeping a constant supply of dialups to spam from/ host from.

      The spam marketing companies look cheap as well but then they don't have to care when your isp gets pissed they just pocket the money and find a new customer.

      Spamming would be a lot cheaper if not for the anti spam crowed but then we would probably see 100 times the volume of it we see now.

      • Re:Yea right. (Score:3, Insightful)

        by lamz ( 60321 )

        Spam is very cheap. In fact, it is almost free. Most spam is sent via stolen accounts, or legit accounts opened with stolen credit card numbers.

    • With a sniper rifle, you can take out the targets that matter.

      With a nuke, everyone dies.

      During WW2, we used 2,000 planes to level a city just to destroy a single factory.

      Today we drop one bomb from one plane and close the factory.

      If I email 2,000,000 people, i'll get about 500-2,000 responses. If I email 10,000 targeted comsumers of a given product I'll get 1000-4000 responses and 500-1250 purchases.

  • I have 4 Letters for you.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by dmarien ( 523922 ) <dmarienNO@SPAMdmarien.com> on Monday July 22, 2002 @10:40AM (#3930424) Homepage
    T.M.D.A.

    It stands for tagged message delivery agent.

    Read more here [tmda.net]

    Number of spam recieved since I installed it 3 weeks ago: None!

    Go ahead, dmarien@dmarien.com spam the hell outta me. It wont get though! Sell my e-mail! Post it on any message board you want. I'm not gonna get any spam.

    If any of you /.ers are running qmail and managing your own email server, i wholeheartedly reccommend you investigate tmda. I enjoy checking my mail again.

    • Does not solve my problem. (Score:3, Informative)

      by eddy ( 18759 )

      Doesn't seem to stop spam as far as I can see, only "hide it". So when you say 'Number of spam recieved' you really mean 'Number of spam read'?

    • ahem, better change your forged e-mail address than :)

      Besides jokes, best way to fight with spam is fight it, via free services like spamcop.net.

      You of course can send your own spam reports but believe spammers use advanced tricks over and over, even hex IP's included!

    • Re:I have 4 Letters for you.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Scutter ( 18425 ) on Monday July 22, 2002 @11:26AM (#3930803) Journal
      My problem is that, while it will keep the spam out of my mailbox, the TMDA method still consumes resources on my server. Doubly so now, too because each incoming "unknown" mail will generate an outgoing message. If I can deny the message before the session even reaches the DATA phase (i.e. by using RBL's and checking the header), then I don't have to deal with the spam at all.

  • Duh... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by hlh_nospam ( 178327 )
    The recipient of spam bears essentially ALL of the cost. Since the marginal cost of sending a spam is basically zero, it doesn't matter if the response percentage is low.

    Spam will continue to be a worsening problem until some way is found to fix the fact that it doesn't cost the spammer anything.
    • The person sending still has their own equipment to deal with, and a nice fat pipe to be able to send all those messages. I would put the cost at about 70/30 with the recipient paying the larger amount.
      • Although actually, I'd like to see a good study that shows how much time is lost to spam on the recipients end. I would say I spend maybe a total 2 minutes per day handling spam. (not much gets through spamassassin, but I still check every once in awhile to make sure nothing valid got flagged).

        That is 2 minutes a day that I probably would have spent doing nothing else anyway.

        So what about bandwidth, clock cycles, etc.? As far as I can tell spam has never slowed down my network connection or my pc significantly that it affected me in anyway. About the only place I see it causing problems is with the mail servers, but if you lock your server down well, you're not going to have many problems.

        So, maybe it's 50/50 or even lower, especially when you look at it as to a total of what the spammer sends, vs. what the non-buyer spends.

  • Headline is wrong. (Score:5, Informative)

    by imta11 ( 129979 ) on Monday July 22, 2002 @10:41AM (#3930435)
    Altough this is an interesting topic, the qrite up and headline have nothing to do with the article.

    The article talks about people ignoring questions from people that send the question to a group.

    • Re:Headline is wrong. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Peyna ( 14792 ) on Monday July 22, 2002 @10:51AM (#3930541) Homepage
      Yeah, it doesn't say anything at all about anonymous e-mails to people soliciting goods and services. It's about writing a group of people you know asking for assistance with something, etc. Of course, I wonder if it would have the same effect if you simply used the BCC: line and wrote it so they thought they were the only person receiving. It isn't too difficult to send mail to a large group of people and make it appear that each person is the only receiving it. If they know other people got it, then yes, they're more than likely going to assume someone else will do it.

      • Re:Headline is wrong. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by outlier ( 64928 ) on Monday July 22, 2002 @11:27AM (#3930817)
        Of course, I wonder if it would have the same effect if you simply used the BCC: line and wrote it so they thought they were the only person receiving.

        The study in the article did just that. Some of the people received an email that looked like it was just to them, others saw many names in the to: field. They found that people who thought they were singled out were more likely to be helpful.

        The relevant psychological phenomena are called bystander apathy [chuckiii.com] and diffusion of responsibility [ndirect.co.uk]. In each, the more people in a group, the less likely each individual is to help/work.

        This is nothing particularly new, it just says that people behave consistently in person or when contacted by email. It has nothing to do with commercial SPAM, only with requests for information/help to others.

  • Why (Score:2)

    by Mr Guy ( 547690 )
    Somehow I doubt this. If Spam didn't work, why do I get a hundred pieces of it every morning? Someone is buying.

    Because of risk v. return. Sending spam once you have an internet connection is for all intents and purposes free. Until you can prove it actually hurts the previous revenue stream, there is no reason not to spam.

    Consider it this way, if I send 10,000 peices of spam, and log on for free, I need one response to make a profit. If I don't even bother with ethics, and instead compile a list of people who respond (auto responders count), people who try and unsubscribe, and people who flame back, then I sell those names, I make a killing.
    Just like used car salesmen, real estate agents, and lawyers I don't need anything valuable to sell, I only need a few suckers.*

    * Obviously, a gross generalization. I appologize for comparing real estate agents to lawyers.
    • I appologize for comparing real estate agents to lawyers.

      Why?

      They're equally slimey. I guess it could be considered an insult to Lawyers since they actually had to get an education.

      Before somebody flames me for insulting real estate agents, I do in fact know what I'm talking about. My Grandmother was a real estate agent for a long time, as were 2 of her husbands, and my Dad tried it out for a couple of years when he decided he was getting to old for construction. He went back to construction because he couldn't handle the rampant dishonesty in the real estate business.

      Oh yeah, and my mother-in-law was an escrow officer, and she has plenty to say about real eastate agents as well.

  • Anyhow, the article does not apply to most spam (Score:3, Informative)

    by pieterh ( 196118 ) on Monday July 22, 2002 @10:42AM (#3930441) Homepage
    It refers to long 'cc' lists, and is intuitvely true. Any self-respecting spam is sent personally to me, and really professional spam has a forged 'from' header that is someone I know. (Maybe I can patent this concept. "Description of a Computerised Machine for the Convincement of Naive Buyers as to the Authenticity and Validity of Unrequested Commercial Messages".)

  • Just to clarify... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Tickenest ( 544722 )
    The point of the article was that the likelihood of getting a response was lessened if the person receiving the message knew that others were getting it. Really, the more someone feels as though they're getting personalized attention, the more likely they are to respond. When I have to ask several professors the same thing, for example, I'll email each one personally, rather than sending one mass email, since I want each one to feel as though I'm giving them personalized attention on the matter (a small example, to be sure, but I think it illustrates the point nicely.)

  • Do something about it Taco.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by reaper20 ( 23396 ) on Monday July 22, 2002 @10:42AM (#3930444) Homepage
    Somehow I doubt this. If Spam didn't work, why do I get a hundred pieces of it every morning? Someone is buying.

    OK Taco... someone mentions this everytime you complain about spam, install Spamassassin [spamassassin.org] and be done with it. No joke, over 5 spams a day to a spam maildir, where it sits for 2 days just in case it's legit, then promptly to /dev/null ... it even makes getting spams fun.

    Hell, if you need help, fork over one of them slashdot.org email addresses and I'll help you for free. :P
    • That's not doing something about the problem. That's hiding the problem. Some of us are not interested in hiding the problem since it solves nothing.

      The people that don't want the spam are already doing their part by not buying from spammers and getting their connections shut off when possible. Spamassassin and the like won't help towards that goal - you think a spammer cares at all if they're not heard by those who won't buy from them anyways?
      • Yeah, but until:

        a) Laws prevent spamming or
        b) I'm allowed to track them down, kill them, and be bestowed with riches for my trouble...

        then we really have no choice but to figure out better ways to ignore them. Until we as an "internet community" weed out and eliminate spammers to get OUR bandwidth back, I can really see of no better way to make email usable again, that is of course, except for option b above. heh.
    • Until a recent /. thread, I didn't realize there was such a tool as Fetchmail [tuxedo.org]. This makes it exceedingly easy to use SpamAssassin [spamassassin.org].

      I thought that since I didn't own/administer the mail server for my address that I couldn't get spamassassin installed or even use it in any way. But if you use Fetchmail on your OWN box, it pops/sends from your pop account on the remote machine to your address on the local machine, where you can use all the spamassassin & procmail stuff you want.

      I didn't think that I could ever get SpamAssassin working for me, but after getting fetchmail working and a few Perl module installs later, SpamAssassin is tagging those nasty spams for easy filtering. It's great
    • No joke, over 5 spams a day to a spam maildir,

      You're only getting 5 spams a day? why the hell do you bother with spamassasin? i'd give my left nut to only get 5 a day. hell, i get 5 spams a day from PEOPLE I KNOW (fwds, chain mail, etc), more like 5 real spam every hour.

      people like you don't have a right to use spamassasin. wussy.
    • Whether it works or not, it doesn't cost the spammer anything, so why not do it? 1 customer is better than 0...

  • You're getting spam because you don't use Pyzor (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Moderation abuser ( 184013 ) on Monday July 22, 2002 @10:42AM (#3930449)


    http://pyzor.sourceforge.net/

    HTH

  • Somehow I doubt this. If Spam didn't work, why do I get a hundred pieces of it every morning?

    It depends. If spam is your only method of advertising and/or you're running a scam then spam won't hurt your buisness. On the other hand "legitimate" buisnesses who send spam are probably thinking that more publicity is better and are under the impression that spam sent is really helping them.

  • Cost and Customers (Score:3, Insightful)

    by flacco ( 324089 ) on Monday July 22, 2002 @10:43AM (#3930468)
    A couple thoughts, actually.

    • If spamming is basically cost-free for the spammer - why not?
    • tech-savvy spammers don't sell penis enlargement equipment - they sell the concept of spam to penis-enlargement equipment manufacturers.
  • At least one powerful industry group [onion.com] is lobbying against anti-spam laws, so I guess it must work for them:

  • Spam enough people... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Albanach ( 527650 )
    It seems obvious that if you spam a million people you are going to hit someone interested in your product - whatever your product is. The fact that spamming a million folk costs pennies is what makes it so appealing to those selling products which have a minority interest.

    I get very little spam these days, but then my mailserver has a blocked senders list that is now over 1,000 lines long. That I find to be the most effective method to stop unwanted mail. Today I started blocking SMTP server IPs as well. I check my logfile every morning and check who was bounced in the previous 24 hours. I haven't yet seen an email bounce that I think might have been legit.

    In other words, if you want to block spam for your users, it requires a bit of time each day. I calculate it is time well spent as it saves staff from being snowed under by the stuff, and saves me from getting multiple emails from staff who all want to know how an email offering them a low cost penis extension made it into their inbox.

    Spam isn't going away. Either you tollerate it or take action to stop it getting into your inbox. Of course it'd help if a few ISP's - today's culprit has been swbell - actually took action against their DSL users spamming of their broadband connection. Why don't they share information of folk they have had to disconnect due to breeching their AUP - if it suddenly became difficult to get any internet access, spamming might become more hassle than it's worth.

  • But it doesn't have to be a lot of people doing so. Given how many they can send to, it only has to be a few percentages buying the products or services. Spam is a cheap way to advertise, that is why they can keep doing it again and again even if few people buy the stuff. The cost of advertisement is spread out on everyone who has to pass it on or who recieves it.

  • Uhh.. BCC? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 22, 2002 @10:45AM (#3930487)
    This article doesn't say anything about "spam doesn't work". The article says that people will likely ignore things with lots of people in the CC: block.

    The clear moral has nothing to do with not utilizing junk e-mail. The moral is, if you're sending something to a bunch of people, use your mail client's "bcc" (blind carbon copy) header, not to: or cc:. This is a good idea for a variety of other reasons as well.

    Moreover, the example they tested this with was not a commercial mailing. It was an informational query. People didn't respond because they assumed someone else would get it. Not buying the product listed in a commercial spam because "someone else will" does not make any sense. (Not that I know anyone who has ever bought ANYTHING, or even visited a website, based on a spam they recieved, but i digress.) If you want something relevant to spam, try spamming a bunch of people with one link using CC, then spamming a bunch of people with another link using BCC, and see which link gets more hits. You'll probably find that there's a psychological tendency to more like things that feel "personal". (But i think if there's a truism in the internet world today, it's that NO ONE likes spam..)

    Silly taco.

  • Useless article. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by damu ( 575189 )
    That "experiment" was rather useless, first they used a woman as the From person, the lonely computer geeks immediatly saw "fresh meat" printed all accross the email, so they wanted to be helpful but also help themselves. Next, the email required the person to actually respond. How many of us have actually recevied spam that wants to "talk" with us? Other than ofcourse the African millionare that wants to use your bank account to extract money out of the contry.

    In conclusion this article proves nothing, and the fact that spam is on the rise proves 1 of 2 things. Merchants investing on spam are idiots or people buying products that see adverstise on spam are idiots.

  • Misleading title (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Neuronerd ( 594981 )
    The paper does not show that spam does not work. It just proves that when sending spammail you should only put 1 person into the to section. And the fact that the virtual girl got responses from such a high percentage of recipients might be a hint that spammers should always use female names in reply to addresses.

  • Are they really buying?? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CarrionBird ( 589738 ) on Monday July 22, 2002 @10:47AM (#3930503) Journal
    I think a main reason we still get 20+ spams a day is not that they're effective, but that they're very cheap. In conparsion to other forms of advertising, the cost of spam is trivial.

    Any type of computer based advertising has a high annoyance factor. Most of us grew up with ad-less computers, so why should we submit to it now? In contrast, most TV has always been a advertising vehicle, so we don't mind as much when we get hit with TV ads.

    • Additionally, it's important that some people believe it is effective. It could end up being a big waste of time, and the spammer would eventually discover this. But not until they have contributed to a few thousand spams.

      People have been getting involved in pyramid schemes too, but it doesn't mean they work. It means some subset of foolish people believe they will.

      Spam may in fact work, but just because it is out there doesn't prove this, IMO.

      mark
  • This article is talking about a different kind of spam - That more innocuous kind where someone asks if for an altruistic act on your part. The idea is that if you ask alot of people for help, and they all know you are asking alot of people, a higher percentage will shrug it off in the expectation that you'll get the help somewhere else.

    On the other hand, "Do this for yourself!" spam would seem to fall into a whole different category. It's no longer a matter of letting the responsibility for following through fall on someone else, because the act is completely selfish. If you don't do it, *you* don't recieve the "benefits". The study doesn't really address this kind of spam at all.

    -Andrew
  • Spamming people also drives some away as potential customers. Perhaps not for nameless spammers that I would never purchase from, but when larger companies do things, they lose my business.
  • If Spam didn't work, why do I get a hundred pieces of it every morning? Cause you are hungry and it beats cat food?
  • Gotta love this line:
    Some just tried chatting "her" up with some very personal questions.

    I guess even if it is a person you don't know, and you are a single male. Anyone is a potential partner. :-P

    In a way, it kinda proves a that porn spam is effective when people try to chat someone up who isn't even being suggestive.

  • Target (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ianscot ( 591483 )
    Was this about "spam"? The link here doesn't really say something that's much like the Slashdot version, does it? I mean,
    Emailing a question to hordes of people is no use if you really want to know the answer, says psychologists. They found that the more people you copy an email to, the more each recipient is likely to ignore it.
    That's not spam, it's more of a general how-to-mine-e-mail question. People could apply it at work, for example -- don't ask 45 people to fix something, ask one. There's no argument here about how sending to more addresses lessens the rate of return; instead I see sociological thoughts about "diffusion of responsibility" and a little study where they sent enquiries from a ficitious person and categorized the responses across 200+ recipients.

    The lesson you'd take away, if you were an advertizing skunk, is to address things specifically to individuals as much as is possible. Advertisers know that, which is why they spend money on mailing lists and attempt to make everything look like it's personally addressed to the recipient. Next time you win the sweepstakes, Name of Addressee, you'll see that.

    But spam? That's different. (Or did they have "Sarah Feldman" ask how she could date more women?)

  • Some just tried chatting "her" up with some very personal questions.

    How could you editors? I am so disappointed now!

  • Article not about commercial spam . . . (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SimplyCosmic ( 15296 ) on Monday July 22, 2002 @10:55AM (#3930579) Homepage
    If you haven't read the article yet, it's not about commercial spam at all, but the psychological effects of getting an email asking a question from someone you know, with more names in the cc: field resulting in more of a "someone else will answer it" effect.

    It really has nothing to do with commercial spam, and the original post here did nothing to make that distinction.

  • The article has nothing to do with spam. It talks about emailing questions.

    This is about the fifth time this has happened recently and I'm starting to become concerned about the quality of the journalists here.

    Of course spam works. I'm not a spammer myself, but obviously it works, or it wouldn't be done by the same people over and over.

    -B

  • Obvious explanation... (Score:5, Funny)

    by jvmatthe ( 116058 ) on Monday July 22, 2002 @10:56AM (#3930587) Homepage
    No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public. --- H. L. Mencken
    s/taste/stupidity/ and I think it still works. Explains a lot, doesn't it? ;^)

    I think Barnum also spoke to this subject...

  • The article linked to is not about spam at all...it's about sending emails personal emails to multiple recipients. The study found that if you send an email (say, asking about the date of a concert) to 1 person, you're more likely to get a useful response than if you send it to multiple people, because in the latter situation, people tend to always assume someone else will respond to it.

    I agree, spam sucks, but that was a blatant misrepresentation of the article...

  • RTFA (Score:2)

    by kryzx ( 178628 )
    This article, while interesting, has nothing to do with spam. I suggest that CmdrTaco has been conned by the anon submitter due to his choice not to RTFA.
  • Somehow I doubt this. If Spam didn't work, why do I get a hundred pieces of it every morning? Someone is buying.

    Somehow I doubt this. If subscriptions didn't work, why are there hundreds of sites offering them? Someone is buying.

    -Sean
  • Please, people, READ THE ARTICLE !

    The article does NOT claim that "Spam doesn't work". The experimenters sent out LEGITIMATE questions by email to people. Some of these recipients saw (from, presumably, the To: header) only their name as a recipient. Others saw that 4 others had also received the same query. The result was that people who knew that others had been asked the same question were less likely to respond than people who were listed as the sole recipient. The result that people are less likely to act if they know others are also in a position to act is a well known result in social psychology called "diffusion of responsibility".

    They did NOT find what was previously implied, i.e. that sending an email to more recipients reduces response rate.

    THEY DID NOT FIND THAT "Spam doesn't work".
  • If Spam didn't work, why do I get a hundred pieces of it every morning? Someone is buying.
    Well, not necessarily. A lot of spam is sent by clueless individuals who've been suckered into some "make up to a zillion dollars a minute in your spare time" scheme. But I guess that's less common nowadays than it used to be.

    If we change "Nobody's buying" to "virtually nobody's buying" the situation becomes clearer. Statistically speaking, the two statements are the same. But even a statistically insignificant response can make a spam campaign profitable. That's because there's no per-message cost. Or at least, none for the sender!

    Our email system was designed on the assumption voluntary self-restraint was all that it took to prevent abuse of the network. That assumption hasn't been true ever since the Internet outgrew its academic/research roots. We need a simple way to make people accountable for the network resources they consume. That's a big issue in all Internet apps, but it's particulary true for email. Until we tackle this issue, spam will continue to be a problem.

  • The article was based on a person requesting information, more of a "help me" type message. The feeling that someone else will help is understandable in this case. It doesn't apply to sales requests, "Buy this thingy now!", because they are assumed to be impersonal with the response being based on the recipient's desires only. People respond to ads on TV and it is safe to say that they are pretty impersonal.
  • I have a hard time believing that many people WOULD respond favorably to spam. I always joke that everyday spammers call me poor, fat, bald and underendowed and expect me to buy their products. Those aren't the most annoying though. Why in the hell do I get mortgage and loan offers in the spambox? IS there ANYBODY out there who is really stupid enough to trust something as important as their mortgage to a company that goes out of their way to hide thier identity?
  • This article is completely irrelevant to spam. It's essentially a study in Diffusion of Responsibility and related, well-known psychological phenomena.

    Yes, it's quite relevant, and suggests the 'net may extend well known psychological phenomena to unforseen degrees. But as for spam, it doesn't tell us a thing.
  • here's what i think... you need to remember that the internet explosion made it very easy for every tom dick an harry to start a porn site and subsequently start raking in the dough. these guys aren't business men, they're essentially farmers wearing tuxedos who threw their money in the air and danced a jig while it falls on their shoulders. when the whole thing started to slow down (and it has!) they didn't necessarily have the business sense to adapt to the new market so they kept doing what they always did. by hook or by crook. spam may have worked once and the adult webmaster involved might have seen one signup in every 10,000 emails that went out. so the numbers dropped to 1 in every 100,000 - what do you do? send 10 times more spam. smart, huh? i don't do it with my site (nameless but strong) because i think there are much better ways to spend my promotional resources. high and mighty? no, still in business. gub
    • when the whole thing started to slow down (and it has!) they didn't necessarily have the business sense to adapt to the new market so they kept doing what they always did. by hook or by crook. spam may have worked once and the adult webmaster involved might have seen one signup in every 10,000 emails that went out. so the numbers dropped to 1 in every 100,000 - what do you do? send 10 times more spam. smart, huh? i don't do it with my site (nameless but strong) because i think there are much better ways...

      You sound qualified to write Running a Porn Site for Dummies (Or "Setup a Porn Site in 21 Days with Java and XML"). Even if one decides against it, it could make for an interesting read.....minus the Java and XML.
  • There's an informative piece about spam in this week's Onion: http://www.theonion.com/onion3825/anti-spam_legisl ation.html [theonion.com]
  • Yet they haven't gone away yet either.
  • 1/10th of a percent success means failure just about everywhere but spam. 1/10th of a percent of 1 million is still 1000. Would even seem 1/100th of a percent success is still success in the spam world. That's 100 customers for a few bucks in adverstising. Basically you can't lose.

    Until that changes spam will just get worse and worse.
  • We get lots of spam for basically 2 reasons:
    • scammers who want to get your personal info so they can rip you off or add you to a mailing list;
    • people selling huge mailing list to clueless businesses that want to jump on the internet bandwagon but don't really understand what they're doing.

    If a business conducts its own mailings, it will quickly find out that spam doesn't work and change its approach. Well, maybe not quickly, but they'll eventually get the idea that it's costing them both money and sales. But if a buisiness outsources its mass email campaign to an unscrupulous spammer who's more than happy to take their money, they'll probably keep right on spamming. The spammers will probably even show their clients numbers that show the "incredible" success that their other customers have had with the same plan.

    Suits are dumb; just show them a upward trending graph with a big pie chart, say a bunch of catchy words that don't mean anything but sound good, and they'll buy anything.

  • fwd'ing based spamfiltering? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kisrael ( 134664 ) on Monday July 22, 2002 @11:24AM (#3930778) Homepage
    I'm in the process of building in a visual-tagging-only whitelist for my personal homebrew webmail sysytem, msgs from people I've ever mailed and/or with subjects I've written with are marked "likely not spam".

    I wouldn't mind sending the rejects to a secondary filter, and then having it send the non-spam ones back to a special address I can pull together...so who offers a service like that?

  • someone's buying (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Vodak ( 119225 ) on Monday July 22, 2002 @11:31AM (#3930842)
    "If Spam didn't work, why do I get a hundred pieces of it every morning? Someone is buying."

    That's simple, alot of small business owners are stupid and they buy lists. that's who's buying

  • I'll tell you why Spam doesn't work. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Phoenix ( 2762 ) on Monday July 22, 2002 @11:32AM (#3930853)
    First of all there is the annoyance factor. Today I recieved 7 messages from 7 different addresses and they all had the same thing. A picture of a naked woman...the same woman in all 7 messages. Since I never know who is going to be in my house at any given time this is not appropiate.

    I do not own my own house and therefore I do not need a second mortgage, nor do I have the ability to sell my non-existant house.

    As a guy I'm quite sure that I do not need to enhance my bust size nor does my girlfriend need her penis enlarged.

    Spam does not work because there is no targeting involved. People who spam equate thier advertising tricks with TV ads...this is very wrong. Notice with TV ads that there is some thought as to who watches a show at any given time and the ads reflect this. You'll find Supermarket and Food ads near mealtimes, you see car ads when the 30-40 year old people watch, Toys during cartoon or cartoon specials. They target and they work. Spam does not.

    Also with TV ads there is a way of getting the product. Car Dealerships give addresses and phone numbers. A Supermarket will tell show you a map. A Toy company will tell you to go to a toy store of your choice. Spam in way of contrast leaves you with no way of contacting the person who sent it as the mailer account changes each time it sends out a batch, and the webpages are often not a listed URL, but nothing more than an IP address...no consumer confidence from me at those pages.

    The only thing that Spam sells consistantly is products to ease the symptoms of stress that comes from getting 50 of the [censored]ing things a day.

  • How To Stop Spam (Score:4, Interesting)

    by the eric conspiracy ( 20178 ) on Monday July 22, 2002 @11:35AM (#3930899)
    Spam is what economicists call an external diseconomy. Simply speaking, it's a resource that general society pays for, not the business. Since the business views the resource as being low or no cost, it will use the resource as much as possible, disregarding the fact that it is costing internet users everywhere.

    These are exactly the forces that cause industrial pollution. It costs businesses little or nothing to dump their waste products in local lakes; society as a whole pays for the degradation of the environment.

    When you have an external diseconomy, the only way to restrain businesses from taking advantage is to change the cost structure - make businesses pay the true cost of spam through internet rate changes, or enact legislation to make it illegal (the later is the strategy used to control pollution).

  • It's not the recipients who are buying (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SheldonYoung ( 25077 ) on Monday July 22, 2002 @12:03PM (#3931137)
    You get spam because some guillible guy in marketing buys the ability to spam from an "Intenet Marketting Guru". The poor marketing guy is convinced that even a 0.1% is likely and will be profitable.

    It's not us who gets suckered into buying the crappy product that doesn't work, it's them.

  • Spam and MLM? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by lelitsch ( 31136 ) on Monday July 22, 2002 @12:29PM (#3931398)
    After a stint of sleeplessness last week I was starting to wonder if some of the spam actually comes through multi level marketing scams. Some of the pitches on late night TV (make $3000 a month on your computer) sound a lot like whoever falls for them is stuck putting up web pages or sending email about Herbal Viagra etc.

    There seem to be some somewhat legitimate businesses that seem to have fallen for list sellers, but 99,999% of the spam I get seems to deal with totally screwball products and services.

    Does anyone have an idea if MLM has discovered spam or is it really just some groups or companies that send this stuff under hundreds of different names?

  • Article has nothing to do with Spam (Score:3, Informative)

    by libertynews ( 304820 ) on Monday July 22, 2002 @12:40PM (#3931495) Homepage
    The research revolves around the number of visible email addresses in the To: (and I would imagine the Cc: headers). When people see a message sent to a bunch of others, they are less likely to respond.

    Only the crudest spam include more than your email address, most don't even have that. email addresses are like gold to spammers and they don't give them away by revealing them in a large To: or Cc: header.

    This is another example of the downfall of Slashdot. This article should never have reached the front page.

    Brian
  • > If Spam didn't work, why do I get a
    > hundred pieces of it every morning? > Someone is buying.

    Wrong. The fact that people send huge volumes of spam does not mean anyone is buying. Indeed, most spam comes from people who have been duped by list-sellers and email-sending-service sellers, into believing the same logical mistake.

    Dozens of dot-com companies spent tens of millions of dollars on TV and radio advertising. They wouldn't do that unless it worked, right? But if that's true, why did they all go bankrupt, and why did so some report that they spent more money on advertising than they received in gross sales?

    For a clever spammer, it costs almost nothing to send spam, so the mere prospect of a single sale is enough to justify sending millions of spams. For a stupid spammer who believes what the remailer or list-seller says, spamming is a bad business decision, just as many folks who advertise in the newspaper or yellow pages would probably not do so if they tracked the results and compared the cost.

    The culprits for spam are ignorance and greed, not actual profit.

  • It's called "carpet bombing" (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Mulletproof ( 513805 ) on Monday July 22, 2002 @01:37PM (#3931960) Homepage Journal
    The more bombs you drop, the more likely you are to hit something. Sure, they're unguided, but they are inexpensive and there are lots and lots and lots of them. This is especially true on the net. People are biting. They're the same people who scout the papers for coupons and better deals. Not every piece of spam is a penile enlargement ad. Granted, I dump spam as soon as I get it, but it'd be naive to think there aren't at least some good deals out there, and there are people actively searching for those deals. I have to agree CmdrTaco... Somebody is buying. It just isn't you.

  • I think Bernard Shifman discovered this lesson (Score:3, Funny)

    by cecil36 ( 104730 ) on Monday July 22, 2002 @02:00PM (#3932132) Homepage
    And he discovered it the hard way. I don't think anyone here will ever forget how he blacklisted himself from every IT employer in the industry.

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