Explaining The Business of Spam 74
ATMAvatar writes "The IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy hosted in Oakland nearly three weeks ago featured a study on the economics of spam. It attempts to identify and analyze the chain of businesses behind spam and the products that are featured. The goal was to take a more comprehensive look at the mechanics behind the industry in an attempt to identify better, alternative means to combat spam."
Low costs... (Score:3, Insightful)
...relative to the number of emails that can be sent. So even if a low percentage of gullible people buy the crap, it's profitable.
Re: (Score:3)
It doesn't even have to be profitable, there just needs to be somebody with a message they want sent. Spammers aren't paid to push products, they are paid to deliver n-thousand messages. That's why we hear stories about it taking millions of messages to earn $100.
Re:Low costs... (Score:4)
It doesn't even have to be profitable, there just needs to be somebody with a message they want sent. Spammers aren't paid to push products, they are paid to deliver n-thousand messages. That's why we hear stories about it taking millions of messages to earn $100.
Kind of hard to believe. They used to pay children to deliver newspapers until it became too expensive checking up on deliveries - and there were too many complaints about newspapers being dumped. I could tell you I'm going to deliver 10 million spam/ads but would you pay me on my word - or on the basis of sales? Even without first-hand experience of the industry (Bulk Data's business of contract data entry for merchants and medical transcription service, and a "cosy" relationship with Melbourne IT). There's thousands of script kiddie spam king wanna-be's - but they're not the ones making the money. It's the "direct marketing" people that are making the bucks. And the idea that all these viagra merchants are getting rich without having any association with the spam that drives their sales.... bullshit. If you make money off products marketed with spam - you should lose the money - unless we can prove you are linked to the spammers - in which case you should lose the money and go to jail. And quick - before ISPs take the Post Offices line that it (junk mail) keeps people in jobs.
Perhaps a law that says if you're caught spamming you have to go around to every household you spammed, and try and deliver that porn ad in person.
Re: (Score:2)
If you read the paper, it goes in to quite a bit of detail. People who actually send spam are typically paid via affiliate programs: people who sell stuff make it easy for a spammer to set up a website and ship stuff, so all they have to really do is get click-throughs.
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah I don't get why every few months there's a story discussing the Business of Spam. High speed internet access as well as computing power are just getting cheaper so sending spam is just becoming more profitable, I don't see what's left to discuss...
Re:Low costs... (Score:4, Funny)
Well, from what I've heard from people in such unsavory businesses, the profit is down. That's in conversions (convert from unknown person to paying customer) per thousand emails.
Years ago, you could get a conversion ratio of 1:300 to 1:1,000. A few years ago, the conversion rate went to something like 1:100,000 to 1:1,000,000, depending on how "clean" your list is.
The little guys trying to push their pharmaceuticals, porn sites, or whatever do very poorly, so it could only be one of every few million make a paying customer. The good money moved over to mainstream companies. Their "targeted marketing" (i.e., spam that they'll insist you asked for) from mainstream companies has a better look and feel, *and* makes it through most spam filters.
You are correct. Faster machines with more memory, and larger residential pipes make a *huge* difference. I knew someone who could send out 100,000 messages/hr on a 28.8 dialup on a machine with 128MB RAM. What's your 15MB/s up FiOS line and a machine with 4GB RAM going to do? A whole lot more, if you set it up right. So they aren't hurt as much by the poor conversion rates, they just make up for it by spamming more people.
As long as people buy from spam or "targeted marketing", the companies will continue to send it. When the sales aren't there, spam will go the way of the print department store catalogs.
Re: (Score:1)
If you need 4GB RAM to send out one million emails... well, you're doing it wrong.
Re: (Score:2)
qmail FTW.
Re: (Score:2)
I guess you haven't done any heavy mailings, have you?
You can serve them out slowly with a little bit of memory. If you're sending out a bunch of mail, you want it to be multithreaded. The more you send simultaneously, the more memory you need.
But why am I explaining computing basics to a troll anyways?
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder... is the conversion rate dropping because people are smarter, or because the sheer amount of spam has risen?
It would seem that they'd saturated the fundamental market (stupid people) pretty quickly. You can send the stupid people more offers, but even the stupid people are only going to buy so much stuff.
If they'd reached 90% of the stupid people with the first billion emails they sent out, they'd probably have to send 10 billion emails to reach 99% of the stupid people: a 10x rise in spam for a
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, a bit from column A and probably a bit from column B.
Plus, spam filters keep getting better and better, which makes it even harder for your spam to land in the respondent's mailbox.
If, in 2001, you had to send out 100,000 spams, of which only 10,00 would land in someone's mailbox and only 500 (5%) of those would convert, you probably count that as a 200:1 ratio.
Now, what if the
Re: (Score:2)
3% is still depressing, but I guess somebody's got to be two sigmas to the left on the bell curve.
Re: (Score:2)
As long as people buy from spam or "targeted marketing", the companies will continue to send it.
You might as well call all advertising/marketing spam, then. I can't see what's so terribly different about email spam compared to paper fliers through my letter box, except that the latter are harder to block.
Re: (Score:2)
One difference is that it actually costs the sender of those leaflets a non-negligible amount per person to send those, which acts as a natural rate-limiter, and also naturally causes the people sending the leaflets to be a bit clever in who they target (i.e,. don't advertise yachts in the slums). Just imagine what your letter box would look like if those leaf
Re: (Score:2)
I think you really intended to say "One difference is that postal mail spam fees are paid to the government..."
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Ok, you got me. My memory isn't perfect. It was a 56k modem with compression. And it may have been a little longer than an hour, but not more than a day.
Re: (Score:2)
Not that I see any of it...
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
That rule applies to more than just spam; everything, from Walmart to China...(or vice versa, in fact).
Re: (Score:2)
Alternatively, if people start boycotting things that are sent as spam... It could still be profitable, by driving customers away from your strongest competitor, and thus, driving some to you.
Re: (Score:2)
...relative to the number of emails that can be sent. So even if a low percentage of gullible people buy the crap, it's profitable.
Who modded this funny?. It's perfectly informative.
Re: (Score:2)
It's easy to keep costs low when you use botnets to pilfer resources that aren't yours.
If spammers had to send the emails on their own dime it might be a different ballgame.
Fine the parent company (Score:1, Funny)
of each business 5 dollars per piece of SPAM. Real businesses will distance themselves almost instantly.
Re: (Score:2)
of each business 5 dollars per piece of SPAM. Real businesses will distance themselves almost instantly.
The fine is already $16,000 [ftc.gov]. From the link:
Each separate email in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act is subject to penalties of up to $16,000, so non-compliance can be costly.
It's just a matter of actually finding them, dragging them to your jurisdiction and squeezing blood from a stone.
Re: (Score:1)
Charging for E-mail? (Score:2)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2006/feb/05/aolyahootost [guardian.co.uk]
What happened to the rumours a while ago about charging for E-mail? This might stem the tide if an E-Mail cost a very small fee to send, but considering the volumes of E-Mail sent around the world, this would not be very popular at all. There will be some bright spark out there that will come up with a solution for spam E-mails soon, but those Nigerian E-mails sure are funny...
Re: (Score:2)
Well, the system was horrible. I worked at a place where we sent a lot of mail. It was all customer service related, like password resets, billing confirmation, and expiration notices. They wanted a little something, but with the huge numbers of customers that we had, it would have been unmanageable. That doesn't even account for the normal business emails, exchanged between our network and customers.
We looked at it, said "when it's been accepted by more systems, we'll use
Re: (Score:2)
Requiring every domain t
Re: (Score:2)
All those mailing lists that you belong to, for free? Where you get free technical help? Gone.
All those spammers who use botnets, fake domains, and host their sites on other people's machines via theft of service? No effect at all.
Not to mention the whole issue of "who would collect the money and meter the usage?".
The root of the problem (Score:3, Funny)
We need to find a way of dealing with the root causes of the problem; filtering and the like is like sweeping up rat droppings, what you really need is to get rid of the rats. Perhaps if we could find a way of really making this business unprofitable.
Re: (Score:3)
Perhaps if we could find a way of really making this business unprofitable.
You mean actual Spam Assassins? Government sanctioned agents hunting down and eliminating the problem of 'spam'? I like the idea but I'm afraid those government agents are too busy at the moment shutting down 'dangerous' websites and chasing pirates.
Re: (Score:2)
That would be unethical. We need a "War on Spam" initiative. I think that would make a dent. Send a few spammers to Guantanamo. They could come from anywhere in the world and never be heard from again.
Re: (Score:2)
You're right, if we gave everyone a free 2 inches, the market for these spammers would be gone.
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps if we could find a way of really making this business unprofitable.
I'm gonna do my bit and finally stop responding and 'making mine bigger', it makes the missus cry these days anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
We need to find a way of dealing with the root causes of the problem; filtering and the like is like sweeping up rat droppings, what you really need is to get rid of the rats. Perhaps if we could find a way of really making this business unprofitable.
Abolish capitalism and the cash nexus?
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Because you end up removing something you actually *wanted* on the floor sometimes, without knowing it... so you have to either live with that, or still manually sift through the rat droppings once in a while.
Re: (Score:1)
We need to find a way of dealing with the root causes of the problem; filtering and the like is like sweeping up rat droppings, what you really need is to get rid of the rats
Hehe.. SpamRats.com, over 100 Million detected already.. But the part comes when IPv6 rolls down the Pipe!
Anti-spam industry (Score:1)
"While it has engendered both widespread antipathy and a multi-billion dollar anti-spam industry"
So at least somebody makes money on spam...
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe they're the ones causing spam to exist? Wouldn't put it past them.
The article (Score:2, Funny)
http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/%7Esavage/papers/Oakland11.pdf
apropos Mencken quote (Score:3, Funny)
âoeNo one in this world has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.â
Henry Louis Mencken
bitcoin spam!? (Score:1, Funny)
New type of spam (Score:1, Funny)
collaborators (Score:1)
spam needs not to be profitable, only visible, for (Score:1)
spam needs not to be profitable, only visible, for others to copycat it. if it's visible, it will appear to be profitable. groupons spam isn't profitable, but appears so.
Different attack (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Instead of going after the actual spammers why not fine the companies that hire them. If a Bank (Orchard Bank leaps to mind) hires an advertising company to push credit cards, fine the bank if their agent uses SPAM as a marketing tool.
You were close to the point in the article, but you're after the wrong target (the merchants). Oddly, you picked a bank as a merchant, but it's the banks that are handling the merchant transactions. This is why the US targeted financial institutions in their online poker crackdown.
From the article: "All told, they saw 13 banks handling 95% of the 76 orders for which they received transaction information. [..] This points to a fruitful avenue to reduce spam: go after the banks."
What happens if you respond to SPAM? (Score:2)
A few days ago, I read an article about that here [marginalrevolution.com]. Turns out they are serious businesses. Well, at least as serious as you can get if you send SPAM :) . Just sharing with you, people.
Re: (Score:1)
I manage our company's mail server. We're a small company (only around 80 employees), and there are three published email address (even though I've advised using feedback forms rather than email addresses). Our mail server is blocking tens of thousands of messages a day, and that's after setting up firewall rules to block almost everything coming in from APNIC (save for New Zealand) and parts of Africa. I've reviewed the logs: muc
stopping the money by targetting the banks (Score:2)
since there are nearly 40 comments already and no one is talking about the banks, i'll assume no one is reading the article.
the main conclusion is that spam could grind to a halt if credit card companies blocked all transactions to the dozen suspicious banks. it takes the spammers long enough to set up a new bank account that the new accounts could be blocked faster than they could be set up.
Re: (Score:1)
Or people could just start implementing the very good filtering solutions that are out there. I know it sounds like a bad idea to enter an arms race with spammers, but this is probably one of those rare cases where it has worked. We're winning. Filtering solutions are GOOD. Turns out the more things spammers do to try to slip through filters, the more obvious their attempts become and the easier they are to pick out.
When was the last time you saw spam in your gmail account? I haven't seen a single instanc
Re: (Score:2)
Just curious.
The irony of spam is... (Score:2)
The irony of spam is it results from having a tool of abundance (email, useful for building a better world, whether more of a gift economy or better designs or in other ways) in the hands of a few people obsessed with making money (ration units) in the current scarcity-based economic paradigm that emphasizes one-for-one exchange and privatizing profits while socializing costs. So, spammers poison the email system trying to get a bit of resources for themselves, and while doing so make it harder for the rest
This was discussed on NPR a few weeks ago (Score:1)
Does anyone here actually get spam email? (Score:1)