Slashdot Mirror

.... is the profile of the average spammer. Most of my spam is poorly spelled and frequently points to sites that don't have anything to sell. My suspicion, and I have no way of verifying it, is that most of these messages are sent by people who get suckered into a "Make Money From Home!" offer, send a few messages to a giant list of addresses, and then give up when they're not living in MC Hammer's mansion by the end of the week.

Does anyone know who the average spammer is?

Another cool piece of spam research I've never seen mentioned on Slashdot is the Bot Trap, which I learned about from this Little Green Footballs entry. If you're the admin for any web server, I strongly recommend setting this up. You probably don't make a huge dent in spam, but you get the satisfaction of seeing the list of IP's you thwarted.

Little Green Footballs has the before(1), before(2) and after shots here.

Little Green Footballs has the before(1), before(2) and after shots here.

Welcome. For more goodness, be sure to check out Little Green Footballs every day.