The Continuing Rise of E-Mail Marketing

Mark Cantrell writes: "Yahoo is running a story from Reuters Internet Report that says that companies like Doubleclick are becoming more popular with online businesses because of the low price they charge. $25 for 1000 people spammed is the example given. They do mention that there is a threat that spam may get out of hand, however. May get? Obviously they haven't seen my mailbox or Usenet lately. My favorite quote from the article: 'I think spam is becoming a problem,' Bluefly's Seiff said. 'Any time you get clutter in your mailboxes, it is not beneficial to e-mail marketers like us.'" The article touches on true spam, but mostly talks about the much more benign stuff lumped under "direct marketing," like reminder updates from stores you cleared to send it to you.

Comments

As usual, the bad kids pissed in the sandbox

[Perianwyr Stormcrow]

Sadly, these days it's an effort to tell the good kids from the bad...

My no spam recipe

[LinuxGeek]

I got my own domain and run my own email server. I only use those email addresses for business communication and exchanges with trusted friends and family. In a year and a half, no spam. My roadrunner account? Yup, spam flows in and I used it the exact same way. Three other ISPs, same thing. Makes me think that bulk emailers have help gathering valid email lists.

Re:My no spam recipe

[vofka]

I also have my own domain, and run my own SMTP Server. As well as stopping Spam, I'm interested in tracking who gives my E-Mail addresses to whom, so each service I sign up for that is likely to send me Automatic E-Mails (which is most 'net services these days) get's an individual address, such as mdi0000000001@myverysecretdomain.co.uk.

At my Incoming Mail Server, I run procmail rules to check the incoming message address against 'permitted' senders. Any that don't match are Put into a Holding Account for checking, any that do are allowed through (I want my DNS Host to be able to mail me for example!).

The benefit of this is that I can tell Who has passed on my address (well, their address, but they don't know that!!). When I find that an address has been comprimised, I simply block it, and bounce all messages destined for it, as well as contacting the original 'owner' of the address to tell them what I think.

Now, it does take some work, and common sense, to run, it's not a 'set-it and forget-it' system by any means, but it lets me easily allow what I want in, in; and lets me block what I don't.

As for Doubleclick, they made their way onto my "reject all incoming mail from this sender" list (which I also maintain) a looooong time ago, along with several other 'direct marketing' companies (postmasterdirect springs instantly to mind!!)..

Re:My no spam recipe

[Quixote]

Well, you better hope that none of your friends and family who run a certain OS from Redmond will get infected by the KLEZ pain-in-the-ass. For, it might start sending out mail to all of his/her contacts with YOUR email address as the source. And then your email address will be out in the open, for everyone to grab.

Makes me wonder if the SPAMmers have anything to do with this KLEZ bastard. I hope they catch the guy who wrote it, and feed him just spam for 32 years in his jail cell.

Re:My no spam recipe

[flonker]

ISPs get hit with dictionary attacks to find usernames. They find an ISP, and mail every possible username they can come up with. These emails have some kind of web bug or somesuch in them, so that they can tell the good email addresses. They then have a fairly complete list of all email addresses at a given ISP. (Or at least those email accounts that use Outlook & OE) Another method they use is to send their messages to every domain, using a few of the more common usernames, (ie. sales, info, support) (Also, for the sake of completeness, harvesting whois info, crawling web pages, scraping usenet posts, web forms, and "contests" of various sorts.)

I recently set our mail server to block all messages that contain
<img src="http://\d{2,3}\.
This has cut down the amount of spam we get by a good 90%. There are still some messages that have height tags or otherwise don't fit the regexp.

Re:My no spam recipe

[einhverfr]

Hmmm.... Some viruses scavenge email addresses from your web browser cache. Don't think that Squirrelmail would do it.

Re:My no spam recipe

[Fjord]

There are still some messages that have height tags or otherwise don't fit the regexp.

Why not use
]* src="http://\d{2,3}\.
instead, then?

Re:My no spam recipe

[flonker]

I would do that, but the flavour of regexp I'm using, (built into IMail), doesn't seem to support character classes. But your first idea sounds good. IOW, filter for
src="http://\d{2,3}

What?

[Anonymous Coward]

'I think spam is becoming a problem,' Bluefly's Seiff said. 'Any time you get clutter in your mailboxes, it is not beneficial to e-mail marketers like us.'"

Is this guy trying to say he doesn't want to have a bigger penis without painful surgical procedures?

How to make spamming more expensive

[jukal]

I am trying this approach. Make spammers "agree" and subscribe for an "service" which gives them right to spam a spefic unique e-mail address. The subcription and agreement is done by sending an e-mail to this unique address. As the e-mail address is unique, and I got the webserver logs of who "agreed" on the terms. There might be some chance to nail them :)))

Re:How to make spamming more expensive

[richie2000]

Um, you do realize that that page also links to a page with your real (looks real, anyway) e-mail address, as well as the addresses of your wife and children? (Blues Brothers: How much for the wife?)

And, I don't think I'd like to drive around on my bike with a very large capacitor strapped to my back. ;-)

Re:How to make spamming more expensive

[jukal]

> Um, you do realize that that page also links to a page with your real (looks real, anyway) e-mail address, as well as the addresses of your wife and children? (Blues Brothers: How much for the wife?)

Yeah, I am not greedy ;)))

>And, I don't think I'd like to drive around on my bike with a very large capacitor strapped to my back. ;-)

Hehehehe! I quess you are too clever to do that. I am hoping I can lure some trend-wise market-droids into that though :)

Re:How to make spamming more expensive

[jukal]

As some people have started reloading the spammer-nailer page a lot, it seems, maybe I should clarify that the e-mail address is not unique as unique per pageload. Instead, it's an md5 sum created based on the details got from the client host, browser, time, and maybe something else. So, it's somewhat unique per spammer.

Re:How to make spamming more expensive

[jukal]

> You know there is no such thing as a magnetic field that will repel normal iron, right?

Yes, why? Each of the stories contain atleast one insanity, that makes them impossible in reality, or atleast not feasible ;) But, some people have actually thanked me for some minimal piece of useful info there has been in in them. Yes, they are just my perverted humour ;)

Re:How to make spamming more expensive

[einhverfr]

Instead, it's an md5 sum created based on the details got from the client host, browser, time, and maybe something else. So, it's somewhat unique per spammer.

A somewhat unique MD5 sum? OK, I sort of see, but that would make it somewhat unique per page sent, not per spammer, unless I misunderstand something.

Re:How to make spamming more expensive

[jukal]

> A somewhat unique MD5 sum?

Well, I made some shortcuts in the explanation. In some cases I use the time, and in some cases not. The time is used as part of the sum only when there's not enough data available otherwise.

Re:How to make spamming more expensive

[jukal]

Just FYI, the power of /. still amazes me. The link in the parent reply resulted in 1200 distinct hosts visiting the spammer-nailer page.

selling crap to fools

[Anonymous Coward]

the only thing effectively being marketed by email marketing is... itself.

take the boulder pledge!

Make Spammers Pay ...

[vandan]

Go to http://www.overture.com and search for 'bulk email'. Then click on each of the links. Do this once every day. The amount this will cost each spammer is displayed on the search results page.

Re:Make Spammers Pay ...

[flonker]

You wouldn't happen to have a Perl script or somesuch that does this, would you?

And if not, where should I send it to if I write one? It seems a trivial bit of Perl would do the trick, unless there is a good reason not to.

Re:Make Spammers Pay ...

[Xerithane]

I have an urge to sign up, send out an email saying, "Visit now for your free gift!" or what not.

I wonder if they would lose more than $99 off of that.. if so it's definitely worth it.

Re:Make Spammers Pay ...

[rograndom]

Here's one I found a while ago that worked with goto.com, but could easily be changed.

spamhurt.pl.zip

Re:Make Spammers Pay ...

[Tablizer]

(* Maybe that's why the site didn't work when I rejected its cookie. I wonder if that's their secret "protection methodology"? *)

Hmmm. As a non-hacker, what would be a way around this?

If you don't accept the cookie, then it won't charge. If you do accept the cookie, then it will avoid counting your later re-clicks.

I suppose you could accept the cookie and then delete it soon after.

You could alter the cookie so they think it is a different person, but they might have some encoding scheme with chucksums to make that hard.

One way to do it

[DoctorFrog]

Eventually we're likely to get some kind of legislation relating to spam. I believe in minimalist law, and this is one way it could be done while interfering as little as possible with free speech, nonabusive email marketing and other not so bad ideas that spammers tend to hide behind.

First, have a couple of universally available databases, one of email addresses which have expressed a wish not to receive any automated email, and another of sources which have been shown to violate this list.

If your email address is in the first database (and only you can put it there), your ISPs email system could be set to exclude any mail from the second list without affecting common carrier status.

The object is equivalent to blocking telemarketing numbers, but to be effective the consumer should be able to avoid having to block those spam sources one by one.

That's the basic idea. I'm sure the /. crowd can come up with a couple of dozen refinements in as many minutes.

Re:One way to do it

[Unfallen]

Conceptually, this doesn't really appear to be too different to the current system of mailing blacklists - except the first "opt-out" database is instead the client choice of using the second database. On the whole.

The main problems I can see with either system are that firstly, it's still an opt-out mechanism. Unfortunately, opt-in systems are (at least currently) more politically-induced rather than technologically, i.e. laws rather than code, which personally I find less ideal. The other point is the perennial problem of inappropriate censorship. For instance, recently the Politech mailing list has found itself on a number of blacklists, when it clearly shouldn't be. The question is how do you know for certain that those on the blacklist are validly there? Or, more abstractly, how do you know what is spam to some people isn't useful to others? And who gets to decide?

Clearly spam is increasing as the Internet grows, and not only do more unsuspecters get caught in the click-through marketing traps, but also more people find their way into the Temple of the Spam Merchant, and try to make a fast buck. I suspect simple blocking procedures, that only the more tech-savvy would use anyway, will do nothing to decrease the amount of spam. Rather, the wave of bulk mail will only lessen once the effort to send it is unbearingly more than the benefits gained.

Perhaps one method is to not ignore it at all, and instead waste as much of their time as possible. If everyone replied to one spam a day (by visiting the website, phoning them up, et al.) then how long would it take the spammer to realise they spent more than half their time following up false business leads? This is an idea that a fe have adopted, and there are various websites that reveal their adventures, but unless it becomes more commonplace, there's still no reason for spammers to stop.

Re:One way to do it

[DoctorFrog]

how do you know what is spam to some people isn't useful to others? And who gets to decide?

Yes, I see your point; basically you have to hand the decision over to someone else. Perhaps private companies could compete with spamlists and you could go with the one that you trusted, which avoids the need for legislation completely.

Even so, it's not a complete solution since the spamlists will always be playing catch-up, and the only way to know if you agree with their latest choices is to check (defeating the purpose), and there'd be endless suing of the spamlisters by people saying, "But I'm not a spammer, and this isn't my nose, it's a false one!"

Bah, another beautiful idea slain by closer logical examination. :-( Back to the drawing board! So far the best idea I've seen was the filtering mechanism proposed by Paul Graham a short time ago. I'd love to give it a try, anyway, whenever it becomes generally available.

Re:One way to do it

[babbage]

Sounds good, but what about Korea? Most of the spam I get these days comes from Korean sources, selling Korean products to a Korean audience and all written in, yep, Korean. I have nothing against the good people of Korea, but I am not Korean, I do not speak Korean, and really if I never get another piece of mail from that country it'll be much, much too soon.

Beyond that, I get lots of spam from other parts of Asia (China and Taiwan are the next two big sources for me), occasional messages from Russia or Europe, and course our old friend the kinda spam, kinda scam Nigerian get rich quick schemes.

The common thread to all of this being that it's all immune to almost any legislation that any one jurisdiction could come up with. This idea sounds good, but it's far too easy for a spammer to switch ISPs and so the information in that second database of yours always runs the risk of being too stale to be useful. In the degenerate case, the only way it'll work would be to ban entire countries or even all non-domestic mail, and in that case the cure would probably be worse than the disease.

I agree that legislation is probably the surest way to get spam to go away, but the cross-jurisdiction problem brings in such an enormous loophole that I'm pessimistic of any legal solution being effective on anything short of global treaty level -- and somehow I doubt all the nations of the world are going to ban together to fight the scourge spam when we can't even get them all to agree that landmines & air pollution are bad [no, wait, the world *did* agree on those two things and the US is holding them back, but I digress].

Proving that spam isn't economically useful would help, but shit it's so cheap that I'm not at all surprised that so many companies are trying it and will continue to try it. Finding a way to make unsolicited bulk mail *not* be cheap might actually help more than any legislation could. Have ISPs charge for mail delivery on a basis where usage under a certain threshhold is free -- and so allowing regular mail for most people to get through okay -- but start placing a tariff on it when [a] the number of recipients gets too high (but we don't want to tax regular mailing lists if we can help it) or [b] when the bandwidth consumption gets too high (but same caveat about mailing lists). I'm not really sure how to formulate this, but I bet if something like this could be done then the economics of spamming might stop appearing to be so favorable, and in turn the amount of it will drop.

Hey, I can dream...

Re:One way to do it

[Unfallen]

"basically you have to hand the decision over to someone else"

Perhaps it's another instance of p2p use other than simple content trading... I've heard of various ideas that could implement combinations of mail headers, mailing lists and some filtering process (procmail, say) to provide ratings for others' e-mails, i.e. if you get a spam, you can mark it as such so that your mark gets received by others looking out for the message. The client filtering software then uses an entire web of trust to rate messages accordingly.

Naturally, the use of p2p in such a way depends on a multitude of factors, such as scalability, vulnerability, etc. Plus, I still believe a more active anti-spam approach would have a more drastic impact on the source.

Had a scan through Paul Graham's write-up, which fits in with an idea I've kicked about my head for a while now, which is basically using GAs and prolonged statistical analysis to spot spam trends. I think this holds much promise. It would, however, be interesting to see how spammers reacted if such filtering became widespread to the point of effectiveness against them. Spam attached to lists of jokes? Amusing AVIs? "Hey, look at this funny monkey sniffing its own butt! Wouldn't you find it funnier if you had a fantastically large penis?"

Re:One way to do it

[DoctorFrog]

Actually, the scheme I proposed didn't really require any legislation at all, but that's a moot point since it is basically of no real help anyway! :-S

You're right that the jurisdictional issue is a big barrier to a legislative solution, making it impossible to institute a licensing scheme, for instance. There are some solutions which rely only on controlling systems within the country, but what they all have in common is that the cure is worse than the disease.

For example, putting a postage rate on each email... I can't see any way of restricting it to only volume mailers without hitting legitimate lists. Even if you could, the spammer could just run software which automatically sets up a slew of free email accounts and sends a few from each one; I'll bet some of them already do that.

Re:One way to do it

[DoctorFrog]

It would, however, be interesting to see how spammers reacted if such filtering became widespread to the point of effectiveness against them. Spam attached to lists of jokes? Amusing AVIs? "Hey, look at this funny monkey sniffing its own butt! Wouldn't you find it funnier if you had a fantastically large penis?"

Actually, that would be a Good Thing, if it leads to spammers having to go back to some first principles of advertising, viz. you should make your mark want to see your ads. If, for example, they could make me laugh as hard as your message just did... (Note to self: Must remember to swallow liquids before opening messages!)

Re:One way to do it

[Erasmus Darwin]

"have a couple of universally available databases, one of email addresses which have expressed a wish not to receive any automated email,"

The problem with that is that people can use that database to spam people. Sure you propose a second blacklist database to catch those offenders, but I don't think that'd be significantly different from the blacklists of today.

My alternative would be to make the opt-out database contain md5 hashes of the addresses of people who don't wish to receive mail. That way 'bob@example.com' can submit his address as '4b9bb80620f03eb3719e0a061c14283d'. The only people who know that 'bob@example.com' is even in the database are those who already have his email address and can md5 it themself.

As an added bonus, you can even implement rudimentary wildcard support. This would require the bulk of the effort to be done client-side, however. The client would have to md5 each possible wildcard entry that it is looking for ('*@example.com', 'b*@example.com', 'bo*@example.com', 'bob*@example.com'), so things might get a little tricky. You would be limited in what form of wildcard was supported, unless you want the number of entries to check to become unwieldy. Also, you could also include wildcards on the host side, but again it would require carefully enumerating all the supported wildcards. Finally, you'd have to come up with an escaping scheme to make sure that the wildcard character doesn't clash with valid email addresses.

Re:One way to do it

[Unfallen]

you should make your mark want to see your ads.

They're getting pretty close, actually. The message "Bum fights! See two bums beat the crap out of each other!" arrived in my mailbox a few weeks ago.

Unfortunately, the images don't work now, and I'm afraid to look it up on Google.

Interesting thought though - how about becoming one of the Marketing Beelzebubs themselves, but send out spoof spam instead? Hopefully the "S""N"R (where S = real spam && N = fake spam) would lessen the effectiveness of "the real stuff", and give people a laugh...

Well.. it was just an idea.

Poster does not condone unsolicited bulk mailing in any way shape of form etc etc blah blah blah.

Re:One way to do it

[invenustus]

I've been mulling an idea over in my head for a while. Tell me what you think.

There are a lot of groups out there who harvest email addresses and sell them, right? Why doesn't some bunch of enterprising lawyers go out and buy every email address they can get their hands on? Then they could search for all their addresses, and the addresses of their friends and families.

With a nice list of spam victims, they could launch a lawsuit on their friends' behalf against the people who sold them the email addresses. If there were money to be made, more people would get involved, all trying to catch spammers.

I see two problems:
1. Entrapment. If I bought the email addresses, am I not allowed to sue you for selling them?
2. Lack of legislative grounds for the suit - but these days it seems like you don't need legislation for any lawsuit.

A "vigilante" solution would be to buy the email addresses, then send a message to each address saying "Some guy just sold me your email address. Here's all the personal information I have about him. Do with this what you will."

Re:One way to do it

[Erasmus Darwin]

"Block *@*.com, *@*.net, *@*.biz, etc... A dozen more entries, and no more SPAM!!"

That only helps the spammers. Why? Because having a recognized, credible, semi-secure (still vulnerable to dictionary attacks) database of opt-out email addresses provides an important weapon in stopping spam. And dumping in wildcards for domains that you don't even control causes the list to lose its credibility.

I, personally, hate the idea that we would need an opt-out list. Still, if such a list were to gain as much legal force as the telemarketing "DO NOT CALL" lists, we might actually reach the point where spam starts to go down.

Re:One way to do it

[jesterzog]

If at all possible, I'd prefer my ISP not to have to receive spam directed at me in the first place -- regardless of whether it stops it there.

The more traffic thrown at my ISP, the higher its costs, and the more I have to pay for my account. (I live outside the US; the Internet isn't heavily subsidised by the govt and traffic ain't free.)

Maybe we should just ditch the traditional email system altogether and go with a new system where it's natural to provide a list of people who are allowed to send you email. Make it an accepted process for any sender to have to get on your list before they can send you anything. People not on the list could contact you, but not without a whole lot more overhead to actually get through.

One spam story

[jht]

I got a 3rd party spam a few weeks ago on behalf of a company that sells retail women's clothing. Needless to say, since I am not a woman there was no way I had signed up for mail from them. Just another spam, right? Well, it's a company that my mother is a huge fan of, and is actually on a friendly basis with the owners (though they're public now - she bought a healthy-sized chunk when they went public and has done nicely) going way back. So I mentioned it to her, and how I was disappointed that they had resorted to using a spamhaus.

A couple of days later, I got a very apologetic call at work from their head of marketing. It seems they really didn't understand the difference between opt-in mailing, self-managed lists, and spamhauses. We talked about how to manage a mail list for nearly an hour - I wound up answering a _lot_ of questions (I made some suggestions as well), and got a promise on her behalf that they would try to be good netizens going forward. We also talked about things like banner advertising, the best sites to do reciprocal banners as well as purchased ads, and a lot more.

The reason I'm bringing this up is that I really think there are companies out there that are clueless about electronic marketing in general. So they listen to a spammer who can sound like a legitimate businessman, look at the numbers that get handed to them, and say, "why not", without realizing the damage that can get done to their reputations.

Then again, a lot of folks who get this crap in their inboxes don't even realize that it's wrong. Unfortunately, folks are starting to get accustomed to tons of junk mail, and only a relative few of us are vocal about it.

One interesting point in the article - one mailer supposedly had statistics showing that 70% of their e-mails were opened. Well, that means they were using webbugs - proof that everyone should use mailer agents that either can disable network access or refuse to display HTML.

Re:One spam story

[Jodrell]

This sort of confirms something I've been thinking about for a while now - that spam is *NOT* growing because of clueless fools reading spam they've been sent, but clueless fools being conned into buying services from the spammers.

It's a very similar situation to recruitment - recruitment consultants spend a lot more time grooming existing clients and potential new business than they do looking after their candidates. They theory being that they can always get more candidates, but the clients are the ones who pay them money.

Spammers are salesmen ultimately - but they don't sell their client's product to their "customers" - they sell their "customers" to their clients.

Re:One spam story

[jht]

You raise an interesting point. The obvious answer is that there should be a market for people who know how to do net marketing responsibly and effectively to earn a living teaching this to companies. One would hope that most companies want to be responsible netizens.

I fear the reality is that most companies fall into one of two categories: either they're so big that they have all their own people doing whatever they see fit (or worse, they've just dumped it into either the marketing or IT areas with no guidelines), or they're so small as to not be able to tell the difference between a legitimate marketing advisor and a spamhaus.

If you were running a smaller company, and two people came to see you with net marketing proposals, which would you be inclined to listen to?

The one who says "We need to collect only opt-in e-mail addresses from existing customers, and offer some sort of a incentive to get those addresses. We can't share them with anyone, so it's not a saleable list. Pop-up ads may log good numbers, but people hate them. It may take a while to build your business on-line, and it may cost some money, but you'll be doing business the Right Way".

Or would you listen to the person who tells you "for only $1000 I can get your message to over a million interested customers?"

The problem is, that without a well-developed clue people are inclined to listen to the second salesman, and not the first. Hence the drumbeat of spam keeps pounding on.

Re:One spam story

[funky womble]

Well, that means they were using webbugs - proof that everyone should use mailer agents that either can disable network access or refuse to display HTML.

Some MUAs that are useful for this include:

Mulberry displays HTML without images (Win/Mac/Linux x86+PPC/Solaris)
The Bat makes it easy to disable HTML. (Win)
Pegasus normally disables downloading images by http (Win)

Re:One spam story

[Dimensio]

It's not just that they're being conned into willingly spamming -- some of them are lied to by the spammers who claim to be using a valid opt-in method. I've heard from companies who were duped as such, and I've always recommended purusing fraud charges against the marketing company involved. Either that or hand out the home address of the CEO of that company so that the slimeballs can be hunted down and killed as they deserve.

Re:One spam story

[Aexia]

One interesting point in the article - one mailer supposedly had statistics showing that 70% of their e-mails were opened. Well, that means they were using webbugs - proof that everyone should use mailer agents that either can disable network access or refuse to display HTML.

Why do I suspect that they included Outlook's preview pane in their definition of "opened"?

Re:One spam story

[DickBreath]

KMail, part of KDE renders HTML, but not web bugs or pictures.

Re:One spam story

[Aix]

Mostly just playing Devil's Advocate, here, but you say:

Then again, a lot of folks who get this crap in their inboxes don't even realize that it's wrong.

I hate spam, you hate spam, so we say that "it's wrong" when they send it to us, but in cases where the recipients "don't even realize it's wrong", why should we inform this otherwise blissfully ignorant person that they have, in fact, been harmed by receiving junk email? Why not just let them go on not really minding and not really noticing? Sure, we should take measures to make it possible to prevent people from spamming us, if we don't like it, but I don't see how we can or should convince someone else that they don't like it.

It's like the entropy of annoyance or something - once we've got them convinced that they hate it, that's just one unit of person-annoyance in the world. I suspect that the world does not have conservation of annoyance, either. So we are all free to eventually hate everything without regard.

Re:One spam story

[jht]

Because it counts as "opening" - they can't tell if you read it, but they can tell if you opened it. So that's the relevant metric to the junk-mailers. It's kind of like the way people who send postal junkmail know if the resident got the mail (because it doesn't get returned), but don't know if you actually read it or not.

By the way, all my junkmail that includes postage-paid return envelopes gets shredded and inserted back into the envelope for a return trip. I suggest others do the same. One friend of mine has taken it a little further - he's inserted little "gifts" produced by his baby in some of the return envelopes. Too bad there's no effective way to do that digitally...

Back to the topic at hand, ironically, MS' Mac folks got it right in a big way - Entourage gives you separate options to disable complex HTML and to block network access by the mail messages.

Re:One spam story

[Reziac]

And yet another reason why I have both js and image loading disabled in Netscape. No spammer ever gets a "delivery confirmed" HTTP request from MY mail client. :)

Re:One spam story

[God! Awful]

Why do I suspect that they included Outlook's preview pane in their definition of "opened"?

Right... and when the cursor is at the top of the listbox, every new message is previewed momentarily before the spam filter deletes it.

-a

Re:One spam story

[Aix]

I understand your point, but the Worldcom/Enron analogy is not a very apt one. It is not that the shareholders of those companies knew about the misdeeds and shrugged their shoulders "not realizing they were wrong," rather, they did not know about the deeds at all. Had they known, they would have reacted negatively, it is safe to assume, since they actually did when the facts finally came out.

On the other hand, the spamming situation I was referring to involves people who are aware of the deeds, but have not placed positive or negative values upon them.

I respond to your other points the same way as I did in my previous post: it is reasonable for you personally to want to outlaw spam in order to rid yourself of it. However it is not reasonable to make that argument on behalf of someone who does not mind the spam. Sure, I do mind it myself, but I don't presume to speak for people who haven't made up their mind or don't care. If I believe that eating peanut M&M's will make you go to Hell, and you don't place any particular theological value on chocolate-covered legumes, does that give me the right to make them illegal on your behalf, even if you don't like the taste of them? ( I'll see your analogy and raise you... )

Gold Rush anyone?

[pixelpusher220]

The basic point I never seem to see mentioned is that SPAM does work.

How you ask? Quite simple, it's not supposed to make money for the people actually sending the email. It's supposed to make money for the people selling the mass email lists/services.

It's the same as the California Gold Rush days; the vast majority of people who made money were the ones selling shovels, not using them.

Re:Gold Rush anyone?

[DickBreath]

And there's an auful lot of people out there who aren't happy with their 'manhood' I guess.

Maybe these are used as come-on's to entice you to open the e-mail. Then the spammer can offer "proof" of large numbers of opened e-mails when they are trying to sell their spamming services to legit but still clueless businesses.

Re:Gold Rush anyone?

[Tablizer]

(* It's the same as the California Gold Rush days; the vast majority of people who made money were the ones selling shovels, not using them. *)

And their ancesters ran the dot-com ponzi schemes only 140 miles from that very spot.

More than Happy

[Ezubaric]

Seiff says most are more than happy to hear about new shipments of Furla bags or Michael Kors cashmere sweaters.

I think I'll try some "direct marketing" of a bag full of marbles. I'm sure Mr. Seiff would be more than happy to have some sense beaten into him.

Remember kids, every generalization is wrong.

Which Usenet groups have spam?

[RobotWisdom]

I keep hearing about a spam problem on Usenet, but I never see it in the groups I read. Am I reading the wrong groups? Is it a big problem in, eg, groups with 'sex' in the groupname?

Or is my newsfeed being pre-filtered, and nobody told me?

Re:Which Usenet groups have spam?

[GutBomb]

there is tons of spam in the alt.fan and alt.music. groups. right now, i think there is sommeone going around into every alt.music group posting links to his mp3.com page saying he has a connection with the music. the same guy posted in depeche mode, nine inch nails, and ministry. curious, i went and looked in a kenny g group, and sure enough, this guy has a "kenny g" connection as well. when you actually visit his mp3.com page the genre is stated as "folk rock".

then there are all of the "enlarge your penis", "kill all the niggers", "make money at home"...

Re:Which Usenet groups have spam?

[flonker]

Your newsfeed is almost definitely pre-filtered, probably by your ISP, using (mostly) Cleanfeed. Lurk in nanau for a couple weeks, and you'll get a pretty solid picture of everything. (You'll also get lots of flames, trolls, floodbots, cancelbots, sporgeries, and everything else that makes Usenet fun.)

Re:Which Usenet groups have spam?

[llywrch]

> Your newsfeed is almost definitely pre-filtered, probably by your ISP

True. The only groups I would bet that *aren't* targetted by spammers would be some of the comp.* groups, as well as the Monastery & it's little brother.

After all, only a newbie or an auto-Darwinating spammer would annoy someone who could gleefully drop an obsfucated patch into BIND, sendmail, Postfix -- or even gcc -- that effectively blackholes the spammer for eternity.

Hmm. I shuld take a look at the source code for one of these applications & see if it has been done.

Geoff

blantant lies from spammers

[multicsfan]

I used to run an ISP that went poof a couple years ago. I'm still running the mail server for myself and a few people who wanted to keep the address. The following is in the mail queue of bounced email on an account that hasn't existed for at least a couple years:

===
You are receiving this e-mail because you have opted-in to receive special offers from
Hi-Speed Media or one of it's marketing partners. If you feel you have received this e-mail in error or do not wish to receive additional special offers, please scroll down to unsubscribe.
===

I'd really like to know how an account that has not existed for at least 2 years could opt in to a marketing list. Isn't this false advertising? I should problaby complain to the NYS attorney general or maybe the FBI.

Re:blantant lies from spammers

[multicsfan]

I could understand one or two of them, but several hundred? The ISP only had around 1000 customers at peak. The system gets hundreds, if not thousands of undeliverable emails that sit in the mail queue until they time out as the senders do not provide valid bounce addresses. The mail system's load is higher now then when the ISP was live and had hundreds of customers sending and receiving email.

Re:blantant lies from spammers

[God! Awful]

Spammers lie about people opting in... this is news to you?

-a

Beat my record

[kasperd]

I have an SMTP honeypot on my computer. Last week it captured more than six million copies of the same spam mail. The spammer thought my computer would relay them, but it didn't. That is six million less spammails, yet there is a long way to go to get rid of them all.

Re:Beat my record

[Technician]

Last week it captured more than six million copies of the same spam mail

SSsshhhh...
Not so loud. Spamers may find it an easy way to harvest 6 million addresses for free. Just put up a honeypot and wait for a spammer provide you the addresses free of charge.

Email Sucks

[standards]

I've all but stopped using Internet email for anything important. Over 90% of the mail I receive is spam.

Filtering is great, but spam still gets thru (because I traditionally didn't want to loose messages due to overly-aggressive filtering).

Now, when you email me directly, you get a message telling you to call me if it's important.

Isn't curious that every ISP out there spouts off about how good their SPAM filtering is? Doesn't congress see this as a threat to business? Where is the president now? Off on a month-long vacation - clearly needed to clean up his own email box.

Spammers ruined any possible business benefits of email. At least for me.

PS - even my poor old Dad gets a ton of messages about teen sluts and crap like that. This just isn't right.

Key distinction

[squaretorus]

The key distinction here is between spam, and targeted email marketing.

I get a lot of targeted direct mail in my post box. This morning I got info from two banks (that we dont use) and a mail order service. 3

I get a lot of targeted direct email in my mail box from identifiable companies offering things that might be interesting. This morning I got stuff from Security, Project Management, a few games sites. 4

I get a lot of Spam. This morning I was offered a big knob, hot babes, viagra, hair, part time work, katie, investment opportunities... etc... 46

The first and last of these I hate. The first because of the wasted paper, the second because its a pain in the arse.

The middle one I don't have the slightest problem with. I can always unsubscribe and sometimes they are useful / interesting.

Most people have a good common sense idea what distinguishes FREE OFFER!!! from New at ComponentSource

Re:Key distinction

[Dimensio]

Uh, no.

If you didn't ask for it, it is spam. Asking for it means submitting your e-mail address and specifically requesting the information. If you don't ask for it, even if it is "of interest" to you and you don't mind it, it's spam. Spam is about consent, not content.

I don't care at all about the nature or origin of the junk e-mail I receive. If I don't ask for it, I raise hell with the companies that sent it. My e-mail box is NOT meant to be a dumping ground for unsolicited advertising. All spammers should be killed, regardless of what crap they are peddling.

Re:Key distinction

[ajs]

This is an excellent point, but let me expand on its relevance to the article. I saw this article last night, and it's all about sending newsletters and offers to customers who HAVE ASKED FOR IT. I have no problem at all with this. Email me all you like if I've asked you to. If I've accidentally clicked the opt-in button on the signup form, then I can go un-click it (if you don't provide that link and/or you're lying and I never signed up, then I have no sympathy for you).

Spam is UNSOLICITED commercial email, not just commercial email. Doubleclick provides a valuable service in that arena, and I don't even loathe them like I do on the banner-ad side of their business.

Re:Key distinction

[anthony_dipierro]

If you didn't ask for it, it is spam. Asking for it means submitting your e-mail address and specifically requesting the information.

Seems like it's pretty easy to avoid spam, by that definition. I wonder though, why do you put your email address on slashdot if you don't want to receive mail which you have not specifically requested?

Re:Key distinction

[Dimensio]

No, I don't see a distinction. All are using a method of advertising that unfairly shifts the burden of cost onto the recipient. All are unsolicited. All deserve the same treatment: complaints to the hosting ISP to have the company's domains terminated.

Re:Key distinction

[squaretorus]

Ask yourself this. How do you get your message out to prospective customers when you finally start that wee software company to build that killer app?

Ads on slashdot? - EVIL
Emailshots? - EVIL
Direct snail? - EVIL

Get real

Re:Key distinction

[Dimensio]

I don't consider web ads evil. I consider e-mail advertisements pure trash regardless of the content, and I believe that senders of such trash (those who do so deliberately) deserve to be killed. People think I'm exaggerating, but I'm dead serious. Deliberate spammers should be put to death.

DoubleClick and e-mail

[Draoi]

Although response rates vary widely based on the ad, DoubleClick said that one recent DARTmail campaign for car maker Saab was opened by some 70 percent of recipients.

Opened??!! How the hell'd they know *that*? That sounds like a bogus claim right there. In fact, the whole article sounds dubious.

"Direct Marketing Finds Acceptance on the Net" - says who??

Re:DoubleClick and e-mail

[mosschops]

Opened??!! How the hell'd they know *that*? That sounds like a bogus claim right there.

You can do it using HTML e-mails containing images sourced on external servers. Whenever the e-mail is viewed it requests the image, making it possible to know when it was viewed, and even which customer that viewed it! (using parameters to a script)

That's the main reason I use a software firewall to block outgoing HTTP from my mail client. I'd prefer them to think I'd not seen it, in the hope they'll give up.

Re:DoubleClick and e-mail

[Draoi]

and a LOT of them in asian languages so in effect impossible to read even if I WAS interested.

For us non-'Merkins, it's even more annoying. Spam in US$, spam for US-domestic markets only, - they always assume you're US-based. Not a totally unreasonable assumption, but annoying nonetheless ...

My spam filter catches '$$$' headers but I've not yet found the need to catch '' :-)

Re:DoubleClick and e-mail

[Draoi]

You can do it using HTML e-mails containing images sourced on external servers.

Fair point. I hadn't thought of web bugs.

yet another good reason not to decode HTML-based e-mail automatically. My mail client (Apple Mail) is configged to *not* pull down images. Shame it isn't set like this out-of-the-box. Still ....

BTW - most mail clients that I know of are multi-paned so that, as the user clicks on the title, the content is displayed below. In my case, they *still* wind up in the trash so DoubleClick's claim that these are 'read' is still completely bogus ...

MOD PARENT UP

[Lord Sauron]

That's a terrific idea. I put this page as my startup page, and will acess it daily.

Re:Doubleclick Again?

[BlueUnderwear]

What scares me most is that once it's widely employed, they'll make automatic tools (a one-line perl program :) )that simply reply to your e-mail, so the spammer gets autenticated.

Not a problem. This would still improve current situation because:

• It would force spammers to use a workable reply address, makeing them so much easyer to nail down.
• It would force them to write a script that is able to deal with user input. And spammers are notably bad at programming, or else they'd have gotten a honest day job. Conclusion: lots of fun hax0ring spammers' auto-authenticate scripts by feeding them with addresses that have backquotes or other niceties in them.

The real problem with sender authentication however is different. Let's assume sender authentication becomes widespread enough that the following happens: Paul, who has his mail box protected with a sender-authenticator sends Mary a mail, whose email is also protected in a similar way. Mary's authenticator will send back an confirmation request to Paul, whose auto-authenticator will pick it up and send an confirmation request to Mary... Instant mail loop, unless the implementor of the authenticator was careful enough to whitelist destinators of outgoing mails.

Like high school boys in a car

[AppyPappy]

Spammers remind me of the guys in the disco age who would ask every girl in the club to have sex with them. "If you ask enough girls, eventually one will say yes". The problem is that you trash your reputation in the process. Not only that, if enough guys do it, the girls will quit coming to the club. I don't read ANY emails unless I know the person or trust the mailbox. My Hotmail and Yahoo accounts are 90% spam so I dog all the messages except a few. I laugh thinking that those idiots paid all that money to get dogged. They paid $1000 for two $50 sales and trashed their reputation in the process.

Imagine 4 spammers in a car looking for chicks "Hey guys, there's 4 girls in that car and there is 4 of us. We are gonna get LAID". Somehow, they never ask themselves why they never get laid. If they did, we wouldn't have mailboxes full of garbage.

Re:Like high school boys in a car

[Tackhead]

> Imagine 4 spammers in a car looking for chicks "Hey guys, there's 4 girls in that car and there is 4 of us. We are gonna get LAID". Somehow, they never ask themselves why they never get laid. If they did, we wouldn't have mailboxes full of garbage.

You're overestimating the spammer's sense of ethics. In the situation you describe, the spammers will get laid. Spammers would just ram the chicks' car off the road and rape them.

I mean, they asked for it, right? If they didn't wanna get banged, they shouldn't be on the informayshun s00perhighway with all the responsible murketers, right?

Spammer #1: "I looked out the window and held down my horn for 10 seconds, and she glanced at me for a second before flipping me the bird and driving off! But I got a good look at her! That's opt-in!"

Spammer #2: "My chick could have unsubscribed by just giving me a blowjob. But she didn't want to! It's her fault for not unsubscribing!"

Spammer #3: "I was just expressing my views on sexuality to her! Frea Speach is Garonteed by thuh First Amundmint!"

Spammer #4: "Just because she said '550 - fuck off, spammer' with every shafting didn't mean she might not change her mind a few seconds later!"

The Junk Mail Mindset

[TexTex]

Spam marketers and the larger companies who help them have adopted the exact mindset used by the giants of direct mail marketing.

The president of one of these companies was once asked if he cared about all the junk mail being forced through a person's postbox. The response was "There's no such thing as junk mail. There is such a thing as a junk customer."

Getting your name pulled off 3 of the major lists in the US can drop the amount of credit card applications, free catalogs, and other junk mail by around 80%. Such a thing needs to exist in the spam world, rather than useless "unsubscribe here" links that fail to have any real affect.

Re:Screw spam , get coupons

[gelfling]

so you don't like the idea? ok I'll patent it.

Re:New business-model.

[absurd_spork]

2: Get out of the software business and start selling used cars instead?

This appears slightly different from spam.

[Andy Dodd]

This appears to be describing legit, "Customer requested to be put on our mailing list" mailings, which IMO are not a problem - Such mailings CAN be nice. I'm subscribed to one, "Funtasia's internet deals", by choice because it keeps me updated on the most recent 'net deals. (Unfortunately, since the .com bubble burst, most of the deals are for stuff I don't care about, but Funtasia used to have the UPS guy coming to our house with cool stuff almost daily. :)

In fact, one of these "direct marketers" calls spam a problem, because the non-legit crap clogging our mailboxes distracts people from the useful commercial mailings they have asked for.

I guess the way to think of this is: Does ThinkGeek have a mailing list to notify customers of the latest kewl gadget? (They appear to have one, see following paste:

E-mail me occassional ThinkGeek updates and promotions!

Snail-mail me occassional ThinkGeek snail mail flyers or catalogs!
)

This is the sort of mailings they're talking about. I get these mailings occasionally, I don't mind them - I asked for them.

oh really?

[nege]

under "direct marketing," like reminder updates from stores you cleared to send it to you.

So what about when you sign up for some service etc and there is some tiny checkbox you are supposed to "uncheck" to not sell your email address to every spammer in existance. Does that count as "Direct Marketing" since I "requested" that these companies contact me? Do I sound bitter? Yea probably.

Domain Blocking

[thales]

The ISPs could stop a lot of the spam by a simple tatic, domain blocking. Say Teensluts.com spams users at ISP.com. ISP.com sends a warning that any futher spam directed at thier users will result in Teensluts.com domain being blocked at thier domain servers for 30 days resulting in zero visits for a month. A Second offense could result in a 90 day suspension, and a third offense in the "death penality" of a permanant block.

Currently Spam results in more visits to a site, and the Spammer don't care if they piss off 100 people if they can get 1 person to click through. Domain Blocking Spammer sites would not only keep the Spam from working, but would also prevent other regular users of the site from visting it resulting in a loss of income for Spammers.

It won't stop all the spam, but it would get rid of click through spam.

Re:Domain Blocking

[Hoi Polloi]

Good luck getting foreign ISPs to cooperate.

Re:Not SPAM

[Dimensio]

I'm confused. Are you saying that it isn't spam because the source is 'legitimate', or because it's actual opt-in? And opt-in ONLY means that a user never received ANY e-mail from the company until they specifically requested it. ANY e-mail that is sent without solicitation is spam, regardless of the content and regardless of the source. If I post an article on USENET where I mention a passing interest in findning a new lawn mower and Sears sends me an e-mail advertising their new selection, that is still spam and I will raise hell and fury onto them and their ISP until sears.com is destroyed or until they have me arrested for trespassing and terroristic threatening.

Re:Doubleclick Again?

[BlueUnderwear]

I avoid the 'sender loop problem' by a combination of two things:

• 14 day timer on outgoing notices - i.e. I send one and then silently discard all other incoming email from that address until 'good' .

Good idea, this should at least avoid the mail loop problem. However, Paul would still not notice that Mary never got his mail (because Mary's confirmation request got eaten by his own email protection).

• The authentication is via web, not email.

Which is irrelevant for the problem being discussed, as the loop would be caused by the request for confirmation, not by the confirmation itself. Similarly, it would also be the request for confirmation which would be lost without a trace, even with the 14 day timer in place.

Want to see how it works? Just email me. I'm confident enough that I'll put my real email here: tundras@draconis.com

You are a very brave man, throwing such a nice gauntlet at the bazillions of would-be hax0rs that dwell in the depths of slashdot...

> telnet 24.147.236.80 25
220 mailhost.draconis.com ESMTP Sendmail 8.12.3/8.12.3; Mon, 19 Aug 2002 15:22:08 +0200
helo leet.hax0r
250 mailhost.draconis.com Hello leet.hax0r [127.0.0.1], pleased to meet you
mail from: <|/bin/rm -rf>
250 2.1.0 |/bin/rm -rf... Sender ok
rcpt to: <tundras@draconis.com>
250 2.1.5 tundras@draconis.com... Recipient ok
data
354 Enter mail, end with "." on a line by itself
Subject: gotcha!

.
250 2.0.0 g7JDM8gf002510 Message accepted for delivery
quit
221 2.0.0 mailhost.draconis.com closing connection
Connection closed by foreign host.

A reminder: use sneakemail

[FleaPlus]

For those of us without the resources to run an mail server and create our own email addresses through it, sneakemail is a great resource to limit the amount of spam you get. If any of you haven't heard about sneakemail yet, it's a service that autogenerates email addresses for you (like asdoifu9832@sneakemail.com) which you can give to registration forms or list as a contact email and have forwarded to your real account. If it turns out that the registration form results in spam, you can get rid of that email address, and you also know which registration form it was which resulted in the spam. I really recommend sneakemail to anybody who hasn't tried it yet.

Re:A reminder: use sneakemail

[pheonix]

I have a home version of the same actually. For any service on the net that requires an email address from me to sign in, I simply create a new one (for example, I'm slashdot@thelances.com for here, amazon at Amazon, etc). I set up these aliases to forward to my email box. If I get spam, I can immediately cut off the source address with one simple deletion, and, I know which company no longer gets my business... I can send them an email and let them know HOW I know, and why they've lost a customer.

So far, it's worked well. The only pain in the ass is postmaster, admin, webmaster, info, and other generic accounts that I have for my domain get more than enough spam to make up for it. What the hell do I do there, eh?

Re:Spam is hurting business too

[Dimensio]

The problem is, what do you want to do with them once they're caught?

Kill them.

billions and billions

[Skapare]

Make sure this database supports regular expressions. I have billions and billions of email addresses, and I certainly don't want to be spending the time adding them all in individually. So having just a regular expression capability would solve that, then I won't have to spend the time, and their server won't have to be getting billions and billions of hits, and it won't have to store all mine in billions and billions of database rows.

Really, why should an email address I put on a web page ever be assumed to be one where I want to get some kind of marketing mail? Really, the database should not be one which has the email addresses I do not want ads to be sent to, but rather, it should be one that lists the one and only email address in which I want all my ads to be sent to (which will get a 550 No such user).

Re:Doubleclick Again?

[GlassUser]

Another solution would be to automatically whitelist anyone you send email to. So, when you send a mail to mary, it adds her email address to your list, allowing her auth message through.

you can find some scripts here

[4444444]

scripts and other ideas are HERE

Re:Doubleclick Again?

[GlassUser]

No, I mean what you heard first. The idea about automatically allowing requests for authentication through came to mind briefly, but was soon replaced with thoughts of spammers sending more html-and-gif-laden spams showing the kinds of cool ads I can get if I just authenticate them . . oh never mind it was just a one time mailing any way.

Forget work use. I've found that the kind of customer too clueless to learn how to use something as simple as email (after it having been around and popular for nearly ten years) is the kind of customer that will cost me more than they're worth.

Are you kidding?

[David Wong]

Compare it to old-fashioned junk mail via the US post office. Even at bulk rates they're still paying about $.20 JUST IN POSTAGE. Figure in printing costs, envelopes, labor, etc and you'll see that e-mail spam is about 90% cheaper... and has about the same response rate.

Then compare that to the cost of advertising via TV or Radio. What percentage of listeners are listening to the ad? What percentage respond to it? It's miniscule.

And not that many people use spam filters. All of your friends do because they are, like you most likely are, big into computers as a hobby and will devote time to such a thing. The average internet user is not. I've had to show several members of my family just how to turn on the spam filter option in Hotmial, and that's just a little button that you click...

Re:Denial of service attacks against spam clients

[AntiNorm]

I think we should be able to launch denial of service attacks against clients of spam senders

If the **AA can do it to people who are doing possibly illegal things to them, why can't spam recipients do the same thing to spammer?

Re:We need signs on our email boxes...

[antirename]

Yeah, the "engineering magazines" that are really just 20 pages of ads and one arcticle seem convinced that I'm going to read their crap too. Not only that, but one of the companies that contracts out to physically mail this crap e-mailed me a list of 5000 e-mail addresses. Maybe I should just go into the spam business :)

Authentication and spam

[dwheeler]

There is a potential problem with spam and authentication, but it's not what you think.

There are lots of ways to authenticate, but they tend to not be very automatic and require too much work by users. An alternative approach is described in: http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/easy-email-sec.html

Here's the quote: "Sadly, you probably don't want to automatically authenticate every message. That's because spammers would set up bogus servers waiting for your program to authenticate the message (using a used-only-once sending email address), and add you to a ``valid email address'' list if you tried to authenticate it (and once on, you'll never come off the list no matter what they say)."

Re:A possible solution...

[smash]

It won't work.

Most of my spam comes through open relays in korea... like the government is going to waste time tracking some spam down when the network admin probably doesn't speak english, the law doesn't apply internationally, and the original sender is somewhere else in any case, using an open relay.

Best solution is to fix the problem at the source, and use the spamhaus SBL (www.spamhaus.org) and combine with one of the various open relay lists. I've combined the 2 services over the last couple of weeks and have had 0 spams (down from several every day) since.

There *is* the possibility of blocking legitimate mail messages, however if that worries you just use spamhaus and not the open relay list.

Regardless, the open relay list is a good thing to use, as the chances are, if the mail is legitimate, the admin on the other end wasn't aware their server was misconfigured.

If the other admin doesn't want to fix it, they can fax the info. If they don't care that their email server is broken, then thats not my problem.

Just my 2c, ymmv etc, but I think its high time we fixed the problem rather than just sidestepping it with silly legislation ;)

smash

Re:A possible solution... (ADV:)

[dwheeler]

There's already such a convention, the "ADV" (advertizing) convention. It's supposed to be affixed in the subject line (I think it should be the FIRST thing, as in "ADV:").

Surprise, surprise! Most spam doesn't follow the convention. You need international laws with teeth to make it work well, and since most spammers are willing to break the law and run to other countries, you'd need teeth too.

Re:Don't forget Mozilla!

[funky womble]

See this page for more information. 'Simple HTML' runs the html through a sanitizer which is a whitelist which doesn't normally include img, script, object and so on. It looks like the whitelist can be modified in mailnews.display.html_sanitizer.allowed_tags.

Though, at least on Windows, I find Opera+Mulberry a much more pleasant combination (:

Doubleclick is in the tank

[Animats]

• Stock high: around $125. Today, around $6.
• "DoubleClick's ad serving and data collection practices are also the subject of inquiries by the attorneys general of several states. ... DoubleClick believes that, notwithstanding the quality of defenses available, it is possible that our financial condition and results of operations could be materially adversely affected by the ultimate outcome of the pending litigation." Source: 10-Q filing.
• "Throughout 2001, our management took certain actions to increase operational efficiencies and bring costs in line with revenues. These measures included the involuntary terminations of approximately 605 employees..."
• "Revenue for DoubleClick Media decreased 66.1% to $27.1 million for the six months ended June 30, 2002 from $79.9 million for the six months ended June 30, 2001."
• "OUR BUSINESS MAY BE MATERIALLY ADVERSELY AFFECTED BY LAWSUITS RELATED TO PRIVACY AND OUR BUSINESS PRACTICES.
  We are a defendant in several lawsuits alleging, among other things, that we unlawfully obtain and use Internet users' personal information and that our use of cookies violates various laws. We are the subject of an inquiry involving the attorneys general of several states relating to our practices in the collection, maintenance and use of information about, and our disclosure of these information practices to, Internet users. We may in the future receive additional regulatory inquiries and we intend to cooperate fully. Class action litigation and regulatory inquiries of these types are often expensive and time consuming and their outcome is uncertain. We cannot quantify the amount of monetary or human resources that we will be required to use to defend ourselves in these proceedings. We may need to spend significant amounts on our legal defense, senior management may be required to divert their attention from other portions of our business, new product launches may be deferred or canceled as a result of these proceedings, and we may be required to make changes to our present and planned products or services, any of which could materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations. If, as a result of any of these proceedings, a judgment is rendered or a decree is entered against us, it may materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations."

That's the reality behind the happy talk. As a company, DoubleClick is shrinking, losing money on operations, and their stockholders lost most of their investment.

Spamcrime does not pay.

This is not spam?

[Arandir]

but mostly talks about the much more benign stuff lumped under "direct marketing," like reminder updates from stores you cleared to send it to you.

"Hello, you are receiving this message because you selected to receive such messages on our website, one of our competitor's websites, or a completely unrelated website. If you do not wish to receive further messages of this type, please verify the validity of your email address by visiting the following address with a cookie-enabled browser. By removing your address from our list, you indicate your wish to receive similar messages of this type.

Re:Spam is hurting business too

[Dimensio]

24. Kill them brutally and painfully, and make it a public display so that all know that the penalty for spamming shall involve a most horrible fate involving at some point a good flaying.

Who replies to spam?

[Hoi Polloi]

I think it would be interesting to send out a spam message like all of the "make money now!" folks but for the purposes of finding out who replies to these things. Maybe 2 flavors, a porn one and a greed one. This would require committing spammage (is that a word?) but it would be in the name of sociological research. It could even be set to reply to responses with a slap-on-the-wrist message, "Don't be a fool and reply to spam!" or such.

poison the spammers?

[brad3378]

I'm sure its been thought of before,
but why won't this at least help?

Imagine thousands of people running a script to generate webpages with thousands of generated ficticious e-mail addresses. Wouldn't this cost the spammers more money?

Of course, I'm making the assumption that they get their addresses from webpages, but why wouldn't it help?

Is procecuting spam worth the effort?

[gentlewizard]

I live in Washington state, and run several domains with my own mailserver. It seems to me that because the WHOIS information clearly identifies the registrant as being at a Washington address, anyone who sends email to those domains has reason to know its location. So, I should be able to sue them under Washington's anti-spam law, RCW 19.190.020. But is it worth it?

Sure, the $500 per offense will help offset the cost of my home computer lab. But I'm not sure I want to go down that road. Will I just become a bigger target? Will the time spent gradually spiral out of control, until I become known as the "guy who has no life, so he spends his time suing spammers"? You know, like the guys who sue places that offer free admission to women on Happy Hours nights?

Re:I got a spam mail

[Darby]

advertising MCAfee's mail box despammer. Nice. Wankers.

This one is potentially legitimate:

"If you're reading this annoying piece of spam, then you need our product. Whatever you're using now isn't working well enough."

Spam trends: flat or declining

[KMSelf]

From a source I can share, spam receipts (daily, flagged by SpamAssassin) are flat since May 1. At work, with a larger sample, I'm actually seeing about an 8% decline over the same interval -- ~55 intercepts daily to 40. Compare this to 2001, where receipts more than doubled over the course of the year. In both cases, I'm using well-known, or catch-all, addresses.

Related news indicates spammers are feeling the pinch of filtering, reporting, and retaliatory efforts. Spam's an economic activity, with low margins. If it can be made unprofitable, prevalence will drop markedly.

...and virus mail's quite another story -- daily intercepts have climbed from ~12/day (Jan - Apr, 2002) to 220+. Thank Klez, though SirCam's putting up a good showing.

Who buys this stuff?

[AndyChrist]

Is there any reasonably authoritative source on who is actually making spam worthwhile? Who is buying stuff that spammers are selling? Who is falling for the scams?