Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

The Economics of Spam

Posted by michael on from the i-am-clearly-in-the-wrong-line-of-work dept.

higgins writes "The Wall Street Journal has the best story I've ever seen on the economics of spam. A self-described "spam queen" (Clean link; should work for non-subscribers) talks about not just the millions of emails she spews, but what it costs per mailing ($250 for 500k emails), what the response rates are (1-2 one-thousandths percent) and what she actually makes. (40% of each sale of one product: anti-spam software)."

1 of 726 comments (clear)

  1. Forged headers by Hieronymus+Howard · · Score: 2, Redundant

    From the article:

    Ms. Betterly says she follows a lot of the rules laid out by most of the state laws: She doesn't forge or falsify the message headers; she doesn't use a third-party company's Internet address or domain name unknowingly

    From the PC in his tidy two-bedroom Tampa apartment, Chris Connell, the company's computer expert, recently launched a large, promising campaign for Ms. Betterly.

    He [Chris Connell] labors over a message's subject line; he's found people are more likely to open e-mail if it appears to be from a real person, so he types his friends' names on "from" lines.

    So she claims that she doesn't 'forge or falsify' headers, but her employee uses other peoples names in the 'from' header field. That looks very much like falsifying headers (& therefor illegal) to me.

    HH