Slashdot Mirror
Spamfighters Get A Hold Of Spammers' Incoming Mail
Karin Spaink writes "On July 3 2003, cyberangels.nl was obtained by Spamvrij.nl, a Dutch foundation fighting spam. Previously,
the domain was owned by the infamous Cyberangels, who are majorly involved in spamming. Cyberangels felt forced to drop the domain when the ground under their feet got too hot after BBC journalist Andrew Bomford connected Dutch ISP Megaprovider to Cyberangels.
Since the MX-records for cyberangels.nl now point to spamvrij.nl too, they get all Cyberangels' incoming mail: bounces, spam complaints and what have you. Have a peek: what kind of mail does a major spammer receive in the course of three days? By now, they have a
very precise answer: 6305 mails. Spamvrij.nl published an analysis of those mails on its site."
"Introduction: 6305 mails in (basically) one day
;-)
We received 5880 bounces and forwards
We received 12 spams for @cyberangels
We received 40 attempts to annoy Cyberangels
We received 371 complaints about Cyberangels
We received 2 business mails"
In other words, they received 12 spams and 413 legitimate emails (not counting the bounces). That can't be right; everyone knows that most inboxes have a ratio of spam/non spam that is more like 413:12 rather than 12:413. Liars!
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Is how few emails were for business. I assume this category would include responses to spam. Maybe I do not understand the story, and the CyberAngels people were merely responsible for sending the spam (for other people), and if anyone responded to the offers in the mails it would go to an non-CyberAngels address. Or possibly redirected to a website, where they could make a purchase. Yeah, as I type out my thoughts, the reason for the dearth of business emails becomes clearer.
.0003%, and insanely high (compared with other forms of direct marketing), like 5%. People can argue for one side or another, but I need more evidence than conjecture to begin to understand the problem. If the response rate is already very low, then relatively simple technological solutions would probably suffice to drive them low enough to make spam unprofitable. If the response rate is high, it is going to take a lot of effort to fix this problem, possibly involving a redesign of the email system.
I had hoped for some accurate stats on the actual response rates to spam. I have heard rumors flying around that they are insanely low, like
Glad to see these spammers were shut down, but we need more insights into the way they operate in order to shut them all down.
Spammers intressts me, I hate them. But I do wounder how much the company buying the spamming service actualy to earn in the end. For ones I contacted a company about there wounderful product, and said I was intressed in buying some. My idea was to get hold of a real life person, to send my "I live in a country where its illegal to spam people, so you guys broken the law!".. But ofcourse I didnt mention that on "intressed in your products" mail I sent them (on there official sales email from there site).. Now whats realy make me confused is that they never wrote anything back.. So..
1. Spam me
2. Ignore me if I want to buy there product
3. ???
4. Profit!
The sheer volume of messages must mean that most spammers are out for only one thing: credit card information. And the best way to get those is to run some scripts to strip out the necessary information. I cannot believe that they can take the time to actually parse out the information by hand, figure out which non-existent product they are selling, and sell anything. 6,000 per day would be 8 seconds per message in a 12-hour day, more or less. I have heard that 40-60 percent of spammers never ship any product, just take a bite out of your credit card and move on. This goes a long way toward confirming that suspicion.
I'm pretty happy about that. According to an article in The Register, One of the board members of spamvrij.nl is Karin Spaink, very likely the same Karin Spaink who has been involved in the battle against $cientology.
Taking on spammers nd $cientologists. Damn. She's got guts.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.