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The Economics Of Spamming

Posted by timothy on from the will-build-a-better-idiot dept.

Shardleton writes "What kind of an idiot would buy penis-enlargement pills? Even more idiotic, who would buy them from a spammer? Apparently LOTS of people, according to this article at Wired. The operators of a spamvertised order site left their customer logs exposed. There were 6,000 orders for the pills since July 4. Sayeth Wired: "Do the math and you begin to understand why spammers are willing to put up with the wrath of spam recipients, Internet service providers and federal regulators.""

2 of 641 comments (clear)

  1. Sigh.... Spam, what to make of it? by sllim · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    I was reading everyones knee-jerk posts to this article.
    A few things stick out in my mind.

    Everyone seems to be asking 'Who would buy stuff like this?'.
    I always took the /. crowd to be smarter then the normal crowd, guess I was wrong.
    Do the math and draw your own conclusions. How much do you think they are paying for a CD of 1 million addresses? $25, $100? Does it matter?
    What is the percentage of sales they need to turn a profit?
    Not much.
    It doesn't take many people to make it worth there while to annoy all of us.
    When I was cold calling I was expected to set only 1 appointment for every 2 hours of work. My bosses were more concerned about the ratio of appointments to work time then they were to how many calls I blew through. Cold calling is cheap.
    Spam is cheaper.

    Then I saw a couple of duffuses that listed some people's real names and addresses.
    Way to go McFly. Do you have any understanding how much trouble you could be in? Lawsuit time.

    Then there is the mandatory 'Some people don't even belong on the internet' comment.
    What is the deal with you? You only pull your nose out of your linux to shove it up in the air and put down everyone around you. Got news for ya, the internet is for all of us.

    There is this part of me that supports laws to kill spamming. But that part is getting laughed at by the other part of me that knows damn well that spammers will move there servers overseas and the ones that stop spamming won't even be noticed. I personally don't even see the reason to make laws against spammers, too many laws in this country if you ask me.

    What I want to see more of is anti-spam tools at the user and ISP end. Seems to me that the solution to Spam is probably there.

  2. Who is the joke on? by brownaroo · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Well I did buy those pills, and I'm quite happy with the extra 2.5" I got with my money.