The Economics Of Spamming

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.""

Comments

a guess

[matt4077]

Maybe they work?

Re:a guess

[TrippTDF]

Look at the "pet rocks" that sold in the 70's

-or the popularity of AOL in the 90s

Re:a guess

[Mannerism]

"Look at the "pet rocks" that sold in the 70's."

I'd have to say you missed the point of the Pet Rock. The product was actually the (moderately) funny book that came with the rock.

Yours came with a book?

Crap.

Uh-oh

[Ominous Coward]

There's now going to be about 6,000 very embarrassed men if these logs remain accessible.

Re:Uh-oh

[twoslice]

They were ordering for a friend

Re:Uh-oh

[Anonymous Coward]

They were ordering for a friend

Yeah, their little friend.

Re:Uh-oh

[EvilTwinSkippy]

I don't know about that, the number seems to be down to only 404.

Re:Uh-oh

[MadCow42]

>>They were ordering for a friend

And being involved in your "friend's" erectile dysfunction is somehow LESS embarassing?

Hmmm...

MadCow

Ooh

[Sir Haxalot]

What kind of an idiot would buy penis-enlargement pills?
Meeeeeeeeeee :(

who would buy?

[Anonymous Coward]

an idiot with a small penis

Re:who would buy?

[NanoGator]

"an idiot with a small penis "

Aren't you glad Slashdot lets you post anonymously? :)

OMFG LOL

[stratjakt]

Hey do you guys remember WANG COMPUTERS?

Hahahahah wang.

Anyhow, dont be shocked. Look how many GNC stores there are these days. They sell nothing but sugar pills and snake oil.

But they make billions selling Stacker 2 to fatties too lazy to excersize and too weak willed to stem their eating.

Re:OMFG LOL

[kapok_tree]

Just incidentally, Wang Computers still exists. They changed their focus from computer manufacture to system solutions. They were under the name of Wang Global, but have since been bought out and are now known as Getronics Wang. And this has resulted in one developer I know, of the name Richard, answering the phone with "Get-a-Wang, this is Dick speaking". They don't let him answer phones anymore. Smart man.

Re:And they don't even have to sell anything

[Anonymous Coward]

even more amazing is a coherent FP

Forget the pills

[Mothra the III]

The penis enlargement lotions work much better. Send me your email and I will tell you how to take advantage of this great offer!

sh!t

[Jucius Maximus]

Where's my head ... I'm at work and I click on a link to order.html on a site that sells member enlarging pills. STUPID STUPID STUPID!!!

(In reality, the wired article was linking to the exposed customer logs which now returns a 404.)

Re:sh!t

[dnoyeb]

Hehe. I always thought, that crap does not work. Their ripping the customer off. But then I saw the diabolicalness of the whole thing.

"Make your penis HUGE"

The penis reducing pills start at $1000...

women customers?

[civilengineer]

Other customers included the head of a credit-repair firm, a chiropractor, a veterinarian, a landscaper and several people from the military. Numerous women also were evidently among Amazing Internet's customers

Talk about salesmanship!

Re:And they don't even have to sell anything

[Dante333]

Of course, if there was ever need for proof that there's a sucker born every minute, just check out this quote from the Wired article:

There was a picture on the top of the page that said, 'As Seen on TV,' and I guess that made me think it was legit.

What channel are they watching?

You! Outta the Gene Pool!

[Garg]

Tiny dicks AND no brains? Hopefully a side effect of these pills is sterilization...

Garg

Re:And they don't even have to sell anything

[stratjakt]

Accepting payment for an item without sending it. Spammers bet that someone buying Viagra or pills for the enlargement of body parts would be too embarrassed to call the police or Better Business Bureau.

The last reminds me of a scheme a friend and I cooked up in high school, which seemed completely legal to us.

Sell through magazine ads (ok no internet then, just modify for the times) a subscription/package of some pornos, nothing special, maybe just your usual college-girls-gone-wild stuff, for a lower-than-usual price, like 5 or 10 bucks.

Now, you collect a ton of money, then to everyone who sent you cash, you mail them back a letter, explaining that for (whatever reason) you cannot send them the porno they ordered, and you enclose a refund cheque for the full amount.

The catch is, you name you company "Scat-Fetish-Jizz-Gobbler Corporation", or something really sick and embarassing.

You bank on the fact that most people wouldnt suffer the embarassment of facing the bank teller for 5 or 10 bucks.

But you're in the clear - after all you did refund their money.

This was back before ubiquitous ATMs and online payments and all that jazz.

Re:The problem that just won't go away.

[mhore]

Despite my vehement loathing of spam, a recent incident is making me question how we go about dealing with it.

Execute the spammers? :-)

E-mail Addresses needed

[Bull999999]

Where can I get the E-mail addresses of those 6,000 people who ordered the pills? I'm a classmate of a roomate who's sister's boyfriend's father's 3rd cousin is a banker in Nigeria who's looking for someone to help him get 300 million dollars out of Nigeria for a cut.

Mathematics 101 with DLS!

[Dark Lord Seth]

Okay, sooo... 6000 orders in a 4 week period?

52 weeks in a standard year (big surprise there for some of you!) so 52 / 4 = 13, thus 13 * 6000 = 78000 sales in one year. For a rough estimate of world population right now I'll take 6.100.000.000 people, but that includes by average 52% women. Thus ( 6.100.000.000 / 100 ) * 48 = 2.928.000.000 and 2.928.000.000 / 78000 ~= 37538 years before every male on this planet has a huge penis and the spam will FINALLY stop!

I suggest lynching spammers, much faster.

Re:They ought to be shot.

[tarquin_fim_bim]

or at least have their penis cut off

No point, they'd grow back after another bottle.

I bought the pills

[Hayzeus]

I alone am responsible for all 6000 orders. Soon, very soon, my penis will be the size of North America, and the world will quake in fear.

Re:I bought the pills

[HarveyBirdman]

That's the biggest laugh I've had in weeks, man. God bless you and your continental penis.

let's break this down

[painehope]

Other customers included the head of a credit-repair firm :
heh...a scammer getting scammed...
a chiropractor :
well, maybe he wanted to straighten out more than his patients' backs...
a veterinarian :
maybe he felt insecure after working around horses?
a landscaper :
Well, according to Hustler, these guys get loads of poontang from horny housewives and their nubile 18 year old daughters, so maybe he just needed it to keep up w/ business.
and several people from the military :
Private Johnson, don't ask, don't tell.
Numerous women also :
I guess penis pumps just aren't cutting it anymore...

Proposed Solution

[barryfandango]

Sell pills to people (via spam) that actually causes sterility instead of the virility the label promises. Once we take these mouth-breathers out of the gene pool spammers will have to call it quits.

You do it wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is the right way:

"Bob Dole here, and like many of you, Bob Dole thought Viagra wasn't enough, Bob Dole thought maybe Bob Dole needed 12" pornstar sledgehammer as well. Well let Bob Dole tell you, those pills don't work, can't work, won't work, so don't waste your money. Bob Dole wishes they would work, but like Bob Dole's wife Elizabeth, your loved one is just going to have to learn to like your 4" pindick."

jobs?

[mblase]

At least telemarketing provides jobs.

So does pimping, but that doesn't mean I'm going to recognize it as an overall benefit to society.

Free alternative to pills

[Jonboy X]

Wanna grow your schlong? Do what I do: View pornography! Millions of satisfied customers report a dramatic increase in length, girth and firmness in just minutes, using this ancient time-tested technique.

Disclaimer: Results may not last more than 5-10 minutes.

Re:Public Disgrace!!

[heli0]

I have said this before, and I am dead serious so do not mod this as funny, the only way to deal with this is if spammers fear for their safety. That could occur in two ways:

1 - Electronic Market
Similar to the Iowa Poltical Market people would buy futures in when a particular spammer would die, and when enough people stood to gain from a particular spammers death then market forces would apply themselves naturally.

2 - Vigilantism
Maybe it would start out as making their lives unpleasant, and would escalate as the need arose.

What a riot.

[nortcele]

You could sell a canned vacuum this way. Enough people will bite at a product if it is marketed correctly.

Yeah... (snicker). I bet if they bottled up some tap water and slapped a label on it, some schmuck would pay more for it than a can of pop.

Re:Uh-oh PHEW!

[Havokmon]

There's now going to be about 6,000 very embarrassed men if these logs remain accessible.

Good thing I ordered mine in June!

Is it April again already?

[meeotch]

For once, it's actually worth R'ing the FA:

Bournival refused repeated requests for interviews about his business. When approached for comment at a chess tournament in Merrimack, New Hampshire, last month, Bournival, who is a national-master-caliber player, ran away from a Wired News reporter.

An investigation (registration to Salon.com required) last month revealed that Bournival's mentor and business partner is Davis Wolfgang Hawke, a chess expert and former neo-Nazi leader who turned to the spam business in 1999 after it became public that his father was Jewish.

You can't make this stuff up.

mitch

Re:And they don't even have to sell anything

[stratjakt]

Years before the movie came out.

It's not like the idea of the century, it's completely concievable for anyone with some spare time to think up the same thing.

My new business plan!

[DaveAtFraud]

Variation: subscription service for intelligence improvement pills. Charge $9.95 for a month's supply. When you get smart enough to stop sending me $9.95 a month for sugar pills I have proof that they obviously worked.

Re:My new business plan!

[Jay L]

When you get smart enough to stop sending me $9.95 a month for sugar pills I have proof that they obviously worked.

That's an ancient Jewish joke...

On a train in czarist Russia, a Jew is eating a whitefish wrapped in paper. A man sitting across the aisle begins to taunt him. Finally, he asks: What makes you Jews so smart?" "All right," replies the Jew. "I guess I'll have to tell you. It's because we eat the heads of whitefish." "Well if that's the secret," the man says, then I can be as smart as you are." "That's right," says the Jew, "and in fact I have an extra whitefish head with me. You can have it for five kopecks." The man pays for the fish head and begins to eat it.

An hour later, the train stops at a station for a few minutes. The man leaves the train and then comes back. "Listen, " he says, "you sold me that whitefish head for five kopecks but I just saw a wholewhitefish at the market for three kopecks." "See," replies the Jew, "you're getting smarter already."

Re:And they don't even have to sell anything

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right. If it wasn't an American, it would have read something like this:

At, top of page there was, is a piccutre, said that was 'As scene on TV' and, I, guess was legit, made me think. Also, US suck as compare to my piss-ant little cou7ntry. Our chief export is mud and we have 2 month per year holiday but, we rule, not like US which suck ass. We could not be fighting our way out of a paper bag and we live in a police state and/or a welfare state and/or a state run by religion, but US still suck ass. Also I speek my language and English so well that you should be proud of me and which is evidence more thjat US suck ass and all is ignorent over ther.

SPAM macro expansion misfiring + more

[sonicattack]

I seriously hate spam. Really. But a few good moments has been cast upon me sifting through Mozilla's "JUNK"-folder.

A fraction of the tens of thousands of spam letters I've received the last three years are quite funny. (Being a former network administrator at an IT-company handling domain registrations, my address is on a _lot_ of spam lists.) Today I still receive at least a hundred per day.

Funny spam #1, with a personal touch:

Subject: Get Null@NullNull.com

[graphic image saying "Be who you are"]

Hi Null,

Chances are you'll switch ISPs in the next year. Or possibly change jobs.

[...]

Avoid the hassle, and always stand out with your own personalized e-mail address:
Null@NullNull.com Now that's unforgettable!

Click here to get Null@NullNull.com now.
-----

Mmm. Just don't forget to expand those macros right (or, preferably, just don't spam me at all). Null@NullNull.com. Yep, that's personal. "Be who you are", indeed.

Funny spam #2: This is a weird one. Someone offering an award for anyone finding some really neat devices, like:

"The mind warper generation 4 Dimensional Warp Generator # 52" and "The special 23200 or Acme 5X24 series time transducing capacitor with built in temporal displacement. Needed with complete jumper|auxiliary system"

Here this letter can be found in its entirety.


Not to mention the infamous "INCREASE YOUR EJACULATION BY 631%" pills. I don't want to know how they came up with that number.

Anyhow, in my IMAP folder, the funniest will stay preserved for the future, where things like these are history ("Granddaddy, we saw a spammer in the museum today. It was really ugly!").

Indeed

[Kjella]

Apparently, there is a small but significant range in which you're smart enough to use a computer, but too dumb to know what to do with it.

It used to be called AOL, but I think the segment is expanding...

Kjella

Question? Has anyone ever seen a Penis enlarged

[anantherous coward]

On TV?!!!

Wouldn't the FCC be a bit concerned with that

Re:And they don't even have to sell anything

[Zork the Almighty]

"Homer, that was an episode of Happy Days!"

Re:And they don't even have to sell anything

[Wumpus]

Damn! My secret identity was revealed!

I'll go sulk now. And then sculpt, or read Proust, or watch American Idol...

Forget embaressment factor, collect interest

[bluGill]

Forget the embarressment factor, just put the money in a bank account, and collect interest until they cash the check. Of course you need to cover overhead (stamp at 35 cents, check and envelope at 25, plus your time) but that is where you should plan on the most money.

I've even heard of a guy doing that. Advertised Texas Oil well, money back if no oil in 5 years. Took the money, put it in a bank CD, sent it back 5 years latter, but kept the interest himself. Was legal because he had rights to oil on his land, and had a shovel that he was digging a well with. (obviously he would never strike oil) Might be a urban legend, but seems real anyway.

Re:You choose to pay, when you choose SMTP

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know, ditch your SMTP-ish email for X.400 or something... you agreed to foot the fractions of a cent it costs to receive an email, when you decided to receive email on a system that permits unsolicited messages. I have no sympathy for you.

If you don't decide to install a bulletproof vest on yourself I will have no sympathy for you when I shoot you.