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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.""
Offering e-mail recipients "free pornography" if they download a software program. The program often provides the pornography, but only after the user's computer dials a 1-900 number to an overseas location, racking up hundreds of dollars in phone charges.
"Pump and dump" stock schemes, in which a spammer sends e-mails touting a certain stock and encourages people to buy it. The stock's value goes up, and spammers sell it at a profit.
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.
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:
John.
Suddenly, telemarketing doesn't seem so bad. At least my household never got phone calls from perverts offering pics of underaged teens, unlicensed pharmacy ads, etc. And to top it off, telemarketing is a manpower intensive operation whereas one guy can send out a billion e-mail letters on his own. At least telemarketing provides jobs.
Considering that spammers essentially lie, cheat and steal to make money...what's to say they didn't intentionally leave their logs exposed on purpose? And then find someone to 'leak' the information?
These are the same people who send spam advertising anti-spam software.
I don't trust anything from a bunch of gutless criminals.
Just because we happen to be the percentage of the world that is tech-savvy/intelligent/cynical enough (is there a difference?) to see spam for what it is, don't think that for every one of us, there's not 100 Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokels out there just thrilled to death that they finally hit the jackpot, thanks so some guy over in Nigeria.
The bottom line? Never underestimate the stupidity of the average human being.
For me it comes down to to the freedom of speech issue -- I've always been told that if you can't handle free speech you don't agree with you obviously can't handle free speech -- and I suppose just because something irritates me doesn't mean that the greater good would be served by silencing that something.
Admittedly, I didn't RTFA.. But, as someone who is vehement about free speech myself I can tell you that I don't consider SPAM as free speech. It's not free speech if you have no way to avoid it. Sure, if I don't like what someone's saying on TV, I can change the channel. I don't have the option of 'changing the channel' on a spammer.
I agree, everyone should have the right to speak their mind, no matter how unpopular or controversial. However, no one has the right to force anyone else to read, listen to, or otherwise hold captive an audience - and thats exactly what spammers are doing.
And don't tell me I can simply hit the delete button - thats not something I should have to do. Just like if someone's making harassing phonecalls to me, I can call the police and press charges. There needs to be a similar mechanism for SPAM, preferrably something involving rope, stakes, honey and a mound of Texas fireants.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
Advertising pays, or we wouldn't get junk TV, junk post, junk email. Greedy bastards do things that sate their greed. They're not likely to do something that annoys loads of people AND doesn't make them shed loads of dosh now, are they.
But I wore the juice
Because they are actually delivering the pills, they aren't breaking the laws. It's legitimate advertising, kinda. I mean, you take the pill, see attractive member of the preferred sex, and your penis enlarges by many inches.
Because of weird legal loopholes, spammers can legitimately email you by way of lists they got from other companies that once got your email because you agreed to let them sell it when you clicked "OK" without reading the entirety of the 5 page privacy policy.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
If you read about most spammers (i.e. Ralsky, Hardigree, etc.) the one thing that sticks out about all of them is that they're generally not very intelligent. Their choice is to spam and live in the million dollar house, or go back to McDonald's and the trailer park. Obviously, they're not going back to the trailer park without a fight.
It's obvious that they're making money; how else is Ralsky going to afford his house?
Do you have ESP?
You HAVE to be kidding.
You could sell a canned vacuum this way. Enough people will bite at a product if it is marketed correctly.
Look at the "pet rocks" that sold in the 70's.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
I know a little bad publicity is in order for these foolhardy people as a group, but isn't that a little specific of a description? How many ELEMENTARY SCHOOL lacrosse teams are there in Pennsylvania?
OMG! Wau!
The president of a California firm that sells airplane parts and is active in the local Rotary Club gave out his American Express card number...
you really believe these people purchased this shit? these people's credit cards were stolen! ever get emails that resemble ebay's account page or aol's billing or some other fake bullshit thats trying to snatch your credit card numbers.. those things fool a lot more people than "make your penis huge" sells penis pills
what do you think gets done with all those stolen cc's.. the bastard turns around and signs them up for penis pills, porno sitesm, etc whatever gets the comission. sending out a buttload of spam to the same people that your stealing ccs from just obfuscates things to help cover your tracks. this is the real shady shit thats going on with spam.. not penis mail that people are actually buying, people are getting ripped off!
bite my glorious golden ass.
First, the "money pumped back into the economy" statement. You think that the customers would have burnt that, or put it in their matress if they hadn't bought swedish-made penis pumps? I doubt it. They'd have bought the next product advertised on the shopping network, or sold at the checkout at Walmart.
Second, the "free speech" issue. If you lie to my employees to get them to stamp your mail with my bulk-mailing code it's not free speech, it's fraud. I won't shut you down because of what your mail says, but because you want me to foot the bill for it. Also, your right to free speech doesn't obligate me to listen. If you have to lie about the subject and sender to get people to listen, it's likely they don't want to hear you.
but of my sites, only one has any members from AOL.
I called them, and reached an agreement whereby they would allow email from my server if I agreed to put my name, address, and phone number on nonexistant mass emails. I have never done mass emailing. Needless to say, they didn't follow the agreement. Email still doesn't get to AOL users, and I have to give them their passwords manually through AIM.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
This article points out a simple fact: there are lots of stupid people and we suffer, every day, for their stupid behavior.
This is not a rarity or even particularly frustrating. Really, those of us awake enough to notice it suffer from other people's stupidity day in and day out. Just turn on the television and be amazed by not just the commercials but the programming now too. Go for a drive. Take a walk through a shopping mall. Order food from a fast food restaurant.
The proliferation of spam because of a few dopes is just another fact of life on earth. I try my best to enjoy the irony (while not wearing out my delete key).
My quesiton is, where's the FTC/FBI in all this? Why aren't these people going to jail for operating a fradulent enterprise? Do we not (or did we ever?) put people in jail for that? Or do we just put them on the cover of Business Week and call them "Corporate Executives"?
.cn servers, etc), and if people started going to jail for internet fraud (yes, to the infamous Slashdot "Federal Pound-Me-In-The-Ass Prison"), then spam WOULD slow dramatically, since most spam is for the same small number of "products".
Sorry of the cynacism, but it strikes me that in the spam problem arena the money trail is the one thing that can be followed (vs. forged header, hijacked
That, and maybe some aggressive advertising by the FTC about the fraudulent, doesn't-do-anything-but-cost-you-money nature of the products:
(Imagine Bob Dole: "Hi, I'm Bob Dole, and like many of you, I thought Viagra wasn't enough, I thought maybe I needed 12" pornstar sledgehammer as well. Well let me tell you, those pills don't work, can't work, won't work, so don't waste your money. I wish they would work, but like my wife Elizabeth, your loved one is just going to have to learn to like your 4" pindick.")
"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.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Your right to free speech does not obligate me, as a private citizen, to provide you a forum in which to exercise that right.
Thus, a spammer's free speech rights have no bearing on my inbox.
My company was also in an IP range that
was blocked by SPEWS because of another
companies actions in the same class C
IP range.
This problem is really with the way SPEWS
operates. Other blackhole lists are much
more reasonable and only block by an IP
per IP basis.
The problem is exacerbated by the fact
that administrators just og out to
places like orisoft and subscribe to
every blackhole list that exists without
reading about how the blackhole lists
are made.
I'd always hoped that people stupid enough to order spam-advertised items would be too stupid to operate a computer, nevermind use email software.
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.
Once I have this information, I would like to give it to Spamhaus or some other organization, preferably one with an advertising budget, and have them do a spot on tv explaining the dangers of spam.
Maybe the government should do a public service announcement about it. You see, the majority of people who buy this crap are not internet savvy, but you better believe they are television savvy.
I think the FTC would be much better off spending its money to educate potential victims of spam than it would going after the actual spammers.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
In principle, I agree with you. But, on the one hand, you argue that
if I don't like what someone's saying on TV, I can change the channel
implying that speech on television is "free speech" (since you have a way to avoid it). However, when refering to email, you write
don't tell me I can simply hit the delete button - thats not something I should have to do.
Does this imply that you shouldn't have to pick up the remote control and change the channel -- that the television should just read your mind? After all, in both cases (watching television and reading email) you are choosing to do so, and you are choosing to focus on a single instance (channel or particular email). If you don't like that particular instance, you either (a) change instances by using the remote control or the next/delete button, or (b) change mediums by turning the television or the email application off.
What's the difference again? Like I said, I agree with you in principle, but your logical argument here on what constitutes "free speech" is weak.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
>>Because they are actually delivering the pills, they aren't breaking the laws.
They may not be breaking any laws selling the stuff, but now that their total sales are public maybe the IRS would be interested?
Sort of like how they finally got to Al Capone...
But the problem is nobody has a good way to stop the spam without hurting innocent parties in the process. This is what the somethingawful anecdote was about. Regardless of whether you think it is right to ban spam, it is still wrong to ban people whose only crime is having an IP address in the same block as a spammer's address.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
I assume that he's a spammer not because his dad was Jewish, but because he lost all credibility as a neo-Nazi when his fellow travelers found him out. Once that happened, he needed a job in which integrity, humanity, and credibility are not required attributes. Hence...he became a spammer. The comment is more of an insult to neo-Nazis than Jewish people...how can anyone claim that the neo-Nazis are the cream of the gene pool (as they claim) if all that unemployed neo-Nazis can do is disperse spam? The comment should be taken not as an insult to Jews but as an insult to single-celled life everywhere.
And what did the administrators of SomethingAwful do? Did they contact their ISP, whose support of spammers led to its netblocks being boycotted far and wide by other networks and mail server operators? No. Instead, they posted a solicitation for their own users (the "SA Forum Goons") to attempt to obtain the personal information of the operators of SPEWS, for the purposes of signing said operators up on spam mailing lists. They also instructed the goons to flood a spam-related USENET newsgroup with crude messages -- which was done.
In short, SomethingAwful's operators specifically encouraged criminal activities and abuse of the network. Reportedly, readers of the flooded USENET group did the right thing in response -- rather than counterattacking with a flood of their own, they reported the criminal activity to the offending user's sites (including universities). At least some of the offenders' accounts were terminated for their criminal activity. The undergrads who thought they were clever to post "fuck you goatse spam whores" a bazillion times from their university accounts won't think they are so clever when they are brought up on disciplinary charges for malicious use of university resources.
SomethingAwful deserves no sympathy. In response to a legal boycott of their ISP's network -- stemming from their ISP's willful continuing to host egregious spammers -- the owners and operators of SomethingAwful committed and advocated criminal acts. Their actions are criminal no less than the spammers' themselves.
I used to work for a small software company where most of our sales were made through direct mail. I think our gross sales peaked at about $2 million one year while I was working there in the mid-90's.
Each direct mail piece sent to a prospect costs hard cash to send, for printing, postage, labor and mailing list rental. Yet it was our experience that a response rate of 0.5% was sufficient to yield a profit.
Once you have identified a profitable offer and a mailing list that's rich with customers who respond to direct mail, you have a license to print money. That's why you probably each of you reading this receive two or three pieces of direct mail every day.
The following two comments I posted at Kuro5hin discuss this in great detail:
- The Importance of Advertising to Business
- Direct mail is very scientifically targeted
Now, if you consider that the cost of sending spam is insignificant when the spammer can hijack an open relay, you will understand that spam will never stop until purchasers stop responding to spam.Simply installing filters on your own machine won't help. The people who purchase sexual enhancement products over the Internet don't know from spam filters.
I think the end to spam will come only when every ISP and mail hosting service installs filters that are enabled by default. Only then will the response rate of spam be reduced to the point that it's no longer economical to send it.
I think it's likely the day will come when ISPs will be forced to install filters that cannot be disabled. Possibly this will be ordered by various national governments.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Let's make a deal. You give me a dollar, then I give you a dollar (a different one!) and then we will have just boosted the economy by $2, at least by your understanding.
This is not how things work at all. Workers are only good for what they produce. Employing people for the sake of employing them serves no purpose; they might as well receive welfare.
In fact, in the case of spam (and telemarketers), all they produce is a drain on the economy. We'd be better off if those fraudulent companies were all eliminated and their employees started getting welfare equal to their previous wages. At least then, they wouldn't be wasting people's time.
When we're talking about Napster or Kazaa a miniscule percentage of legal use is sufficient to argue that the entire network should be preserved, but when we're talking about spam blocks we're just supposed to ignore the legal use and go on with the jihad? You can't have it both ways.
I always thought that people gullible/uneducated enough to fall for spam would also be too uneducated to run a computer well enough to handle the email in the first place.
Guess we've done too good a job of making them easy to use...
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
The Federal Trade Commission said there is no proof that the pills work as advertised. But the FTC does not have the resources to press a case against such companies, according to spokesman Richard Cleland.
What exactly do they have the resources for then? I mean it seems to me this is just the kind of thing the FTC was created for...
Well in my day we had pencils, paper, slide rules and APL. Shame that IBM effectively killed it by taking it propriatary.
.
Ah, the good old days of waking up, eating a cold lump of poison, going to work in mine. .
Ummmmmm, nevermind.
Feynman was always highly visually oriented. It seems almost natural that he would have developed both useful and unique methods of notation. I'm not sure the current state of academia is suitable for the development of his like. In fact I'm not sure the state of academia at the time was suitable for the development of his like and he really got a bit lucky with the Manhatten project. Luck that benefited us all.
KFG