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Following the Spam Trail

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the stuff-to-read dept.

An anonymous reader writes "MSNBC's Bob Sullivan doggedly follows a spam trail from Alabama to Argentina to find out who actually benefits from spam. The beneficiaries aren't necessarily the pasty faced, high school drop out industrial spammers we have gotten to know, but well known companies."

2 of 232 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Obviously by Arker · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Several times. I couldn't figure out what the scam was so I did some googling. Apparently the guy sending them out is a bit... different. He really seems to believe that some time-traveling bad-guys ruined his life and caused him health and other problems. He seems to believe there are actually many time-travellers on earth at the moment, and wants to get a machine so he can travel back in time and undo the horrid stuff they did to him as a child.

    Numerous folk have corresponded with him and he's made the deal many times, but somehow the bad guys always seem to nab his seller at the last moment. Poor guy.

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  2. Fight spam by replying to it? by owlmon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The article describes how "affiliates" get paid for supplying information gleaned from people who respond to spam e-mails.

    This suggests that the economics of spamming could be disrupted rather easily if large numbers of folks would helpfully supply the information that the spammers seek.

    Think about it. What would happen if every time a slashdotter got a spam, he responded with all the personal information (randomized, of course) that the spammer requested? The article used the example of a web form that the spamee was invited to fill in with his mortgage information.

    A perl script could generate a lot of fills to the web form in a short period of time.

    In the short term, affiliates would make extra money by selling truckloads of (phony) personal information. But within a few monthes, the large companies that pay for that information would wise up. That's when the spam economy would start to suffer.

    This strategy is only interesting to those of us that have good spam filters in place. I'm getting very good results with bogofilter now. I believe that I could "survive" the major spam wave that would result if I employed this strategy. But this strategy would be a lot more effective if I had some company.