David Harris On Spam

Ace Suares writes "David Harris, maker of the free e-mail software Pegasus Mail, has written a white paper on spam as part of 'an active initiative to bring together a broad group of people who can promote education and legislation against spam in the New Zealand environment'."

Comments

Math lessons

[Phronesis]

From the white paper:

Imagine for a moment that a spammer promoting penile enlargement pills for $29.95 a bottle sends out ten million spams - a very moderate number by modern standards. If the spammer gets one thousandth of one percent sales response (.001%), he will sell 10,000 bottles, for a total return of $299,500.00. Even on response rates as small as one millionth of one percent, operations like this can still turn a profit that makes them worthwhile, simply because of the enormous number of addresses that can be reached at almost no cost.

Last time I checked 0.001% of 10^7 was 100, not 10,000. The spammer would sell 100 bottles for a total return of $2,950, not a huge haul.

At one one millionth of a percent response, he would sell on average one tenth of a bottle.

Re:Math lessons

[Stargoat]

They make pills that can enlarge my penis? Tell me where to sign up!!

the New Zealand Environment

[falsification]

This is the correct term. The old name was just "New Zealand." Due to legislation recently passed by the Parliamentary Body of the New Zealand Environment, it is henceforth illegal in the New Zealand Environment to say the words "New Zealand" if not sandwiching them between "The" and "Environment." The New Zealand Environment is a fully protected copyrighted trademark. Anyone who uses the term the New Zealand Environment without permission must pay $5 to the New Zealand Environment. Thank goodness Slashdot has caught on to this in time, or it would be liable for $5 for every hit.

the cost is increasing

[chochos]

From the article:

simply because of the enormous number of addresses that can be reached at almost no cost

But the cost for spammers is (fortunately) increasing. We read here about a spammer having a DDoS with snail mail, about spammers getting their names and addresses published, about a spammer who was harrassed until he had to shut down his operation (in New Zealand, nonetheless).

Just last night there was this article posted and the /. effect was worse than usual... My guess is there was a DDoS attack performed with the scripts posted by some /.ers and the bulk club domain was removed from DNS servers (although you can still reach the site with the IP address).

So now a lot of people have names and addresses of many spammers, a spam support group site is under attack, perhaps some of these spammers can expect some harrassment over the next days... I hope they learn the lesson.

Re:the cost is increasing

[zcat_NZ]

..about a spammer who was harrassed until he had to shut down his operation..

we wish..
harassed == a few phone calls (only 20? wtf?!!)
shut down == switched to search-engine and referer spamming

Personally I think 'cost' is where the answer is, but not in the form of an email tax!

Every major ISP needs to clearly define what they consider 'spam', and then lay down enforceable rules about it such as "You WILL be charged a cleanup fee. You WILL be terminated immediately. Your name, company name, and known aliases WILL be publically blacklisted."

Unlike the elsewhere-proposed 'email tax', these costs would only affect spammers.

Nothing about prevention

[svennieboy]

Too bad the author didn't write about what can be done to prevent spam from happening.

Following things come to mind (some are quite obvious, on the other hand your average user doesn't know these things can have a big impact):

• react against HTML email
• Turn off JavaScript/previewing of messages (or even just images), so web bugs won't be activated
• Never open attachments of unknown origin (this particular practice has been stressed a lot lately (think trojans), but still people seem to happily open every file they get in their email)
• Don't react to spam (quote from the article: "As long as the profit motive remains, so will the problem.")
• Don't use the unsubscribe button (it reveals as much information as a web bug does)

There are probably more do's and especially don'ts I forgot to mention.

As long as Joe and Jane Average User stay uneducated about spam, they will keep on reacting to it and help the problem remain (or even escalate).

Sven

Re:When will we replace SMTP?

[schon]

if servers had to authenticate in order to transmit mail (ie, identify themselves), then perhaps we could stem the flow of spam.

Perhaps you're not aware, but all servers do identify themselves. The first thing two SMTP servers do when they connect to each other is identify themselves.

It doesn't do a damn thing to reduce spam.