Slashdot Mirror
Study on the Effects of Spam on End Users
An anonymous reader writes "'About a third of people responded to a spam, seeking more information. And 7 percent actually bought a product or service.' Who are these people? Is this really what non-techies do with Spam? They can have my Spam if they want it :-)"
One problem is people ignoring email that isn't spam, simply because the subject line looks like it it. It may change the way subject lines are written. In the end, I think email will be like IM, you'll have to 'approve' what email you'll accept, like you have to 'approve' additions to your buddy list now. This will take away much of the openness and functionality of email, so I hope it doesn't come to that.
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
With a sample size that small, I'm amazed they got any information from that study.
i know of people who tried to remove themselves from the spam mailing list by clicking on the "remove me from mailing list" link/button. which only made things worse :(
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
an intelligent person who bought something off a spam. These are the same people who are getting herbal viagra while dreaming of a larger penis while writing up their resignation since they'll get so much money from that nice Nigerian man.
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
until these numbers drop, spam will continue to push it's way into our email boxes...
but, there is hope, you can only enlarge your penis so many times.
Runnin' On Empty
After all, what man doesn't want a larger penis?
They're your friends, family and/or neighbors. In short, they are people who view a computer as merely a tool, not a hobby or profession. It would be interesting to run this every year and study trends. I expect that Joe & Mary Sixpack are becoming more aware of spam very quickly.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Hopefully we'll soon be able to study the effects of legal measures on spammers. :)
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
I work as tech support at a university. It is my experience that most people actually read spam messages and then actively consider the promotion. I guess they are still naive to the ways of the internet and believe they are actually seeing a good deal sent to them. People always ask me about the "send your bank account info to nigeria" scam because they don't ever think that *they* could be the target of a scam. I'm afraid to think of what kinds of scams these people fall for in the real world if they believe everything they read on their computer screen.
I've posted before about this...
One of my coworkers, a real computer wiz, convinced my boss to give her the corporate credit card to purchase a copy of photoshop from an email she got for just $49.95. She was so excited about the "great deal". That was about 7 months ago, I still haven't seen this copy of photoshop come in the mail. I wonder when it will get here.
The average population is not very smart, they'll believe anything
"Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the life-long attempt to acquire it." -Albert Einstein
alright, so "remove me" links are bogus, and "reply to" fields are forged. So how can someone track down who is actually sending the spam? how forged can the header information be about the steps it took to get from them to me? Telling people not to respond to spam is one thing. Telling people how to contact the spammers ISP, or even the actual spammer seems more helpfull. their anonimity is what keeps them safe. break that down and their "business" will be less appealing to them.
The blurb reminds me of "Every five seconds, somewhere in the world, a woman is having a baby. Our job is to find that woman, and stop her." Par for slashdot, I suppose.
Am I reading the same report?
For this report, we collected original data from two sources. The first was a national telephone survey of 2,200 adults, including 1,380 Internet users that we conducted during June 2003. The second was a compilation of more than 4,000 first-person narratives about spam that were solicited since September 2002 by the Telecommunications Research & Action Center (TRAC), a national consumer group.
It's been a while since college statistics, but I thought that in general, once you got to a sample size of 400, your results weren't going to get much better...??
My provider just installed it. : .
Now, the spam comes with a modified subject (beginning with *****SPAM*****) and a report such as
SPAM: . : . . : . : . . Start SpamAssassin results . : . . : . : .
SPAM: This mail is probably spam. The original message has been altered
SPAM: so you can recognise or block similar unwanted mail in future.
SPAM: See http://spamassassin.org/tag/ for more details.
SPAM:
SPAM: Content analysis details: (6.4 hits, 3 required)
SPAM: Hit! (2.7 points) Subject contains lots of white space
SPAM: Hit! (3.7 points) BODY: Information on getting a larger penis
SPAM:
SPAM: . : . . : . : . . End of SpamAssassin results . : . . : . : . .
Now, I'd suggest you ask your provider to install such a filter on his servers.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Oxman's 15-year-old son, Robert, says five out of six e-mails he gets daily are spam, often including offers of pornography or dating services. Robert says he simply deletes them.
Robert would neither comment on the delay between when he received the pornographic emails and when he deleted them, nor would he comment on his activities during that time.
Frankly, I've never had much of a problem with spam. A simple solution of using four different mailing accounts, and only using the two web-based ones for any potential spamming online forms, has taken care of all of my spam problems, without even a need for a filter. Go figure - the only email address with huge amounts of spam was the one I created on hotmail for a lark. It got loads spam from MSN before I ever even used it.
I've got my Dad well trained... he usually blocks anything that's not from a user in his address book, and deletes anything with an attatchment that he was not expecting. He's not exactly a techie, but he's a lot more savvy than a lot of non-technical internet users
My mom on the other hand, still seems to believe that it's all personally directed at her, and that she should either respond, get angry/offended/whatever, just as if someone she knew in meatspace said/sent it to her. :-)
She's learning, now, but quite often she looks at stuff like those banner ads saying "Speed up your internet connection..." or "You have won..." and she's just not worked out yet that it's all lies. The worst are those emails which claim it's a new critical update from Microsoft. It took ages to convince her that Bill's Boys don't send out neccesary updates through email.
It's the folk who don't have a reality check in the form of a friendly techie around that I'm worried about. If not for me, my folks PC would be riddled with trojans, virii and other malicious software.
-- Soluzar
Sign the FSF's Anti-DMCA petit
A few years ago I had a rather nasty realization; as 100 is the mean IQ, that means fully one half of the population has an IQ below 100.
This realization has brought me peace. I'm no longer frustrated at the stupidity of the "average" person...they just can't help it.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
I'm rolling my own.
I'm setting up my own Email server (yes, paid the extra bucks to get a business broadband account), complete with filters, attachment blocking, etc. Even purchased and read a couple of books on the subject... it's proven to be quite an educational endeavor.
When my kids are old enough to use Email (pretty soon now), I want to provide them with something at least partially filtered by dear old dad... I' ve even saved about 2000 spam emails to help train the filters. I don't want to have the birds-and-the-bees conversation with my kids any earlier than I have to (and explaining some midgets-in-leather porno spam is NOT on my preferred activities list).
Doing something is so much better than just bitching, and so much more satisfying.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Take my Dad, for example. He's happy keeping in touch with his operatic society via their mailing list, and using email - you forget how big a "Wow!" moment you had when you first got your head around the whole idea of free global communications - but he's still printing out the latest "MS Security Patch" fakes and asking me if he needs to do anything with them.
He also keeps asking if there's anything I can do to stop the semi-porn spam - and other than the usual precautions, the answer is still "not really".
It may be natural to us old pros to just hit delete, but to people new to the technology it's not that straightforward.
People think it's polite to mail back saying "actually, I don't want this mail" rather than LARTing them to the ISP, looking up their address from WHOIS, burning down their house and sowing the ground with salt like we do (it's not just me doing this, is it?
Basically, there are always going to be enough people making enough mistakes whilst learning to keep spammers happy...
Mind you, anyone who buys a Penis Patch probably deserves all they get!
this report says that 33% of users have "clicked on a link" in order to find out more, sometime in their lives, and 7% of users have ordered something from a spam message at some point. (At least I interpreted the blurb to mean that some spam had a 7% return rate -- that's not the case.) I don't think that these numbers are really all that surprising. For a beginning internet user, spam may seem like no more than commercials on TV. It shouldn't be surprising that occasionally people get interested.
Much more interesting would be a survey of the last time they responded or bought something from spam, versus how long they have been using e-mail. You could draw more conclusions from that.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
"I'll tell you the effects: it's pissing me off!"
(Movie title? No fair using IMDB!)
The extent of the damage from spam is measurable. One-quarter of emailers say spam has reduced their overall use of email, for most of them in a big way.
Some of the damage likely comes from emailers just being overwhelmed and throwing in the towel, an expression reflected by a number of respondents from the TRAC survey: "Spam has 100% shut me and my family down. We can no longer deal with downloading 1 hour's worth of spam and viruses to get a message or two that we are expecting."
"My time is valuable and I do not have time to filter thru all this unwanted spam. So half the time I just hit select all and delete every email I get. I have gone so far as to tell everyone not to bother emailing me...I have gone back to using the phone and no longer email anyone."
E-Mail is suffocating under the spam pest.
... people are stupid. Film at 11.
You can not get around this fact: the average person is of average intelligence. Most of us know a lot about how to 'properly' use computers because this is either our hobby or job. But the average person has no idea. Our secretaries at work, for instance, haven't a clue about anything beyond click, type, drag.
Then there's just plain stupid people, who think that an anonymous advertisement in their email, with spelling mistakes, lots of exclamation marks, and garbage writing warrants a legitimate product or service. A fool and their money...
So you'll either have to require better training for all computer users, which probably won't happen. Or you'll have to revise the types of software that laypeople use to protect them from the world.
You cant avoid getting spammed if you aren't hiding your email. Real-World Example, a while ago I set up a disposable hotmail account and posted the address *one time* on slashdot. Within a week I was puling 10-20 spams a day, by the end of the first month it was up to 200 a day. Either you get 500+ legitamate emails a day, so 200 spams is just "a few extra", or you're just blatantly trolling.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
You know, I'm just thinking aloud, but what if you sent them your spam? How would they know you had some? Maybe if you wrote a bot to scrape emails off the web, you could make a list of people and send your spam to all of them! I wonder if someone's thought of that already? Hmm, know any venture capitalists?
No longer do you have to be rediculed because your sample size is too small! With our new, patented system you can increase your sample size GARANTEED! Just click here and impress those survey ladies at the mall with your new, bigger sample size!
I never hide my email when posting on forums or anywhere online.
Profile for Garak
Garak (100517)
(email not shown publicly)
Come again?
Our company maintains web sites for a number of clients. We frequently get clients forwarding us spam that they have received, saying things like "your web site is not optimized for search engines", "why aren't you in this great directory...?", "your web site would recieve a lot more visitors if...", asking us what we should do about it.
It can be a bit annoying, because of course clients don't understand these things are just spam sent out in their thousands, and think they are from real people criticising their web sites. Of course the standard Slashdot response is to laugh at such people for being dumb, but often this type of spam is created in a deliberately deceptive way to make it look as if it is from a real person.
This morning I emptied my spam folders like I do every morning. The one SpamAssassin-caught spam goes into has 2100 peices of spam. The one Bogofilter-caught spam goes into had 150 pieces of spam. Now do you understand why some people kick up a fuss about spam?
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
The problem is finding my important email in all the crap I have to wade through in my inbox. Appromixately 95% of the email I now receive is spam. That certainly makes it hard to find legitimate messages, in addition to the fact I have to make sure my kids aren't around when I check my email because of all the pr0n that comes in.
Although the great internet boom of the late 90's is over, many newbies enter the Internet every day. These people have never used e-mail or browsers before and have no idea about what (not) to do on the 'net. I think these are the people that reply to spam, leave their names, adresses, crdit card numbers and what not everywhere and are in general the most vulnerable group on the 'net. Educating these people will not always work (as in real life), so there will always be people that reply to spam etc., and therefore sending spam will continue to be profitable.
-- Cheers!
is to educate our friends and family never to buy anything thru these channels. It's probably one of the best things we can do. If they don't get any money in, they'll stop sending spam out...
I never know what I might find,
p am/01f ree_winner.shtml
on any day I go online.
I used to get in quite a huff,
while wading through unwanted stuff.
But then I changed the man I am,
the day I answered all my spam.
Now every time I check my box,
I load up on fantastic stocks.
I'll gladly say I felt no loss,
when, with a smile, I fired my boss.
With just one click, the best thing yet,
I freed myself of all my debt.
I have, paying a few small fees,
ten university degrees.
Now that I'm losing all this weight,
I'm sure, someday, I'll get a date.
Instead of going to a show,
I spy on everyone I know.
(That's easy, since I have in hand,
this nifty wireless video cam.)
I spend my evenings viewing screens,
of barely legal horny teens.
And with a little credit charge,
Whoopee! My penis was enlarged!
Meanwhile these shots of Britney Spears
should be enough to last for years.
And so I lead this online life,
my monitor is now my wife.
It has become my greatest dream,
to launch my own get-rich-quick scheme.
And if you think you might get missed,
relax, you're on my e-mail list.
SATIREWIRE'S 2ND ANNUAL POETRY SPAM
2001 FREESTYLE WINNER:
"I Answered All My Spam"
by Alex Silbajoris, Columbus, Ohio
http://www.satirewire.com/features/poetry_s
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
I think you meant to say "median" there, since the mean IQ is just the simple average across the population. The median value is the dividing line of the two halves.
Cheers,
-a
It got so big from all those pills that now my wife needs a larger vagina. She won't let me even get near the other "option".
In the end, I think email will be like IM, you'll have to 'approve' what email you'll accept, like you have to 'approve' additions to your buddy list now. ...whitelist. They've been around for a while. They also don't work so hot.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
...or Russia, or Eastern Europe, or anywhere else these deadbeats have to move their operations to in order to operate without getting pinched.
Surely the money would be better sent educating users as to the benefits of a good Bayesian filter, or even subsidising their inclusion into commercial software. Imagine if all those millions of copies of Outlook Express came with a well advertised, easy to use Bayesian filter pre-installed and ready to go.
The report is based on a randomized, national phone survey of 2,200 adults.
Now, I wonder why a survay carried out in this manner recorded an unusually high number of people responding to spam?
Maybe a truer responce would have been acheved if every time someone told them to fuck off and slammed the phone down they treated this as an 'I dont respond to spam' reply
Anyone quoted by a reporter knows how little they understand
Don't believe what you read is the truth.
You'd never buy an ab-blaster or set of knives while zapping the channels (hoping to find some pr0n), would you?
Still I know a few people that did and were disappointed and I see quite a few parallels with spam.
Oh allow people to act stupid once in their life!
Having said that, how many people haven't yet acted stupid? Maybe I should change business until the magic 80% has been reached. Then again, maybe I shouldn't.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Obviously you do hide your email. Some of us still need to allow others to contact us. Unhide your email on Slashdot and wherever else you are, and tell me again in six months that it's only "an extra few emails to delete". For me, despite the high-volume mail lists I'm on, spam has been the majority of my email by message count for the last two months. And it's continuing to grow geometrically worse. (Exponentially is really too strong a word, but geometrically is still bad enough...)
Maybe they could have taken those pills that increase your size
People claimed that the courts would collapse from all the TCPA cases for junk faxes, but it have not. But, junk faxes have gone down quite a bit.
Fight Spammers!
I see this as more toothless-tiger feel-good legislation that politicians sign to get votes. I for one don't buy it for a second.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
From the previous story, the NYTimes said the following about the latest point release of os X:
"Mac OS X Mail can screen out all messages except what comes from recent correspondents and people in your address book."
So that day is now, for mac users with $130.
The IQ scheme was set up assuming an approximately Gaussian distribution, for which the mean and median are the same. 15 IQ points = 1 standard deviation.
Naturally, that's horseshit, but 100 was at least designed to be the median and the mean, by definition.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
This is more than just sending off a single email to a scantly watched abuse email.. This means getting hold of a real person and explaining, realistisay, what sort of legal liabilities they might be open to if they continue to support the spammer's actions.
(Hacking laws, aiding and abetting, Trademark infringement and vicarious liability) often fit in there.
If more people would do this, life would get a lot harder for spammers.
You lucky lucky people. Guess I'm in the top 1% with 120 a day.
Email is useless for me these days. Even with filtering 95% of the mail it is still useless. I get one email a week from The Old Man and authorisation emails from forums.
Thanks you dirty spammers.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
Seven percent sounds awfully high. If we could just register these people someway, maybe with some sort of tattoo on their forheads, then the spamsters could go straight to the known gullible people and leave the rest of us the hell alone. A win-win situation -- except for the gullible people, but who cares about them anyway?!!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
oh yeah, that's right 7 % of the US population has an IQ of 20 I forgot
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
Since I started using POPFile I simply don't see my spam anymore. It's a naive bayesian classifier and after a few months useage I have about 98.5% accuracy with it, and only 1 or 2 false positives. I highly recommend it. Hey, that sounds like a spam :D
Everyone's always complaining about spammers and their behaviour, and although they _are_ bastards for wasting our time, we need to concentrate on the people who RESPOND.
We need to educate them about this -- if nobody responded to spam, there would be no spam at all. Think about it.
I've yet to meet an intelligent person who bought something off a spam.
I've never seen anyone in the act of purchasing the National Enquirer either but obviously it must happen. Frequently.
Not sure if that's funny or depressing...
This is where I stick messages that SpamAssassin flags. My sysadmin was saying 'hey, your spam box is getting kinda large'.
33,600 messages. About 1 months' worth. And I have to check them individually to make sure that there are not real messages in there, and yes, there were some.
Spam is a _real_ problem. At the least it means that the level of reliability of normal email is dropping from perhaps 99.9% to about 97% today. At the worst it means hours spent every week cleaning out the junk.
Think about a lorry-load of unwanted paper post arriving in your hallway every week.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
yup, i've partaken of the proverbial herbal viagra and now have a monster cock, just like the ad said. problem is i can't find a pussy to accodate it, so i'm seeking an equally monsterous cunt.
for some reason though, every time i place a personal ad all i get is monster bitches responding. i'm so confused.
They should check with Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig - years of valuable data.
..and their customers. People buy stuff from telemarketers evey now and then. At least, Homer Simpson does.
This
I thought response rates were much lower, like less than half a percent. This 30% response rate must be "30% of those surveyed replied at least once to spam". Did they consider "please remove me" as part of the spam? Did they consider opt-in users responding to coupons for sites they frequent? How did they classify spam? I guess I'm too shocked.
Use the Firehose to mod down Second Life stories!
You've never paid by the byte for your data transfer, then, have you? I imagine you've also never paid for your storage space or paid by the minute for your connection time. Any of these things make spam suck much worse. Also, it really sucks if you get so much spam in your mailbox that your provider starts bouncing legitimate messages. These conditions (among others) can cause unwanted email to become costly rather than merely annoying.
Liar. You hide it when posting on slashdot.
.sig: file not found
I have (as do many) a domain. it's a .info
strangely, it gets NO spam...
(suddenly that changes)
with unlimited aliasing, a dictionary spam to my server would kill me, but with unlimited aliasing, every domain and every compan gets an email with it's name it it, to my domain.
circuitcity.com uses circuitcitycom@mydomain.info
the local store got
circuitcityac@mydomain.info
(I live near atlantic city nj)
it's great to see who's selling my email
it's also easy to remember my email address for each domain that I visit/transact biz with.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I am trying to attract Spam to my test account. Please do not mod down, as I want to keep it on the main page so that it will be picked up by the Spam-bots! Thanks! ThisIsAnExampleAccountGL@yahoo.com
Though, yeah, certainly not IQ. I've known a brilliant physicist at UBC who got duped into giving a homeless person about $100 for a train ticket so that the guy could get back to his dieing mother...only to see the guy pan-handling on the street the next day.
...It would reach from here to Baltimore!
When it cost more to send it, than the income the spammer gets from it. Nothing anyone does to stop it / control it / make it illegal will create even a scratch in the surface.
Or in other words - we might as well give up.
Based on the current lineup of television shows right now I would have to say that they are people who watch these shows.
...blech!
I mean come on, who actually watches these shows? They're CRAP! Look at the shows that have been cancelled lately: Firefly, John Doe, Farscape, etc. These shows are worth watching. Even better yet if you want to experience reality go outside and experience it. Get off your couch you lazy bastards and do something about it. Take responsibility for your own life and actions.
And what do the networks keep on in their place? Reality TV, and reruns of Fraiser and Friends. I think I'm gonna be sick...
"You're on my side and the dark side, like Lando Calrissian?" --Gimpy, Undergrads
I have this really crazy idea about how to kill spam: Prosecute people who buy from spam services...
I mean, it's the same thing with drugs: you prosecute those who sell, and those who consume.
If law enforcement starts sending bogus spam and getting those who respond, fewer people will respond, thus killing the profitability of it.
how long until
A few months ago I just quit using email. It just isn't worth my time to sort through all that junk. I just tell people to icq me or don't contact me at all. It really sucks but if that is what has to be done then so be it.
Got Code?
What abut the IQ of the average spammer? If I haven't responded to the first 50,000 Nigerian Viagra Penis Enlargement Refinancing ads, what makes them think I'm going to reply to the next one??
You never saw a fish on the wall with its mouth shut.
Ok, so we've all been duped a time or two and have signed up online for a really kewl website - and then we've started to receive a monstrousity of spam spam SPAM! Your first instinct might be to reply and delete - well, that only confirms you're a real live human being. Your second instinct might be to change your email address and never again give that out. Or, you can do like I do - just don't give out your email address online (and shun those sites which propagate SPAM lists) - and secondly, delete all incoming spam immediatelly. After this policy is in full effect you can expect to see a drastic drop in your number of spams a day. (Mine has dropped from 20+ to around 6). Remember - many spams now incorporate html (allowing them to better track usage and stats) - so, even if you 'preview' the email - then you're hooked up for more.
You separate into groups; the response group R, and the "Fuck off" group F. Say that F is 1000 people or so; you now take a subsample of F, say 20 people, and you harass them at all hours of the day until they give you a straight answer. You then assume that the 20 people you randomly chose to harass in this manner are representative of the entire 1000, and multiply the ratio accordingly.
Of course, most surveyors don't have the nerve to do the statistical analysis properly, and frankly I can't say I blame them.
I filter all of it out.
It's the only way to get my Pr0n at werk!
That's it! Everybody out of the internet! NOW!
------- Code to try when you're bored: qsort( 0, UINT_MAX, sizeof( int* ), IntCompare );
How big can one man's penis get?
Yes, you fail it!
Just like Bush failed to win over some stone throwing camel drivers and stick bearing towelheads with his oh-so-mighty 15645 Billion US-Dollar 'Army'.
There is a large group of people with IQs of 100, so fewer than half are less than 100. In a normal distribution (bell curve) median, mean & mode are at the same point. IQ tests are constructed to fit the normal distribution, so for IQ tests:
100 is the most common value, or the Mode.
100 is the midpoint of the values, or Median.
100 is the average value or Mean.
If you're talking about something without a normal distribution, then extreme values on one side will drive the average down, but most of the population is above average.
In Lake Wobegone, "All the children are above average." Maybe they have a lot of terribly stupid adults, so that all the children can be above average. I knew something bothered me about that place.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
Letter from a SPAM victim:
Let me begin by saying that I was a simple, rural, college freshman student with my first big exposure to the Internet last year. I had never once thought that my life could be so messed up by the young age of 27. With my classes starting in Computer Training, I was given a school email account. Safe enough. Wrong. My best friend, Cleetus, thought it would be funny to send me a link to one of them nekid lady picture sites, and the first thing I was asked for to get access was my email address. Well, seeing as I had only the one account, I used it.
Then my life went to Hell. Within 30 minutes, I had an email confirmation that my pictures were accessible. Then I received another one saying I should increase the size of my penis. I figured it was from the same site. It was actually from an online drug seller. Something about Viagra... So I figured, what the heck, I could use a girlfriend (since Bobbi Sue left me for that no good Jethro) here at college. So I ordered some with what was left from my scholarship fund for this month. I waited a few days for my order, while being stampeded with more emails about Viagra and penis enlargement.
I finally got my order, and tried it. It worked great! I would roam the campus strutting like a horny rooster. Girls started noticing me, although none of them wanted to go out with me. I ordered more and more figuring that it could not hurt, since I see lots of nekid pictures with black guys doing white girls. Pretty soon, I was hung like a horse and starting to get the attention of the ladies, but there was never anything lasting more than a single night, that is, except my addiction to the cheap Viagra mixed with narcotics.
I was going broke using up all of my scholarship money and the pay from my job at McDonalds. I had to respond to one of the home equity loan emails, so my parent's place is now mortgaged three times (and the outhouse five times), and I am still running behind. I walk with a limp, and the women all run from me in horror. Maybe that nice Nigerian man can help me with my problems...
Jimbo
We're doomed.
.01% response rate to television advertising, which is stupidly expensive, and tangled with all kinds of "decency" regulations, like the truth in advertising act.
Think of it this way:
About a third of people responded to a spam, seeking more information.
And 7 percent actually bought a product or service
A spammer would read this as:
A STUPENDOUS, UNHEARD-OF 33% of people responded to a spam, ATTEMPTING TO BUY SOMETHING!!!
And A SPECTACULAR **7 PERCENT** actually bought a product or service, compared to the measly
Also:
A notable 20 percent of those under 30 said they responded to an e-mail offer, then later found out it was bogus.
would read as:
An AMAZING 20 percent of those under 30 said they were STUPID ENOUGH to respond to an e-mail offer, without realizing it was bogus. This makes 15 to 30 year olds our TARGET MARKET, if we actually cared about market research and give a tinker's damn about who we were spamming, instead of just doing so indiscriminately.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
I'm not making this up, the national average cop has an IQ of 105, a full 15 points below the average citizen.
My ISP did a few years ago. The headers are changed slightly, but in the end it doens't help much. Now I just get a lot of SPAM with ***SPAM*** in the subject. (I can't recall the exact string). However I can't force them to delete all that mail, despite an appearent filter.
A bigger problem is I don't control it and cannot configure it. I looked in the headers of one and found something like:
(Score:13, required 6, Not spam, whitelisted).
I get that particular subject 5 times a day, each in a 41K message with the exact same subject. I suspect there is a virus there, but I don't run windows so I'm not sure - either way I can't read the attachment. When I control the filter is might be of use, until then it is just annoying.
I have received over 100 messages in the last 24 hours. Less than a dozen made it through to me.
I had one request for passage of mail, which I accepted as I knew what it was about.
In the whole time I have used Earthlink's challenge system only two businesses have requested permission to be added to my link.
None of the big delivery or sales sites have asked, but I did add them as my daily summary of blocked "suspicious" mail was large.
Earthlink has two categories. know and suspected. it is from suspected that permissions can be asked about. their known spam category does not send out notifications of blocked mail
Getting my permission requires the user/company to follow a link and ask for it. It uses the standard picture challenge technique that some advanced systems can defeat.
In the end I love it, I no longer have to filter at my end. I also have cut down my spam to zero.
I have yet to experience a case of repeated requests. I know I can block them permanently, so unless they roll addresses all the time all they could be at most is a request hassle.
PS: This system is great for those who have grand parents who don't need to see that seedy side of the net. You can setup their address books for them and even review their spam online if they give you the passwords.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I guess we should stop trying to make laws to stop spam. If it were something like 5% of responded to a spam message and 0.01% actually bought something, I could see the argument for illegalizing it. However, a figure this high suggests that people actually want these offers (I haven't a clue why, either, so don't ask).
Maybe this is better as I would much rather have spam than DRM, and it appears spam has been used as one of the arguments in favor of locking down the Net.
I would rather suffer the inconvenience of freedom than the frustrated meaninglessness of life under tyranny.
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
Especially when people e-mail me without a subject line, sends me a joke containing words like penis, viagra or sex. Please people, for God sakes, put a meaningful subject on your e-mail other than "fw: great joke".
My girlfriend has the password to her sister's Yahoo! account and occasionally reads her e-mail. Without discussing what that's all about, she found out that her sister responded to a piece of spam about inventions. It was pretty funny actually reading the response. It went something like this:
"I have an invention that I'd like to have manufactured, but I've had problems with other companies before. What is your relationship with the BBB?"
Who are these people? Dumbasses. The problem with these dumbasses is that they hurt all of us because they keep spammers in business. Sadly, I'm not able to discuss any of this dumbassedness with her sister...
My problem is compounded. Over the years, my ISP has altered their server name a few times.
g arnet.msen.com
I have
xxx@mail.msen.com
xxx@conch.msen.com
xxx@
xxx@msen.com
I usually get 3-4 copies of every spam sent. Some days I get over 800 spam emails.
Since I've used this email for nearly 15 years, changing my email is not an option. Filters can remove about 90%, but I still wade through 50-100 spams a day.
I'd castrate every single fucking spammer out there if I had the chance.
How else am I to get my supply of Viagra and learn about penile enlargement you insensitive clod!? ooohhhh.... I have been pre-approved for a credit card!
Mr. X? Shall I cross the final frontier? -Comic Book Guy
Then we'd be able to shoot anyone who sends us UCE (maybe we should extend that to anyone who cuts us up on the freeway?!)
The story looks like unprofessional BS to me - do reporters go to university to learn things like scientific method and statistics?
Anyone who opens, let alone replies to, an Email entitled "Fr33 Viagara, increase your P#E@N%I!S size" deserves to be shot too.
#include <sig.h>
Damnit, I knew that outcome-based education would dumb people down to the point of a drooling mass of blubber.
-- Liberalism is a mental disorder.
Dictionary spams to hotmail.com, and snagging of outbound addresses - M$ doesn't sell address lists (yet). The address is a semi-random string to get around dictionary spamming, and I haven't sent any mail from it, so I can assume that a large % of the spam came from address harvesting.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
Ok, I've been trying to get Spamassassin to work for a long time and need some help. Yeah I know this isn't the proper forum to ask, but I'm desparate and there will be a lot of Spamassassin attention to this thread and maybe some kind soul will respond. I need a good HowTo for my email topology.
I have a purely-internal-network Lotus Domino server that must send and receive all Internet email thru a Linux box that's running Postfix. There are no local users on that Linux box, it is purely a relay host only, as a bastion between the Internet and my interior private network. I have four different Internet Domains handled by this relay host / Domino server combination. I need a step-by-step HowTo for Postfix+Spamassassin in this purely relay-only scenario. Every other HowTo I've found is for combining more stuff like Amavis or Amoly or whatever in addition to Spamassassin and also assumes you are running a usual unix mailserver where your user mailboxes are local on that box. I need Spamassassin to be a filter for mail that simply flows thru the Linux box. Nothing I've tried thus far has worked for me, and yes, I've RTFM'ed a million times to no avail. Help!
Why do people in cyberspace (read internet) do things they would never do in the real world?
IMHO a kind of driver licence needed for Internet!
Is there a matrix out there I did not recognise?
NoSuchGuy
[Bad Karma only God know's why]
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
Whats the big deal about spam... (Score:-1, Flamebait)
by Garak (100517) on 10:48 AM October 23rd, 2003 (#7290424)
(http://garak.dyndns.org/)
I never hide my email when posting on forums or anywhere online.
(Score:-1, Flat out liar)
I, on the other hand, used to spend a ton of time reading and replying in comp.os.linux.help years ago with an unblocked email address, and I now get over 140 spams a day. So there goes your theory.
Intelligent Life on Earth
If you want to stop spam, make laws that go after the people who employ the spammers. When the people who employ the spammers get hit with hefty fines, they will quit employing spammers. When they quit, the spammers no longer make money. When the spammers no longer make money, they will quit also.
There is no possible way to stop the seven percent of the people who receive spam from buying the product; nor can we ever reduce that percentage.
The only way to stop spam is to cut off the hand that feeds it.
All it takes to find the real source is to track down the people willing to sell products via spam. Obviously, seven percent of spam recipients can find this source; why can't the feds?
I can confirm for you guys that people DO, in fact, reply to spam when it's the right type of offer. A lot of it, just like telemarketing (which we also do where I work), has to do with not just blindly sending stuff out to random people.
I should point out that I'm not responsible for all those animal sex/viagra/soma/paypal chains or anything of the like. I mean... even I am having a hard time understanding why people would respond to those things.
The key here is finding the people who want a service and delivering it. Typically, we do online businesses and sell them services which they actually need... and to be honest, we're doing alright at it. (Just like we do alright with b2b phone sales.)
Here's an interesting set of stats for you guys... we picked up one of those spider bots and sent it on it's merry way, harvesting email addresses right and left. We ended up sending 1,000,000 emails out.
Guess how many responses? 10.
Compare that to when we did a targeted harvest of contact info off one of our competitor's sites. Sent out about 10,000 emails... got about 200 customers out of it.
So... yeah, perhaps my soul could use a little redemption. My job is pretty fun, though.
I've met someone who bought "Free, just pay for shipping" business cards from an ad she saw on the internet. I assumed this was from a spam, since there was a lot of that going on then (3-4 years ago), though it's possible that it was a banner ad instead. I don't know whether those spams were also being used for identity theft, or only for selling names to other spammers and junk mailers.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
That is partially correct. If I signed up for website X, it does allow X to send the e-mail to you. It does not allow everyone that X sold the list to, to send you e-mails.
Fight Spammers!
it's funny dammit!!
I'm stuck with Exchange 2k for a few more years... easy to put a linux box with this running in front of it?
Using the Linux box as a relay host between the Internet and your internal Exchange/Domino/Whatever is easy enough, but getting Spamassassin installed and working on a purely-relay-server is pretty hard. It seems that all the install instructions are assuming you are using *nix mailboxes for your users mailboxes on the same *nix box as your spamassassin. I've been trying to get it to work on a relay-only host for a couple months now, see my plea posting for help further down this thread. I'm the A/C with the Domino server needing a good HowTo for SpamAssassin on a Linux Postfix relay host.
They buy herbal supplements for every medical condition imaginable right now. My dad, who was a salesman, got rooked into a couple of different herbal supplements including coral calcium. To this day we almost get violent arguing about the worthlessness of coral calcium.
But look at all the people that have bought into herbal medicine. I'm sure there are some herbal remedies that do something, but many of them are failing double-blind studies (St. John's Wort) as they get tried, and many have just never been studied -- anecdotal evidence and mystically decoded ancient remedies are as close as they get.
People are suckers for anything they think will work cheaper than what they use now.
The best part of the article was that the email address and phone number for the Seattle PI reporter, Kristin, was included at the bottom of the report. I know it's common for press releases to do this, but in this case it just makes me shake my head...
Rofl! Redundant! That's hilarious! :-D
Daniel
Carpe Diem
check out Brad Sucks' Spam Song project at www.bradsucks.net
(I like tracks 7 and 13 best)
Sure, spam sucks and spammers should be castrated [or worse] but at least one person is having the last laugh at the spammers: http://www.thespamletters.com
"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand". -Milton F.
Think about graylisting instead. The machines do the work for you. Whether this turns out to be a temporary solution or not will be seen.
Now that's a felony.
A valid spam-fighting tactic would be to identify spams that come from hijacked computers and prosecute the advertiser for conspiracy to violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The key here is to prosecute the seller of the product being advertised on conspiracy charges.
A few aggressive prosecutors could put a big dent in spam.
IIRC IQ tests are standardized so that the mean, mode, and median are all right at 100, It is just a standard bell curve.
... we won't have a spam problem. Think about it -- suppose every personal user implemented this, and never saw spam email. Then, when the spam is pumped out, only public business accounts would even receive it. How many of them are going to respond? Zero -- they delete it in batches like you.
The upshot is, spam becomes an ineffective tool and stops being used.
mean != median.
You are assuming a distribution where the mean (numerical average) is equal to the median (the midpoint of the data). Are IQs like this? I have no idea.
Consider five numbers: {50, 110, 110, 110, 120}
The mean is 100. The median is 110. Only 20% of the numbers were below the mean.
In short, your smart arsed comment, while funny, implies that you may in fact be "in there".
Support a few technologists in Washington.
I have to wonder, when scanning some of the spam in my quarantine folder, what the spammers were thinking when they put complete gibberish in either the sender, subject or both. (except for the Chinese spam, which I just write off to bad list selection) If spam didn't work, there wouldn't be any. So does that tell me that J. Random Email-User not only decides to read email with gibberish in the headers, but acts on the (frequently also gibberish, except for the all-important hyperlink) contents? I guess Kornbluth really was right.
Mail? Put "slashdot" in the subject to pass the spam filters.
I've been getting more and more spam lately, and finally set up Spamassassin+Vipul's Razor. I typically get > 20 spam a day. For the past 3 days, ALL spam have been sent to their death, and NO real email got misplaced. With settings that are more likely to let spam through than misplace a real email. That's pretty damn good.
This leads me to my question: What the heck are services like Hotmail etc. doing? Can they just not spare the CPU for that much mail? Would my girlfriend get millions of spam instead of the hundreds she does now? Do they purposefully suck unless you pay them? Somebody must know.
If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide. -Ghandi
Responded to Spam? I think they misspelled "end lusers."
Of course, responding to spam makes you a lot worse than a luser.
How bout "Someone I wish would die in hell along with the spammers."
True. My own mother sent me a mail that said "Hi from home, how are you?" and I deleted it without ever reading it. I'm also beginning to see spammers adapting by seeing [word] with square brackets around it in the Subject: lines of my spam.
What's worse is how this mental killfiling is extending into real life.
For instance, about half of the drugs I get spams for are legit, the other half are pure quackery, or worse, once-legit drugs that got banned due to side effects.
I know that Viagra and Prozac are legitimate drugs. I think Phentermine was one of those fad weight loss things that killed enough people that it got pulled from the formulary.
But the worst thing is that I don't know what half of these other drugs do, but if my Doctor ever offers me Soma, Floricet, Meridla, Propecia, Adipex, or any of about 100 other drugs I get spambombed with every day, my first reaction is going to be to blurt out loud "What the fuck is that crap? Are you another one of those spamming quacks running an MLM scheme or an illegal offshore pharmacy? Up yours, quack, I came to you because I thought you were a real doctor!"
If the trend holds up, it'll end sexual promiscuity. Imagine, every day, going to school with 500 hot teen girls. (Or for those of us who are a little older, going to work and being surrounded by MILFs for 8 hours a day.)
Once upon a time, that sounded like a lot of fun. After eight years of being spammed to death with the notion that that somehow constitues "sex", I'll respond with any offers of a date with "Look, spammer, my wang's plenty big enough, I can make it 3 inches bigger any time I want to, and I delete so many pictures of 'em every day that I don't care if I ever see tits again. And stop fucking dogs and horses."
I have already said to every survey organization and phone solicitor that's ever called me in the last five years these exact words: "Please add me to your do not call list and never call this number again. Thank you." (By the way, these simple words have really reduced the number of phone solicitations I get. I never went overboard demanding names, nor was I rude except for the occasional hangup on a persistent pest.)
I'm also on my state's Do Not Call list, as well as the federal Do Not Call registry. However, these lists will not stop telephone surveyors or pollsters.
So the people they called to perform the survey wouldn't have included many of the most ardent anti-spammers, simply because the survey was conducted in a spam-like fashion that was already being filtered.
John
There might be something to the idea that limiting the amount of circulation your email gets will limit the amount of spam you get. But it'll never completely obliterate it. I personally say get a spam filter and then stop wasting time trying to protect a piece of information that is very easy to get. It's like people who get paranoid about their SSN. If somebody wants your SSN, they will get it.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
Sorry...but I really do have to challenge this. A major portion of most IQ and intelligence tests consists of the recognition of fallacy. (Every A is a C, and every B is a C therefore every A is a B. True or false?) Yet, nearly everything Rush Limbaugh says is based on such fallacies. I am at a loss to understand how someone can claim the ability to easily recognize fallacy (the same as claiming a high IQ), yet follow such consistently fallacious diatribes.
For the record, my "IQ" is around 190 (depending on the day, as IQ does tend to fluctuate significantly). Using the more recent criteria of seven distinct types of intelligence (I know...some say there are more) I score well above average in six of the seven, where even most high-IQ individuals generally only score above average in only one or two.
I agree completely with the original poster. The hardest lesson I have had to learn in my life is that I am extremely intelligent. I never felt that smart and I could never understand why other people couldn't get the simplest facts straight. That frustrated me for many years. Now I simply see it like muscle strength. Not everyone can bench press 200 to 300 pounds, even with practice. It took me many years (I am over 50) but I now realize most people really can't think things through very well, which is why so Spam, and Rush Limbaugh, are so successful.
They couldn't help it. Was there a new rule that illuminata must be moderated -1 no matter what?
...And to think that somebody can't make better use of their mod points.
Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
The article says people are more annoyed with spam than door-to-door salespeople knocking on their front door. Or even unsolicited phone calls.
OK. People would rather put up with some poor yammering sod than hit "delete"?
Makes little sense to me.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
I recently applied for a home loan. I now realize that I should have created a separate e-mail account for this! I get so many e-mail messages whose subjects are "re: Approved" or "re: Home Loan" that it's driving me nuts!
if you want to do anything useful with the information by understanding sub-sets or demographics of respondents, you need to increase the sample size.
You may have 400 total adults answering, but if you were trying to understand differences by gender [assume
Who put this thing together? Me, that's who.
Nice humorous ambiguity in the article:
Oxman's 15-year-old son, Robert, says five out of six e-mails he gets daily are spam...Robert says he simply deletes them and is less bothered by spam than his father.
Robert's top annoyances:
1. His father
2. Spam
There is no way to "define" IQ in such a way that a situation like that makes the mean and median different.
*Sigh.* Yes, there is. First, you are mixing the concept of a population, a parametric model, and a sample. A population is the large, effectively infinite pool from which samples are drawn. A parametric model is devised which fits the samples.
No, the actual population *isn't* Gaussian (as I admitted in my previous post), but IQ is fit to a parametric form, and is defined so that the median and mean IQ is 100. Note that Gaussian distribtutions are symmetric. For about 3 sigma off the center, this holds pretty well. Also note that Einstein is a whole lot more sigma than that, and it is not surprising that the model breaks down.
Recall, however, that Einstein is only 1 person, and since the population of earth is 1 billion, he doesn't skew anything much on his own. Also, for every Einstein, there's someone completely retarded as well.
Note, I am not saying the mean and median IQ aren't the same. Im just saying if they ARE the same, it has more to do with the way intelligence is distributed among the populace, and not with the way IQ was defined.
You've got the cart before the horse. IQ was defined that way to fit a populace whose intelligence is pretty well Gaussian. It's not coincidence, it's simply the choice of an effective model.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Partner has a specific meaning. At the very least, if their partner sends it, you can tell their partner to stop and all their other partners should be notified. Now, if they claim that they can't inform their partners, are they realy partners.
Fight Spammers!
I don't want to speak for him, but I don't think that's what he meant at all. You don't have to invoke a discontinuous mapping transfer function at all, nor does one need to consider cheating or anything like that.
Consider simply a light spectrum from some given source. Let's say I'm going to rate the spectrum, and assign a score to each individual wavelength component. 100 is equivelant to the mean wavelength, and 115 is equivalent to mean+1sd. Let's imagine the source is effectively Gaussian with regard to frequency. From this standpoint, in terms of score, the "mean" frequency is equivalent to the "median" frequency. However, consider the "score" as a function of wavelength (where wavelength is equal to the speed of light/frequency), and the distribution is no longer symmetric/Gaussian, and the mean does not equal the median.
Has any cheating been done here? No! It's simply an indication that different mapping functions lead to different distributions that may have different characteristics than the parent.
In any case, IQ scores are generated exactly as g'parent suggested: they are converted into a Gaussian form from raw scores that may take an arbitrary parametric form. This is actually a very common technique, and can be completely valid if performed correctly. As Gaussian functions are symmetric, the mean is the same as the median. If you've never done anything like that, I'd question how much statistical work you're actually doing.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
I'm just a bit curious - the last time I looked the only way to get any kind of business account was to purchase a t1 line (or similar) to your property - although the local cable company implied that there was this mysterious "business class" service over cable available, they wouldn't actually sell it to you.
Or is this business class DSL? (Which I've only ever found available if you have a "business" phone line, which gets hit with all sorts of extra fees that residential phone lines don't get)
Junk faxes are now back - they just moved the originating fax # off-shore. (I get a few per month now.)
"Liability for the people who hire the spammer to advertise their products." - that's a good idea because it would catch the US companies who try to end-run around the law by using an international firm to do it.
Frankly, I'd settle with making forged e-mail domains or fraudulent claims as the basis for determining what is/isn't spam.
I remember I got a spam from a company called Revolution Helicopters. I was so intrigued by the concept that I emailed them saying they really shouldn't spam but their product was interesting.
They emailed me back, saying the company will never do this again since the response was so hostile, and they had learned their lesson!
I was curious, so just now I did a search for the company. They are not in business anymore, but people are still using and maintaining the product.
So I have technically responded to a spam, but I never actually bought anything from one.
D
Which is actually done, but it's more in response to the estimated population rather than a small sample. You can estimate an uncertainty for population parameters (mean, std) from that of a sample, but it's a tad too complicated for me to go into. As it happens, for LARGE sample sizes, it's not generally necessary, and any differences are noise. Also, if they fit the data to a consistent parametric form (Gaussian), the estimated mean and median may change, but they'll always equal each other.
If this is true, IQ scores have no relevance, because you are redefining the standard for each different sample.
That's just not really the correct way to think about it. The sample is used as a means of estimating the population. Sampling methods are never perfect. The goal isn't to try to use the sample and assume it's the population. The sample is used as a tool to estimate the parameters of an assumed functional form.
certainly any GIVEN sample would not have that work out.
Which is irrelevant. No one cares about the median or mean of ten guys sitting home watching football. There's a difference between sample, population, and functional statistics. Sample statistics are used to determine a function that is used to model the population, which is too large to sample.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
she told me that she responded to some spam about a coffee subscription. You sign up for one month of coffee and they send you a coffee maker (nice and big), 3 mugs, a nice big thermos made of aliminum, and two packs of good coffee. all for $25. She also had no problem canceling her subscription after one month. (yes we did check for any weird charges on her card)
So she got a realy good deal, and it was through SPAM.
So maybe some of the 7% SPAM that people responded to were actualy good deals?
Sure, but that's a matter not of a different *sample* but of a different *population*. The distinction is subtle but incredibly important. Even then, the question is what parametric form one would fit the sample data to for the sub-populations. If that is Gaussian, then the means and medians of those populations are taken to be the same. If not, then the subpop medians and means may be different, but relatable functionally.
A relationship established between a given variable and a population can never be assumed to be valid when applied to a separate population unless one has good reason to believe it does.
Clearly, my prior comments are intended as relevant for the population, as any model breaks down when one analyzes sub-populations or subsets.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
I don't think a third of people clicking a spam link is all that surprising. It's not like 1/3 of all spam links have been clicked - just 1/3 of people have ever followed a link. Hell, I've clicked spam links occasionally if the spam is funny enough.
I got one a few days ago whose subject was "Mongoose Fzcking". I had to follow. Lo and behold it was a broken link.
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
My cable company was more than happy to sell me a business account. I did purchase it through my personal corporation, but I don't know if that's a requirement to get the business class account. I supposedly get preferred access to bandwidth on my node, better tech support (which I virtually never use... calling tech support is a sign of weakness), a static IP, a bunch of email addresses, etc.
I don't know why your cable company wouldn't sell you a business account... I'm sure my cable company makes big bucks on the sizable install fee (you don't even want to know how much it was)... but otherwise the cost is only a bit more than residential service.
As I said, no problems (BTW, my provider is Cox cable), though YMMV
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Doh!
The report is based on a randomized, national phone survey of 2,200 adults. It defined spam as "unsolicited commercial e-mail" from an unknown sender.
I think i'll send out a mass emailing survey about telemarketers who do surveys.
do() || do_not();
It has to do with volume and ability to slam doors.
Everyone would prefer one spam a day over one door-to-door salesperson a day. And everyone would prefer 500 spams a day over 500 door-to-door salepeople a day.
But those aren't the choices. I get one door-to-door person a month or so. I get 25000 spams a month or so. Yes, I'd prefer one saleperson knocking on my door, to the 25000 spam emails.
Plus I am powerless against spam, I can send abuse reports but that has no observable effect. With a door-to-door salesperson I can slam the door in their face, I can yell abuse, I can call the police if they visit 25000 times a month.
So yes, I am more annoyed with spam than with door-to-door salespeople.
It's all about volume.
I receive 250 spams per day, but that is rising at an alarming rate. Soon it will be 1,000 per day, and then 10,000 per day. If I don't check my email for a few days my inbox at my ISP overflows, and I miss regular correspondence.
So, the occasional door-to-door salesman or telemarketing call is far easier to deal with. If they were lining up outside my door, or if the phone never stopped ringing, then I would agree with you.
Having trouble walking?
Need a third leg to added to all your pants?
Do your underpants fling themselves across the room when that *special* lady walks in?
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What the hell did the other 8% think it was, a fringe benefit?
Would'nt it be great if you had an army of cloned door-to-door sales men at your door, waiting for you to come back from holiday.
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
Don't blame you, then. Odd, though, I use 3 different addresses, subscribe to a number of mailing lists, and only get about 30 spams a day. Most of those go to a Yahoo mailbox that I empty without even opening.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Yeah, but you can't delete all those salesmen. I'd much rather press a key than get out of my chair to answer the door.
I have one well-protected address I give to people whose mail I don't want to miss. That's all I use it for and, so far, it gets very little spam. I'm quite willing to empty the mailboxes of the other accounts, sight unseen, when they get out of hand.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
None of this is available from Spam, but cloned door-to-door sales men would make all this, and more possible.
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
Email addressed to numerous places ends up in my mailbox (sholden@*.cs.usyd.edu.au, sholden@*.cs.su.oz.au, and a bunch more).
Such addresses have been active since 1995 or so...
They are non-munged on my web pages, in my usenet posts, and so on.
My filter gets rid of essentially all of it (occassionaly something gets through when a new style of spam occurs but the filter quickly learns and catches them too). If I didn't filter my email would be completely unusable - I'd never find the real email amongst the garbage.
I agree with you.
He may like to happyspam people...
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Except for my throw-away Yahoo address, none of my addresses have been active for more than a year. That, I'm sure, accounts for the relative lack of spam I receive. Interestingly, before that I worked for an outfit with a global presence and I can't recall seeing a single piece of spam in my office inbox.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Alright, so a third of people they surveyed responded to spam... well thats of people who even responded to their tele-survey, which in itself is spam, so the results of this survey are not entirely valid. Many people like myself refuse all telemarketing and surveys, so would not get included in the sample, and these people would also be unlikely to respond to spam. /. :P
This survey is less even valid than the usual surveys posted on
It has to do with volume and ability to slam doors.
And dogs. Don't underestimate the impact of having a large dog barking as soon as they knock on the door. :^)
Seriously, door to door just isn't very effecient for the marketer. One "salesman" can only annoy one person at a time, and it'll take them 30 seconds to walk to the next house - plus however long it takes for that person to answer the door (assuming they are even home) and tell them to F-off. That's why marketers like spam (one person can annoy millions of people in a short amount of time) and telemarketing (one person can annoy more people per hour than via door-to-door.)
Door to door, they get cussed at, have to worry about dogs, and it's time inefficient. I've seen maybe three door-to-door salesmen in the last three years. There aren't enough of them to be a problem. If there were, I'd put up a "no soliciting - owner has a dog and isn't afraid to let him loose" sign on the door.
You don't post your email address on Slashdot. The domain you give here is http://garak.dyndns.org/, which doesn't resolve. So claims about how you "never hide your email when posting anywhere online" are clearly bullshit.
I have several very public addresses. I am currently receiving 250-300 spams every day, as a minimum. I've never bought from spam, a telemarketer, a shopping channel, or any of the other things that you claim make me a spam target. All that makes me a spam target is that spammers can find an email address for me.
Basically, everything you said was a lie. Why are you so pro spam? Could it be that you have a bunch of HerbalV1agra that you need to sell?
I see door to soor sales people at about the same rate as you. Unless you include those damn jehova's witness people... The wife invited one in once when she bored at home, and they just kept coming back - when I was at home and she wasn't.
They seem to have stopped coming a few months ago now, maybe because I started answering the door nude...
have a nice day, you hear!