Attacking the Spammer Business Model

Stephen Samuel asks: "Spammers spam because it's an 'easy way to make money'. They send out millions of spams knowing that 99.995% of them will be ignored, but the other 0.005% of responses are pure gold (Andrew Leung at Telus has an excellent report on the economics of spam). Responses to mortage spams are reportedly worth $50.00 each. What would happen if, instead of technical and legal approaches, we simply started attacking their business model? If people started responding to just 1% of the spam we received, spammers would drown in the responses, and the mortage spam responses wouldn't be worth an email, much less $50. The Nigerian Sweet Revenge is an example of this. The nice thing about this sort of statistical approach is that it would start to reward spammers for sending out -fewer- emails. (fewer emails -> fewer bogus responses). What other ways can people think of to attack the spammer business models, and what are the expected downsides of such approaches?" Of course, the one major drawback to this is the likelihood of more spam, since you'll be giving them a valid email address. However, many of you may be receiving increasing amount of spam as it is (even through your filters) so might an organized spam-the-spammers movement work?

Comments

This is actually a GOOD thing.

[Mirk]

This is actually a good thing.

Why? Sheesh, I don't know, but whatever story gets posted here, someone always claims it's a good thing, so I figured it might just as well be me this time.

Re:Filters that fight back...

[spacefrog]

automatically crawls any links listed...bring their web servers to their knees

Oh, the Slashdot business model!

Re:Richest spammers could afford to handle replies

[ron_ivi]

"Now what about sending them bogus email addresses and phony information?"

Reply with the the email addreses of other spammers :-)

No, This is actually a BAD thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is actually a good thing.

Why? Sheesh, I don't know, but whatever story gets posted here, someone always claims it's a good thing, so I figured it might just as well be me this time.

This is a bad thing. Why? Well, I don't know either, but whatever comments get posted here, someone always claims you're wrong, so I figured it might just as well be me this time.

Re:Capital punishment...

[fdiskne1]

I was talking with a salesperson of an anti-spam package last week. She said that I could tweak the rules so the spam I WANT to receive makes it through. I asked her why in the world I would want any through, and she said, "Sometimes you can find some good deals in spam." She then told me about something she had recently purchased from spam. I can't remember just what it was. I was too busy trying to get my brain around the fact that she actually purchased something from spam. 8-/

Re:Richest spammers could afford to handle replies

[BrokenHalo]

Well, I guess a few spammers found dead with "THOU SHALT NOT SPAM" carved into their skin might start getting the message across :-)

Re:Ironic, don't you think?

[Kynde]

That's not ironic. Why? Hell if I know. But whenever someone says ironic here, there's always a reply moaning about missuse of the word ironic, links to webster et al and raving how Alanis is to blame for all this confusion. I figured it might as well be me this time.