Slashdot Mirror
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?
"What other ways can people think of to attack the spammer business models, and what are the expected downsides of such approaches?"
Break their fucking legs, and arrest.
evil adrian
Turns out the Iraquis have a little Kobe Bryant blood in them -- they like the old corn hole, too.
Five minutes after Lynch was captured, they're passing her around like a pack of smokes, fucking her in the ass, turning her into their own personal goatse man.
As Americans it is our patriotic duty to go to war overseas and kill as many filthy sand niggers as possible. Send their heathen asses to burn in Hell for all eternity. It's what Jesus wants us to do.
By modding this post down you are affirming your allegiance to the Jihad over in the Middle East and we will track your Allah-praising ass down and you will be executed for teason against the United States of America.
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We could smear poopy on their webservers; get a nice big turd on the CPU and that sucker will cook, and the poop vapors will repel all!
get to it
Lfjldskjfsldkfjsdlkfjsdlk FuFu FFFFfsdfsdfsd
you are fucking retarded
Kill yourself
People decry spam because it decreases productivity and costs businesses money. But you know what else decreases productivity and costs businesses money? Their smart employees wasting all day dreaming up new schemes to thwart spammers. Bayesian filter, spam-the-spammers, RBL, it's all quite ingenious, really. But for Christ's sake, gain some perspective. Or use those brain cells for something that matters, at least.
Certainly I can't be the only one out there who feels that this story, which nets about a Slashdot post and a dozen wire stories per day, is getting so blown out of proportion as to become unrecognizable. We're closer to World War III than we've been in 50 years. A couple hundred people a day are getting blown up in various parts of the Middle East. Large parts of India, China, and North Korea are in famine. 40 million people in Africa are dying of AIDS. Yet all I read about is this goddamn Spam problem, which I remind you, is incorporeal. It doesn't, techinically, even exist. So please: take two minutes a day to hit the delete key and then _shut up_ about the state of your inbox. There are more. pressing. issues. out there.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.