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Spam Capital of the World

Posted by timothy on from the at-least-of-the-U.S. dept.

ermita2 writes "The South Florida Sun-Sentinel published this weekend a story about how South Florida is home to more spammers than any other place in the world according to Spamhaus. The reason for that seems to be Florida's long history and friendliness with dirty business from real estate speculation to the penny stock scammers. Among the interesting tidbits is anecdotal evidence that the amount of spam worldwide fell for a while after last year's hurricanes in Florida."

8 of 213 comments (clear)

  1. Re:solution by azaris · · Score: 3, Informative

    Economics problem - spam is profitable as long as 0.01% of the spammed masses buy the pills. As long as there are just a few idiots buying into the crap, we all get spammed.

    The spammers aren't making a profit selling physical products, they're making a profit selling spamming services. The best ones usually have a huge network of contacts where small businesses buy "opt-in mailing campaigns" or some such rubbish from a third party, who then subcontract someone to harvest or buy a list from the Internet and then give it to a another spammer who sends the actual spam. The end result is that the product seller is inundated by angry e-mails but has no idea what happened (plausable deniability) and the only one who gets anything out of it is the spammer.

  2. South Florida is DEM territory. by mosel-saar-ruwer · · Score: 5, Informative

    South Florida is home to more spammers than any other place in the world...

    Don't forget the Bush family...

    South Florida is Democrat territory [mostly transplanted NYers and NJers] and went overwhelmingly Gore. Republican strength is in North Florida, which, for all intents and purposes, is an entirely different state.

    By the way, real estate swindling is a long time source of Democrat wealth [John Zaccaro, husband of Geraldine Ferraro; Richard Blum, husband of Diane Feinstein; etc], which is the primary reason why Federal, State, and Local zoning laws and "environmental" regulations exist in the first place [to defend the interests of the landed gentry, and crooked Tony Soprano-esque insiders who can game the system].

    We could also take some time to review the history of penny stock swindlers, like FDR's bootlegger cum-Nazi apologist ambassador to Great Britain, but this reply is getting kinda long-winded.

    1. Re:South Florida is DEM territory. by nunchux · · Score: 2, Informative

      South Florida is Democrat territory [mostly transplanted NYers and NJers] and went overwhelmingly Gore. Republican strength is in North Florida, which, for all intents and purposes, is an entirely different state.

      True that N. Florida is the bottom of the Bible Belt, but your summation of S. Florida as all transplants from NY is dated. They definitely exist in large numbers, but so do native Republicans. And then there is the enormous first and second generation Cuban community, which Jeb has more-or-less managed to sway (and who are responsible for tipping the scales in the state and getting him elected to office in the first place.)

      Also-- I'm not familiar with the specifics of bankruptcy laws and such, but I believe Florida is extremely lenient. Meaning you (or your shadow corporation) can declare bankruptcy and still hold on to most if not all of your personal assetts. Seems to work for O.J...

  3. Old news. by alanw · · Score: 5, Informative
    It has long been known that Boca Raton is the spam-haven of the world. A google groups for the place in group:news.admin.net-abuse.email turns up 1,230 hits.

    See, for example, this media report in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel from Mar 24, 2003, or this one from Oct 10 2001, asking

    What is wrong with the Boca Raton, Plantation, et. al. area of FL that it has such a high density of shameless and unrepentant spammers?

    One of the reputed reasons spammers find it attractive, as mentioned in the article are the lenient bankruptcy laws which prevent the spammer's house from being reposessed.

  4. Re:solution by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    See this piece from Wired:

    http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,576 13,00.html

    Spam is one big pyramid scheme.

  5. South Florida is (NOT) DEM territory. by Ryosen · · Score: 2, Informative

    2000 Election results from CNN:
    Bush 2,909,176 (49%)
    Gore 2,907,451 (49%)

    2004 Election results from the Washington Post:

    George W. Bush 3,955,656 (52%)
    John F. Kerry 3,574,509 (47%)
    Other 61,618 (1%)

    49% of the state voted Republican in 2000. 52% in 2004.

    In South Florida, only Broward, Miami/Dade and Palm Beach counties voted Democrat and Kerry lead Bush by only 6% of the votes in Miami/Dade.

    More info here: http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/sta tes/FL/P/00/map.htmlpages/results/states/FL/P/00/m ap.html

    Not exactly "overwhelmingly" Democrat.

    --

    Ryosen
    One man's "Troll, +1" is another man's "Insightful, +1".
  6. Re:solution by jschottm · · Score: 3, Informative

    Some spam is indeed like that. But if you look at the records/discussions of anti-spam groups, you'll see that a very large portion of the spam sent from people in .us comes from a relatively small number of individuals.

  7. Re:Spam blocklist by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    http://blackholes.us/

    You can block by the major providers - e.g. hurricane electric, internap, etc.

    Or the entire US - not recommended for anything other than toy sites - http://countries.nerd.dk/

    Please rsync if you're going to hammer the server.