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Who Benefits from Spam, Anyway?
Elbowgeek asks: "I've noticed that the vast majority of spam emails I receive are barely literate, to the point that in some cases one can hardly discern the product or service being advertised. Since most people are savvy/jaded enough to detect these entities that are not filtered automatically, just where does the profit motive from these messages come from? Is it simply the theory that if you send enough spam messages you're very likely to hit enough gullible recipients to make an acceptable amount of money? Does anyone have any insight on this dark underbelly of Internet advertising?"
By doing this
1. Send mass, annoyingly misspelled emails
2. Wait as stupid people wanting (insert lame thing here) open and click on them
3. ??????
4. Profit
Funny createSig(Witty remark, Odd reference)
{
return (Funny)remark + (Funny)reference;
}
I've spent an inordinate amount of time fighting spam on my server in the past. My guess is that the completely mussed up ones are a combination of the following:
Of those three, only one is intentional. Seeing some large nefarious purpose may be giving the spammers too much credit.
As a side note, some of my favorites are the pharmaceutical spams that say the names of the drugs, but don't offer any means of purchase let alone contact. I often wonder if some madman at GSK or Pfiser is reminding the world that v1a6r@ can be spelled so many different ways.
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
Is there any point left in spam but to keep spam-blocking companies in business? After all, Internet Security is quite the nice racket...
It's entirely possible there are people with fake google accounts marking that as "non-spam" to counter the operation.
It isn't like you need a captcha to report spam.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
My regular email address gets them from time to time but its my Final Fantasy XI PlayOnline email address that gets them the most.
They are emails with gibberish for subject lines and gibberish for contents. They are sentences which make no sense what so ever, random words put together that have little meaning at all. There's no ad, no link, and the addresses they are sent from are bogus (I know, I tried finding them). A few of these emails have originating address of @ds1.yahoo.com or @server1.paypal.com or @ddl.amazon.com and so on and so forth. The actual address itself is made up of random letters and numbers.
My theory, like those suggested aboove, is that these emails are sent by "Botnets" to random email addresses in order to see which ones don't bounce. This can be in preparation for sending ad-like spam or a prelude to a virus infestation. Or, like someone else suggested it could be a form of coded communication which is widely broadcasted in order to prevent the authorities from find out its true intended destination.
Michael "TheZorch" Haney
thezorch@gmail.com
http://thezorch.googlepages.com/home
"Yes, Jimmy, people really do buy spam advertised products"
Fine. Some idiots out there buy vi@gr@ from spam. But I'd be willing to be that damn close to 0% of people WHO ACTIVELY FILTER SPAM buy stuff from spam.
So, who do they try so hard to defeat spam blockers?? Think about it- they are working so very hard in order to make their message reach the very people who specifically try to block it.
Why?
Eeuwh. Believe it or not, they can cause you many Maalox moments under certain circumstances.
Take a close look at these. If (a) you have a website, and (b) they come in pairs, or especially if they come in threes, they can be a signal that somebody is evaluating you for a bit of cross-site scripting--or worse yet, that they have you. They may look as though the sender has forged and garbled your email address--but then again, they may not look like that. Little spates of one-word messages merit a second glance. They're like the odd little sounds you might hear if someone were trying the doorknobs of your house in the middle of the night.
"Here's what's happening. You're starting to drive like your Dad..." - Red Green
I'm beginning to think they must be paying Google to never tag their crap as spam.
1) Offer free email with gobs of space to instantly become a major player in that area.
2) Punch blatantly obvious holes in the spam filters for your biggest-budget customers.
3) When people complain, simply remind them that it's still in beta.
4) Profit!
Attention zealots and haters: 00100 00100
that the spammers haven't started data mining mailing lists and using legit text from those lists along with their spam garbage.
If spammers are just scamming their customers with full knowledge that the spam will not increase product sales, then what is the incentive to actually send out the spam messages rather than simply lie to the customer? Can one take a spammer to court and claim "this man promised to send 2 million unsolicited emails on my behalf but failed to do so; I demand a refund!" Seems difficult to proved one way or the other if the spam services are even legal.
I did the same thing. I took a spam with a very clear disclaimer (although they used a tiny font):
[...] We have received 250.000 free trading shares from a third party, not an officer, director or affiliate shareholder. We intend to sell all 250.000 shares now, which could cause the stock to go down. This company has : negative cash flow from operations, no revenues in its most recent quarter, an accumulated defecit, a negative net worth, nominal cash, a going concern opinion from its auditor and related party transaction. [...] This is a penny stock and is a high risk security. URGENT: Please, Please Read the Company's SEC filings before you invest.
The stock was ASIQ.OB, before this spam, it was around $0.25
So the 'third party' gave around $62.500 to the spammer in free shares. Few days after, the stock was priced around $0.75
If the spammer sold everything at this price, he actually gain $187.500.
The 'third party' bought probably a million or more of trading shares. Imagine how profitable this operation was for both of them.