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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?"
Well you can assume that some of the Spam is static used to detrain spam filters. But for most cases Spammers make money in sending the Spam, Not selling the services that goes with it. So say they charge $10,000 for a Million emails. So unexpecting company or some poor smuck think he is going to get rich quick with this stuff will pay the spamming companies so much to give the link to their website and sell a product. But there is no promise that they will sell the product they only promise to deliver a million emails. So what normally happens the Smuck goes bankrupt and the Spammer gets the money. If the Spammer can get past the Spam filters then they can promise better visibility.
There is basically an endless pot of Smuck who think they can get rich quick by selling sex toys, Investing in stock tips...
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The short answer: yes. Send out a million emails and get a .1% response and it's more than worth it.
It's just like every other business out there. Some people don't know how to run them. Unfortunately, with spam, these idiots are able to make a major anoyance of themselves with their ill-concieved, badly run catastrophies.
Trust me, the illiterate folks really don't make any money. But they're only part of your spam. The one where, you know, you can actually find some information on how to buy a product? They're doing ok.
TW
Is there any point left in spam but to keep spam-blocking companies in business? After all, Internet Security is quite the nice racket...
Um.
1. Spam has never been used to advertise respectable products.
2. The motive for virus writing nowadays is profit, same as spam. Viruses let you put up adware and create zombie hordes for spam forwarding or DDoS blackmailing.
3. In the past, the motive for virus writing was not to hurt other people, but simply a kind of power trip or experiment. For proof, look at how very small the proportion of viruses that intentionally delete data is. The psychopathic "hurt as many people as possible" mindset is extremely rare.
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