Slashdot Mirror
Spammers Learn to Outsource Their Captcha Needs
lukeknipe writes "Guardian Unlimited reporter Charles Arthur speaks with a spammer, discussing the possibility that his colleagues may be paying people in developing countries to fill in captchas. In his report, Arthur discusses Nicholas Negroponte's gift of hand-powered laptops to developing nations and the wide array of troubles that could arise as the world's exploitable poor go online." From the article: "I've no doubt it will radically alter the life of many in the developing world for the better. I also expect that once a few have got into the hands of people aching to make a dollar, with time on their hands and an internet connection provided one way or another, we'll see a significant rise in captcha-solved spam. But, as my spammer contact pointed out, it's nothing personal. You have to understand: it's just business."
If I am not mistaken, there have been several stories on this kind of thing on Slashdot...
Ayway, the bottom line is that spammers have been doing this for a long time, and I'm not sure if the $100 laptops will make a difference either way. Will these $100 laptops all have internet access?
1. The cost of computing and Internet access have truly dropped to a point to where it is nearly "universal".
2. The Human solution sometimes is the best.
What's going to be interesting is threefold: how do we conquer this problem, and how long until "sweat spam shops" have opened up, and how long until the outsourcers become the main branches? Much like the Cory Doctorow story revolving around sweat shops of MMO players, it might not be long until automated scripts are combined with "sweat shop" style workers, who's only job it so enter in the proper "human" data to fill spam.
On the other hand, as outsourcing has taught us, it is only a matter of time before the outsourcees become the suppliers as they get the training they need. Once the "local guy" starts making up the scripts, it's only a matter of time before he/she goes to open up their own spamming sweat shop. Which is a good thing in a weird way as the article points out - it encourages new business at the expense of annoyance.
The next phase of solutions might have to focus on more detailed question/responses - but there's a danger in this in finding the "sweet spot". You want to make it as expensive as possible for spammers, but not so annoying for your "true customers". Much like my new bank's online service, perhaps, where they made me select my "security image" and more personal questions so I had to enter 2-3 things to truly "log in" the first time.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
It's pretty depressing when one of the primary worries of bringing the third world on-line is that it will drive the cost of breaking anti-spam measures to zero.
In fact, there is a lot of good, low-end on-line work low-skilled third-world labor can do once they are on-line. That's a good development: it gets work done that otherwise wouldn't get done, and it gets people jobs that beat the back-breaking, dangerous work they'd otherwise have to do (provided they aren't too old, weak or ill to do it in the first place).
Hey, maybe that third world labor can also do the spam classification, manually. I'd be willing to pay for that.
The problem with this reasoning is that there is only a small group of people buying the pills, but the spam is received by a much larger group.
This is of course because spreading spam costs too little to be worried about pre-selecting the audience. When advertising on TV or sending info by post, companies usually try to match their audience to the product they are going to sell. I.e. they do not send adverts for luxury products to houses in poor neighborhoods, they try to weed their lists so that bouncing addresses are not kept on it forever, etc.
All this to maximize the return on the cost of sending the adverts.
Spammers don't have to do this, because they make money anyway.
When it would cost 1 cent to send a spam message, it would not be worthwile to send it to 100000 addresses and make 1 sale of a $25 product.
The very point of spam is it is almost zero cost to the spammer. When you pay people to answer to captchas the zero cost factor disappears. I don't think cheap computers and internet will make the problem dangerous
Not everyone in the third world is going to get computers
Every computer is not going to get internet connected
Not everyone on the internet is going to be spamming
Also consider the fact how much can a single person spam. If the dude with the new cheap computer answers captchas for even 15 hours a day they would hardly generate over a 1000 spam messages which is likely to get the spammer one or two hits. Do you think the spammer is stupid enough to pay for this much profit?
Hire someone in the developing world to monitor your blog and clear it of spam. If the cost is insignificant to them it is insignificant to you. And as the cost of labour rises with competition the problem naturally goes away.
Whilest spam is by far the worst case, all direct marketting suffers from this problem to some extent. Very little of the crap that's shoved through my door, SMSed or telemarketted to me is actually relevent to me.
I can assure you that all direct marketing bureaus match the product and target audience. When living in a lower-class neighborhoud, you will find very few Mercedes or Jaguar flyers on your doorstep. It will not be perfect, but nobody is just throwing away money they know they can better spend elsewhere.
(maybe it also differs by country; I can assure in certain countries those bureaus have very detailed profiles they can use to target advertisements)
Even easier solution: kill everyone with a penis. Never mind the spam; there would be no more violent crime, no more porn, no more rape, no more unwanted pregnancy.
I'd say we'd nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to make sure.
*blink* what country do you live in? In a 1st world nation, that's *well* below the standard minimum wage. Here in Ontario, for example, minimum wage is $6.85/hour. Even after taxes are taken off, that's about $45/day if you're working full time, and I think there's talk about raising the minimum wage to $7.40. Hell, an untrained private in the Canadian army, who has just come in off the street and has no education after Grade 10, makes almost 3 times what you claim, and he doesn't have to pay for room/board.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
The problem with your logic is that sociopaths exist in much higher ratio's than you seem to believe. See, according to http://www.psychiatric-disorders.com/personality/a ntisocial.php and other sources, nearly 3.6% of the US population is sociopaths. Essentially, the only thing keeping 1/30th of the population from this behavior is laws. While sociopaths may not care whether you live or die, they do care whether or not they go to jail. That means 1 in 30 people CAN squeeze that trigger, and not really feel too bad about it. These aren't some rarity, meant to be warded off by the masses. This is a common behavior disorder, and odds are, many people you know have it.
Microsoft Sucks, F/OSS Rocks. I get mod points now right?
Nothing against all that, and yes, I knew that they're not uncommon. I was going by a roughly 4% number, but 3.6% is close enough. In a nutshell, yes, we can very quickly aggree about all you've wrote.
The point still stands that you can't just snap your fingers and become one, so it's kinda pointless to dream about becoming one. "Man, if I were alone with this guy for a minute, I'd soo punch his clock" is a pipe dream. Either you aren't a sociopath at all, and in practice you couldn't do anything to this guy. Or if you are one and not already in jail, chances are you have better passtimes than beating a spammer up. Also chances are you wouldn't give enough of a damn about the rest of humanity to rid them of a spammer.
And the second point, although I just skirted it in the last paragraph is: we're IMHO better off just recognizing these guys for what they are, than dreaming of becoming one.
Their main weapon and "super-power" is the ability to pass for just a guy like you or me, except they always have a good excuse to be callous and ruthless. "We're the good guys, so it's ok if we break the rules." (At which point we're not the good guys any more.) "You can't make an omelett without breaking a few eggs." (Except they invariably break a lot of eggs and practically never end up with a decent omelett. Because in the end, breaking eggs is just for the fun, and the omelett is just an excuse.) "Everyone else is doing it, so it's ok if we do it too." (At which point we're a part of the problem too.) "You can't get ahead by being one of the sheep." (But at what cost to the society of those "sheep"?) "It may be unpopular/unethical/whatever, but someone has to do it. It's just doing what's necessary." (Really? I've yet to see many situations where being an asshole is _necessary_. An easy way out, maybe, but an absolute necessity for society, almost never.) Etc.
And since they almost never can do all the harm alone, they have to use those a lot. They have to recruit their, well, basically "accomplices", by posing as the guys like you and me, only with the smarts and willpower to do what, sadly, needs to be done. So basically the worst thing you can do to one is to stop believing those lies and excuses.
Dreaming to become one, just gets one closer to _accepting_ that line of reasoning. Once you've accepted that it's ok to act antisocially and illegally if it's for the right reason (e.g., beating this guy up because he's a spammer,) you're one step closer to accepting it for a lot less clear-cut reasons.
Yes, it won't really get you closer to actually becoming one. But it might get you one step closer to accepting it from someone who is one.
That's, more or less, all I'm trying to say.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
They love to pose as just the smart ones, yes. They do that a lot.
But in the end that all bears fairly little relevance. Even if there is no afterlife at all (in fact, especially if there isn't one), there are some millenia of learning to, more or less, work together to make our stay here reasonably acceptable. That's in the end all that society is.
If all humans actually were unchecked wolves to other humans, you'd probably find this one existence here to be very shitty and very short. Because at least 1%, the elite among the elites, as psychopathy goes, would be perfectly capable even to slice you up for nothing more than because they're bored and would find it funny to see you scream.
So instead we've worked out a way to live with each other somewhat better. It's not perfect, but it's the best we've managed.
And these people being "smart" invariably comes at the expense of everyone else's happiness. One unchecked prick can cause 1000 or 100,000 people to be happy. Or several million. At the risk of invoking Goodwin's law, Hitler was a diagnosed psychopath. They're the school bully being happy at the expense of a lot of other kids being a lot unhappier.
Even if we accept them "smart" to ruthlessly pursue only their own happiness, it's something that causes more unhappiness on the whole. A society where they're left unchecked isn't particularly happy even for the most of them, as most of them will just find a bigger bully stepping on their toes. And a lot less for the rest of us.
So basically, well, it's still in everyone's interest to keep them in check and stop falling for the various excuses.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Well, from that line of thought, I agree. I have to say, that is one of the most well thought out responses I've seen on /., and thanks for further explaining. You're right, in that throughout history we have shown that the sociopathic can be contained, but only when they cross a certain line that enough people find unacceptable, and I think the most important thing, as you pointed out, is that sociopaths can only operate when there is a certain amount of apathy from the masses.
Microsoft Sucks, F/OSS Rocks. I get mod points now right?