Former Spammer Reveals Secrets in New Book

StonyandCher writes "A retired spammer is looking to make money from a tell-all book rather than fleecing people dependent on pharmaceuticals and people with gambling problems. In this Computerworld article 'Ed', a retired spammer, predicts the spam problem will only get worse, aided by consumers with dependencies and faster broadband speeds. From the article: 'He sent spam to recovering gambling addicts enticing them to gambling Web sites. He used e-mail addresses of people known to have bought antianxiety medication or antidepressants and targeted them with pharmaceutical spam. Response rates to spam tend to be a fraction of 1 percent. But Ed said he once got a 30 percent response rate for a campaign. The product? A niche type of adult entertainment: photos of fully clothed women popping balloons ... "Yes, I know I'm going to hell," said Ed."

Comments

Let me guess...

[Fx.Dr]

It's a pop-up book? Sorry, couldn't resist.

Re:Let me guess...

[HalifaxRage]

The book is not too bad, but it's kind of hard to read since the words constantly vibrate and change color.

Re:Let me guess...

[Red Flayer]

Speaking of pop-ups...

It's hard to go into a bar and explain your job to a woman by saying "I advertise penis enlargement pills online," Ed said. "It doesn't go down very well."

Of course it doesn't go down well, it's enlarged. Sheesh.

Re:Let me guess...

[jslater25]

Not a pop-up, but a pop-under...

Re:Let me guess...

[Anonymous Coward]

I found the book to be nothing but garbled text, images, and unrelated passages from works of popular fiction ... I just assumed it's all an attempt to get past my bayesian filters.

Re:Let me guess...

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought it was the Viagra that was supposed to cause that...

One Percent With No Communication Cost!

[garcia]

From the article: 'He sent spam to recovering gambling addicts enticing them to gambling Web sites. He used e-mail addresses of people known to have bought antianxiety medication or antidepressants and targeted them with pharmaceutical spam. Response rates to spam tend to be a fraction of 1 percent.

I work with targeted communications and our success rates with similar lists are just as "successful". We were looking to contact Juniors and Seniors in HS to let them know of our offerings and had a list that supposedly contained names and addresses (no e-mail/phone) of people that would be in this demographic. Out of 9800 people we had a 0.93% response rate. Being that the cost of that list was as low as it was we will do it again...

I can only imagine what an advantage it is having such a low communication cost (it costs us .41/each) and having a 1% return rate... If only I could retire on the money I make ;)

Re:One Percent With No Communication Cost!

[mpapet]

Interesting.

I find it very telling that there's very little of the usual /. moral outrage associated with spam.

It's clearly okay for corporations to collect and maintain detailed records of individual consumer preferences, financial records and medical records. And yet, when identity theft stories appear, there is the usual hue and cry "something must be done!"

It seems to me that few people understand the two go together like beer and potato chips.

Re:One Percent With No Communication Cost!

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh, you admit that you are a spammer (err, "targeted communicator") and include contact information (link to web site) on Slashdot. Thou hath cojones grande.

Re:One Percent With No Communication Cost!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the "lack of moral" outrage you see is only telling of how long spam has been a problem. Do you really need to read thousands of angry rants about spam on every article just to know people are still mad about it?

Re:One Percent With No Communication Cost!

[bberens]

Given that each of his communications cost $0.41 I'm assuming he's a snail mailer.

Re:One Percent With No Communication Cost!

[Anonymous Coward]

We were looking to contact Juniors and Seniors in HS to let them know of our offerings

Finally a case where I wish someone really was thinking of the children.

I hope the GP doesn't have any encryption software on his computer, else I might be forced to conclude he was a pedophile.

Re:One Percent With No Communication Cost!

[FireFury03]

Given that each of his communications cost $0.41 I'm assuming he's a snail mailer.

Sorry, I'm failing to see why sending snail mail spam is ok, but email and SMS spam, unsolicited telephone marketting, etc are bad.

Direct sales, no matter what the form, are a Bad Thing - they are an invasion of my privacy and make me go to some effort (whether that effort be answering the phone and telling someone to get lost, deleting spam emails or taking spam snail mail to the recycling bin).

Infact, snail mail spam is also bad since it increases my council tax (which goes towards paying for this stuff to be recycled).

I wonder if any companies involved in direct marketting do any research into how many potential customers they _lose_ - I actively avoid companies who do direct marketting to me in any way.

Re:One Percent With No Communication Cost!

[Anonymous Coward]

...beer and potato chips.

It's beer and tortilla chips. And don't forget the salsa.

Re:One Percent With No Communication Cost!

[dodobh]

That's because the cost of the communication is borne by your recipients. Oh, and you are spamming.

Re:One Percent With No Communication Cost!

[Anonymous Coward]

Agree on all counts. Snail mail spam is definitely the worst - now that my telemarketing calls have dropped to near extinction levels! At least with email spam, my filters can take care of most of it automagically, and only a few electrons were inconvenienced in its delivery.

The recycling bit is a big issue for me. By the OPs own estimate, 99% of those mailers go straight to the trash. Most are a PITA to recycle, if you do it right and separate the paper from the celophane window envelopes, fake plastic credit cards, refrigerator magnets, etc. So all these assholes are doing is taking our forests and dumping them in our landfills - via a very circuitous and energy intensive route.

I also try to avoid doing business with companies who do this kind of direct marketing. I certainly make it a point to *never* do business with them as a direct reply to these mailers.

Re:One Percent With No Communication Cost!

[clodney]

If we ignore the environmental burden caused by printing and delivering snail mail spam, I find it much less obnoxious than email spam for a number of reasons:

1. It comes in once a day, and I can sort it in a few seconds, as opposed to trickling in all day long and distracting me.
2. Since it has significant costs to send, it is almost never as blatantly stupid as most of the spam emails I get.
3. Since the post office does investigate mail fraud (at least in the US), most of the offers may be stupid, but they are usually legitimate.

And really, snail mail spam is an invasion of your privacy? Care to explain that one? If your privacy bar is set so high that a piece of mail dropping in a box counts as a significant imposition how do you handle walking down the street or using public transportation? Wouldn't someone actually being able to see you be far more of an invasion of your privacy?

Re:One Percent With No Communication Cost!

[garcia]

We'll, it could be worse. We could use massive bulk mailing, pay much less, and blanket a larger area based solely on zip code like most companies do.

I wish my company hadn't decided to go the route they did but in the end, regardless of my words speaking against it, it's was not my choice to make. All I do is tell them the effectiveness of it.

It sucks but it's a fact of life if I want to keep my job.

Re:One Percent With No Communication Cost!

[Belacgod]

Real snail mail spammers send it 3rd class and it costs them under 20 cents. 41 cents means they're sending stuff first class, which is at best highly-targeted spam.

Re:One Percent With No Communication Cost!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't consider receiving a snail mail spam to be an invasion of privacy - but the massive data collection and mining industry that has grown up to support it definitely is.

Re:One Percent With No Communication Cost!

[Grifty]

I may be going out on a limb here, but when I read it, I assumed (perhaps incorrectly) that the invasion of privacy was the market research they do in the first place in order to know where to send that costly snail spam.

Re:One Percent With No Communication Cost!

[pintpusher]

I also try to avoid doing business with companies who do this kind of direct marketing. I certainly make it a point to *never* do business with them as a direct reply to these mailers. What gets me is the amount of snail mail spam i get from people I already do business with. Mortgage company and a couple of my credit cards send me stuff almost daily between the three. I hate it. I suppose I should drop them and tell them why... but one is Amex. For some reason I love Amex... I don't really know why. Anyway I get at least three things a week from them...

Re:One Percent With No Communication Cost!

[Proteus]

Sorry, I'm failing to see why sending snail mail spam is ok, but email and SMS spam, unsolicited telephone marketting, etc are bad.

Yes, yes you are. Let me break it down, since you're actually speaking of three things here:

1. With "postal spam", otherwise known as "junk mail":
   1. The sender bears the entire cost
   2. Fraudulent claims in ads are pursued
   3. The Direct Marketing Association will gladly remove you from member mailing lists (stopping about 85% of junk mail, in my experience)
2. With email and SMS spam:
   1. The recipient bears the majority of the cost (actually, the ISP does, in terms of increased bandwidth and storage requirements, but they pass these costs on to subscribers in order to keep making a profit; the distinction is therefor irrelevant).
   2. "E-mail fraud" doesn't have the same problems as mail fraud, and is not readily investigated
   3. There is no large central trade association that manages the majority of e-mail marketing -- you often can't get your name off of anyone's lists
3. With telemarketing:
   1. The caller bears the cost
   2. The recipient has no control over the timing (the phone rings during dinner, e.g.), making it very annoying
   3. There is a do-not-call registry

In short, people put up with junk mail because it doesn't cost them anything, only saps a couple of minutes of time once a day (at most!), and isn't particularly annoying.

People don't like e-mail and SMS spam because it costs them something, is very annoying, is often fradulent, and takes time and effort to deal with almost every time one checks one's mail. Likewise, telemarketing is very annoying.

Re:One Percent With No Communication Cost!

[FireFury03]

If we ignore the environmental burden

Why should we do that? This stuff harms the environment and costs the tax payer far more than spam does.

Since the post office does investigate mail fraud (at least in the US), most of the offers may be stupid, but they are usually legitimate.

In the UK there is a problem of scams being mailed in from overseas - there's not a lot the post office or the police can do about it (although it is far rarer than email scams of course).

how do you handle walking down the street or using public transportation?

I don't - public transport in the UK (with the exception of London) is a joke, so generally I have to use my car.

Wouldn't someone actually being able to see you be far more of an invasion of your privacy?

Ok, maybe privacy is the wrong word - what I'm trying to say is that I find unsolicited crap being pushed at me (through whatever means) offensive.

Re:One Percent With No Communication Cost!

[FireFury03]

It sucks but it's a fact of life if I want to keep my job.

Find a job with a more ethical employer?

Re:One Percent With No Communication Cost!

[mcrbids]

Sorry, I'm failing to see why sending snail mail spam is ok, but email and SMS spam, unsolicited telephone marketting, etc are bad. On the surface, they are the same. But the key difference is this: the $0.41. By its very definition, the product being pitched has to have enough desirability to be marketable with a per-impression cost of $0.41.

Compare that with spam pump-n-dump / p3n1z pi11z emails which offer products of no or negative value which are only profitable at the expense of the gross majority of recipients.

The former by definition are almost always "legitimate" businesses, while a large percentage of the latter are actually illegal.

Re:One Percent With No Communication Cost!

[FireFury03]

[Postal spam]
The sender bears the entire cost

Wrong - the recipient has to fund the disposal or recycling of this crap through their taxes.

Fraudulent claims in ads are pursued

Often not the case - most scams come from abroad for the precise reason that they _can't_ be pursued.

The Direct Marketing Association will gladly remove you from member mailing lists (stopping about 85% of junk mail, in my experience)

You have clearly had more success with this kind of thing than I have.

[SMS/email spam]
"E-mail fraud" doesn't have the same problems as mail fraud, and is not readily investigated

How does email fraud not have the same problems as mail fraud? Fraud is fraud - both can be investigated (but as mentioned above, generally not if the sender is in another country, which is often the case with email, SMS, snail mail and telesales.

Also, reverse billed SMS fraud is rife and noone cares (I've twice been fraudulantly subscribed to reverse billed SMS spam - neither my service provider (Orange) nor ICSTIS are interested in helping. Orange swears blind that I must have subscribed to the system even though they can see that the phone in question has never sent an SMS message anywhere, let alone to a premium rate service. Refusing to pay the bill leads to threats of debt collectors and wrecked credit ratings.

[Telemarketting]
There is a do-not-call registry

Which doesn't work on international calls and isn't entirely successful on domestic calls (no surprises why - noone has ever been prosecuted for ignoring the registry). I also find that telemarketters often get very abusive if you point out to them that they are breaking the law.

Re:One Percent With No Communication Cost!

[FireFury03]

Compare that with spam pump-n-dump / p3n1z pi11z emails which offer products of no or negative value which are only profitable at the expense of the gross majority of recipients.

Oh, I get quite enough snail mail spam which offers products of no or negative value to me.

Not to mention the vast amount of crap dropped through my door by people paid to wander round dropping junk though doors rather than sending through the postal service.

Re:One Percent With No Communication Cost!

[LordSnooty]

Absolutely agreed, I'm just as sick of the aimless leaflets that fall out of newspapers, more so than the junk mail with my name on it. Every week the recycle pile consists of one or two freesheets and about 20 different supermarkets pumping the latest great offers (tinned fish 3 for 2 and other such fluff). Another pertinent question to ask the letterbox abusers, both targetted and leaflets, is how much THEY are contributing to the recycling bill. And with leaflets, there is simply no way to stop them.

Re:One Percent With No Communication Cost!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm comfortable working in the industry I do and because they all do this it wouldn't matter which one I chose.

Re:One Percent With No Communication Cost!

[QuickFox]

So tell them to stop. They should stop if you tell them.

Re:One Percent With No Communication Cost!

[E 99]

If we ignore the environmental burden caused by printing and delivering snail mail spam, I find it much less obnoxious than email spam for a number of reasons:

1. It comes in once a day, and I can sort it in a few seconds, as opposed to trickling in all day long and distracting me.
2. Since it has significant costs to send, it is almost never as blatantly stupid as most of the spam emails I get.
3. Since the post office does investigate mail fraud (at least in the US), most of the offers may be stupid, but they are usually legitimate.

Not only that, but if one has a wood-burning stove and is willing to fill out the occasional product registration form and sweepstakes entry, one can fairly easily heat one's house for free with postal spam. Besides getting free heat, you can contribute beneficial CO2 to the atmosphere. (Eat my shorts, algore. Besides, this is carbon neutral, as carbon in = carbon out.)

And really, snail mail spam is an invasion of your privacy? Care to explain that one? If your privacy bar is set so high that a piece of mail dropping in a box counts as a significant imposition how do you handle walking down the street or using public transportation? Wouldn't someone actually being able to see you be far more of an invasion of your privacy?

Easy... Someone could mail you a monkey that observes your actions and reports back to its owner. For me anyway, this doesn't occur frequently enough to actually become a nuisance, though.

Re:One Percent With No Communication Cost!

[mrchaotica]

Oh, so you're a spammer too? Or does "targeted communications" mean you're an (equally scummy) telemarketer or bulk-[snail-]mailer?

Re:One Percent With No Communication Cost!

[heinousjay]

You do realize that there are costs aside from the delivery, right?

Re:One Percent With No Communication Cost!

[Anonymous Coward]

And at 41, he's a first class snail mailer, and thus likely a smaller outfit. Larger companies will bulk mail everything at a cheaper price.

We snail-mail too, but not very often. We get about a 30%+ response rate. Out of many hundreds or thousands of pieces of mail, we only need to make a single sale to make it worth it.

Paid in CASH?!

[erroneus]

Oh I'm sure the "Department of Homeland Security" with the urging of the IRS will be drafting several letters to get the identity of this guy... paid in cash?! He is bound to be hit up for tax evasion. Yes, indeed he *IS* going to hell, but he won't have to die to get there!

Re:Paid in CASH?!

[Anonymous Coward]

he will be out of the US by now - oh I'm sorry I forgot where the world stops.

photos of fully clothed women popping balloons

[klenwell]

It's the only kind of adult entertainment fully endorsed by my church and my local clown guild.

Re:photos of fully clothed women popping balloons

[Broken scope]

rule 34 I believe?

Re:photos of fully clothed women popping balloons

[Anonymous Coward]

rule 34 I believe?
Ixnay on the orchanfay!

Re:photos of fully clothed women popping balloons

[myth24601]

"It's the only kind of adult entertainment fully endorsed by my church and my local clown guild."

I am still trying to figure out how to word my Google search for this one.

Re:photos of fully clothed women popping balloons

[beadfulthings]

Oh, it's easy. Just type in "women popping balloons." It will take you to this site.

Who knew? Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go wash my cache out with soap.

Re:photos of fully clothed women popping balloons

[multipartmixed]

Okay. That is SO FUCKED UP.

What the HELL do people get out of THAT?

BOooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooring.

Re:photos of fully clothed women popping balloons

[gstoddart]

Oh, it's easy. Just type in "women popping balloons." It will take you to this site. [mellyloon.com]

Must ... not ... click ... link ... at ... work ...

Re:photos of fully clothed women popping balloons

[darthnoodles]

Once you cave in a look at it please let me know if it's SFW or not.

thanks...

Re:photos of fully clothed women popping balloons

[flanksteak]

The home page there is fine. There do seem to be some NSFW links from there, but the initial loading isn't going to get anyone in trouble.

But my god, what a weird thing to be turned on by.

Re:photos of fully clothed women popping balloons

[gstoddart]

Once you cave in a look at it please let me know if it's SFW or not.

Web filter says no
"Pornography: site denied"
So broken hearted

Cheers

Re:photos of fully clothed women popping balloons

[Anonymous Coward]

Who would've known, I got wood!

Amazing.

Re:photos of fully clothed women popping balloons

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't contain nudity, but they aren't fully dressed and it is very clear that this is a fetish site

Wow!

[gstoddart]

But Ed said he once got a 30 percent response rate for a campaign. The product? A niche type of adult entertainment: photos of fully clothed women popping balloons ... "Yes, I know I'm going to hell"

I've never gotten such spam.

I'm surprised it was only 30% -- that kind of thing is bound to pique the interest of a whole lotta people.

(Oh, come on, admit it, you're googling it right now, aren't you? Oh, maybe I'm going to hell too ;-)

Cheers

Re:Wow!

[Jerry Rivers]

"I've never gotten such spam."

How do you know? Do you actually read all your spam?

Re:Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.fetishpalooza.com/

Re:Wow!

[dankasfuk]

From a balloon fetish website: Balloon fetishists, who also call themselves looners, balloonophiles, or loonatics, get off on blowing up and/or popping latex balloons. Some looners actually have sex with the balloons by sticking their equipment in the nozzle (obviously, you have to be male to pull this off). Others enjoy putting balloons inside their clothing.

Re:Wow!

[UbuntuDupe]

Without doing any research whatsoever, I'm going to guess that the reason for the balloon fetish is similar to the reason for the so-called "crush fetish" whereby guys enjoy watching women step on bugs. The latter is due to how, while growing up, their mother would scream and then step on bugs, exciting a lot of surprise and excitement in the child, which molded his psyche and eventually developed into arousal. Similarly, perhaps children got the same sort of panic from balloons popping.

Re:Wow!

[smooth wombat]

Some looners actually have sex with the balloons by sticking their equipment in the nozzle (obviously, you have to be male to pull this off).

Ok, oddball question time. Using the above quote, yes, only a man can stick his equipment inside the balloon. However, what about the reverse? Sticking the balloon inside a woman and GENTLY inflating and deflating it again and again.

I know, I know, I'm a sick puppy. Aren't we all in some manner?

Re:Wow!

[A_Non_Moose]

I've never gotten such spam.

I'm surprised it was only 30% -- that kind of thing is bound to pique the interest of a whole lotta people.

(/user looks up from bubble wrap section)

I (pop) haven't either (pop) but, honestly, (pop!pop!) have no interest in the (pop!pop!pop!pop!) subject.

Now, clad in bubblewrap (pop), and the eventual popping (pop!pop!) is another subject (pop!pop!).

Re:Wow!

[ookabooka]

Well I googled (you know. . to uh. . verify the integrity of the summary) but came across something also quite bizarre . . .2 people died after crawling into a large helium filled balloon in a rich suburban neighborhood. . .sometimes google surprises me with what it thinks is relevant to my query.

Re:Wow!

[gstoddart]

Without doing any research whatsoever, I'm going to guess that the reason for the balloon fetish is similar to the reason for the so-called "crush fetish" whereby guys enjoy watching women step on bugs.

I've always thought trying to figure out the root cause for a fetish is kinda pointless unless someone has a really strong obsession which interferes with their normal life and they need clinical care.

Sure, some people probably do have some fetishes which start out with some kind of Freudian-explainable experience. But, you don't need to rely on a man who used a lot of cocaine and figured everything revolved around how you were potty trained, and how badly you wanted to sleep with/kill your mother to determine why someone might do something for their own pleasure.

Nowadays, fetishes are so easy to find information on (like, say, a Slashdot article ;-) that you can pretty much do a little research, see if any fetishes might work for you, and then try them on for size. I question if most people involved in any form of fetish play nowadays actually have a truly abnormal physchological fixation with something, or have just rationally decided that, say, latex is cool or whatever.

Lets face it, go to an adult store and they've got all of the fixin's for fetish play just sitting there. You could just one day decide to try one of them out. Spot a video and decide to watch it. Or, possibly, a partner will suggest it one day just for fun.

Fetishes don't need to be just irrational/compulsive obsessions any more. They can be conscious decisions that you stumble upon and decide will just be damned fun. As Freud himself said ... sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. (Although, I guess maybe if you choose it, it may not technically be a 'fetish' in the clinical sense. I just view it as a new set of toys you can choose to play with or not.)

I for one welcome our fully clothed, balloon-popping female overlords.

Cheers

Re:Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

Psst... you forgot tho click the "Post Anonymously" checkbox...

Re:Wow!

[UbuntuDupe]

My explanation, which did not originate from me:

1) does not involve "killing/having sex with mother" desires, and
2) does not attempt to morally condemn the fetishist

so I'm not sure what you were responding to.

As for why we'd bother finding the root cause ... it's because over half the posters here are wondering why it would arouse someone.

Re:Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

> Nowadays, fetishes are so easy to find information on (like, say, a Slashdot article ;-) that you can pretty much do a little research, see if any fetishes might work for you, and then try them on for size. I question if most people involved in any form of fetish play nowadays actually have a truly abnormal physchological fixation with something, or have just rationally decided that, say, latex is cool or whatever.

Along those lines, I recently decided that since everyone seems to be writing about S&M and B&D and all this stuff, that I would try it.
I mustered up my courage and went to a 'dungeon' advertised in a local alternate magazine. Some nice ladies talked to me about what might be fun to try, and I chose a 'sampler' from a pretty girl dressed as a French maid.
Well, I got naked. She tied up my genitals. She had me lick her legs. She spanked me while telling me I had been naughty. I spanked her while telling her she had been naughty.

I felt like a jackass, and couldn't stop laughing the whole time. It was about as sexy as a visit to the doctor.

I won't be doing that again.

This message posted as anonymous. In case anyone traces my IP address, this was a prank call!

Re:Wow!

[gstoddart]

My explanation, which did not originate from me:

1) does not involve "killing/having sex with mother" desires, and
2) does not attempt to morally condemn the fetishist

Sorry, I didn't mean to infer that you were doing either of those. I was more responding to the position that there is some childhood event which made people pre-disposed to such things. Most such explanations end up being Freudian in nature, and then I just took the opportunity to point out that he wasn't the most rational of sources. So much of his explanations involve mother issues as to be rather annoying and boil down to those criticisms I made of it. (Admittedly, psychology isn't my field, so I may be unfairly simplifying his views, but so much does see to get attributed to those few over-simplified things.)

I'm certainly not attempting to morally condemn (or condone) the fetish or fetishist, nor was I implying you were. Just offering a counter-point to the explanation you offered.

so I'm not sure what you were responding to.

More the general points, and for the same reasons you were -- because most people are trying to figure out WTF anyone would want to do this for. I just don't always agree that the explanation of fetishes as a childhood conditioning which gave the person an unusual state of arousal under an unusual situation. It might be, but it doesn't have to be; and there isn't always a nice simple reason for such things. It's just too reductionist.

Just that your post was the first to try to postulate a root cause for fetish behavior. I was pointing out that an explanation based on childhood experience isn't always the reason why people engage in such things. You don't need such conditioning to engage in things that half of the people in Slashdot can't figure out why. :-P

Cheers

Re:Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oddly enough, if you combine the two fetishes (GPs male-only fetish and your female equivalent), you get something entirely normal and even a recommended practice to avoid pregnancy and STDs....

Re:Wow!

[lessermilton]

And I'm going to be laughing all the way there... oh my goodness that's too funny!

Re:Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just don't combine the practices at the same time...

Re:Wow!

[noidentity]

Hope this isn't too much for you: virtual bubble wrap

Re:Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.virtual-bubblewrap.com/bubble-wrap.swf You know you want it

Re:Wow!

[StarfishOne]

Funny, interesting and insightful.. not bad! ;)

However, the following part in the 'female equivalent' description:

"GENTLY inflating and deflating it again and again"

will not be easily combined with the 'become harder and stay longer hard' spam ;)

Sod the spammer, how about the sources of his info

[Anonymous Coward]

'He sent spam to recovering gambling addicts enticing them to gambling Web sites. He used e-mail addresses of people known to have bought antianxiety medication or antidepressants and targeted them with pharmaceutical spam. '

Some companies dealing with confidential information clearly have been passing on this information.

This guy should be forced to disclose where he got the information from, so that these companies can be punished for poor data security, or worse, actually selling such sensitive private information on.

I also believe that there are laws against the exploitation of vulnerable people, but they're probably next to useless, and poorly defined (or specifically defined, so won't apply to X because it only mentions Y).

Jeeze! It is too simple

[iminplaya]

As long as there is demand, and the business is profitable, you will have spam. Trying to get rid of spammers will only make it more profitable and worth the risks for those remaining. Wake up! It is no different than anything else. The customer drives this business, not the seller. They(the seller) are simply a response. Talk about passing the buck!

Re:Jeeze! It is too simple

[CRCulver]

When a spammer intentionally targets gambling addicts with gambling spam, then the spammer deserves blame. I agree that often customers should be chided for supporting the spam business model, but gambling addicts are tormented enough and the blame falls with the spammer who exploits their demons.

Re:Jeeze! It is too simple

[iminplaya]

It doesn't matter if you believe the bible or not, but check out who gets thrown out of the garden of eden in that little parable, which does hold up in a "rational" world. Hint: It wasn't the "spammer". Your addict there requires more intensive therapy. Resisting temptation is not the spammers responsibility. In a capitalist society, exploiting a weakness or a shortage(or creating a shortage) is a feature, not a bug.

Re:Jeeze! It is too simple

[Dausha]

"The customer drives this business, not the seller. They(the seller) are simply a response. Talk about passing the buck!"

The solution is simple. The Chinese handled problems with the opium trade by killing the addicts. This drove down demand considerably. Perhaps a similar campaign can be waged on email users. I guarantee if all email recipients were killed, there would be a substantial reduction in successful spammers.

Re:Jeeze! It is too simple

[Anonymous Coward]

And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: I dunno, I'd say the spammer got punished pretty badly too.

Re:Jeeze! It is too simple

[iminplaya]

The Chinese handled problems with the opium trade by killing the addicts.

Ah, the old Texas way - "They needed killin'. Maybe I should spam governments with my "capital punishment" services, now with volume discounts. "Such a deal we have for you! Kill two, and get the third one FREE!"

The Brits wouldn't have it any other way

Re:Jeeze! It is too simple

[spun]

Capitalism or any other economic system can in fact be tempered with a sense of justice, fairness, and decency and still function. One way of ensuring that justice, fairness, and decency prevail is to call out the opposite when you see it. Just because something is a certain way doesn't mean it should be. Your wording isn't clear, so let me ask straight up: are you saying we shouldn't criticize people who engage in immoral or unethical behavior but legal behavior?

If a system encourages the exploitation of weakness, is it in the best interest of the weak to support such a system?

Re:Jeeze! It is too simple

[Marty_Krapturd]

If a system encourages the exploitation of weakness, is it in the best interest of the weak to support such a system?

Yes. That's why I'm glad that food, water, healthcare, clothing and safe housing are free!

Re:Jeeze! It is too simple

[iminplaya]

Your wording isn't clear, so let me ask straight up: are you saying we shouldn't criticize people who engage in immoral or unethical behavior but legal behavior?

No, we should criticize it. What I'm asking is, Which is more immoral or unethical? Buying or selling? I see just as much immorality in those who buy. The root of the problem is their failure to resist the temptation of a fast buck. It seems to me that as long as there are buyers, you will always have sellers. They will seek them out. To me it is much more effective to get people to stop buying. The only effective way to deal with spammers is not prison, but to remove all profits by seizing their assets gained by it. I would have no problem with that. You track them down and garnish their income. If it was not declared, then you can nail them for tax evasion also. If they are off shore, not much you can do without the help of the host. Then use their list of clients to after them. Those who get caught buying should lose the money they spent, and possibly be charged as an accomplice to the fraud. The buyer is aiding and abetting. Notice how the government wants to go after online gamblers.

If a system encourages the exploitation of weakness, is it in the best interest of the weak to support such a system?

But they are doing just that by using it themselves to exploit those weaker than them. Weak people become pretty darn nasty when they acquire a little bit of strength or power over overs. They become vengeful, and them go about doing precisely the same thing. It's the nature of nature, and it's something we need to understand when tackling a problem like this.

Re:Jeeze! It is too simple

[spun]

Which is more immoral or unethical? Buying or selling? I don't think it's always useful to make such distinctions. We in the west tend to apply reductionist thought patterns to systems analysis problems, and it doesn't work. We can't just pick an arbitrary point in a system and say, "that's our problem, right there!" We need to look at patterns & feedback loops.

In this case, you choose to isolate and morally condemn the demand side of the equation as if it had no interaction with the supply side. The idea that everyone is solely responsible for their actions is only true in a vacuum. Being solely responsible for ones actions implies that no outside force could cause one to deviate from some completely internal compass. Which implies that no one could ever learn from experience.

If one can in fact learn from experience, then certain experiences can change our internal compass. Think for a moment, what would a person raised in a blank box with no outside stimulus be like? We are not individuals. We are amalgams of genes we didn't choose to be born with interacting with experiences we never chose to have.

The rush to assign blame is counterproductive. It ignores the fact that all causes themselves have causes. It is not enough to point fingers, saying "There's your problem!" and think you've solved anything. Punishing people for buying from spammers is a ludicrous solution. I mean, come on, we've been trying that approach to addictions since prohibition, and it has never, ever worked.

It is valid to focus on the purchasing end of things. Just don't jump right into the blame and punishment game. Look at what has actually worked to reduce addictive behaviors: education. Instead of punishing spam-buyers like we punish drug-addicts, why not spend that same money to educate people? It has worked wonders for tobacco addiction.

Re:Jeeze! It is too simple

[spun]

"We know there'd prob'ly be no one in prison
If rights to food clothes and shelter were given"
--Boots Riley, The Coup, "I Love Boosters!" on Pick a Bigger Weapon

Re:Jeeze! It is too simple

[lessermilton]

Yeah, but you don't have to click on their link.

I've... maybe once or twice got spam that was relevant to my interests, but rather than click the link, I've gone to Google or something else. It's still the clickers responsibility.

Re:Jeeze! It is too simple

[sjames]

Proposal: legalize credit card fraud against spammed products!

Step 2, DDOS spammers by flooding them with orders to fake addresses using invalid credit card numbers.

Re:Jeeze! It is too simple

[Anonymous Coward]

> We in the west tend to apply reductionist thought patterns

Like painting everyone in "the west" with the same brush?

Re:Jeeze! It is too simple

[iminplaya]

I don't think it's always useful to make such distinctions...In this case, you choose to isolate and morally condemn the demand side of the equation as if it had no interaction with the supply side.

I really mean it to say that the relationship absolutely, entirely symbiotic. One cannot survive without the other. The seller is the gas, the buyer is the engine. Maybe I'm overreacting to the horribly one sided take I see from most, that it's the sellers' fault. Chances are they(the sellers) did fire the "first shot" by putting the idea into the buyers' heads that they(the buyers) "need...must have...will make it rich with" their product, but it's that second step by the buyers and then more sellers that want that big money that made it snowball into what we have now. Without that step, it ends right there in a brief flash. Of course it feeds on itself due to perfectly natural desires for power and domination on both sides. That is the "weakness" that I see. Both buyer and seller are falling for the same big temptation. I don't mean to place blame on one side nearly as much I mean to see it that it is placed equally on all the involved parties. The sellers are no more guilty than the buyers is what I'm trying to get at. To me this goes for all human interaction. "It takes two..."?

Being solely responsible for ones actions implies that no outside force could cause one to deviate from some completely internal compass.

Understood, but one is responsible in their decision as to which way they deviate. Will you bite the apple? Or say, "No thanks."? Will you take the natural animal path of least resistance? Or will you be a rational, thinking human?* That decision can only come from within. Those who take the natural path are not learning from experience. They are simply acting on instinct or conditioned reflex.

Punishing people for buying from spammers is a ludicrous solution. I mean, come on, we've been trying that approach to addictions since prohibition, and it has never, ever worked...Look at what has actually worked to reduce addictive behaviors: education. Instead of punishing spam-buyers like we punish drug-addicts, why not spend that same money to educate people?

Okay, then we must look at the sellers the same way. They are addicts also. To something else possibly, but the addiction is just that and nothing more. I think they should be treated with the same understanding. I will agree that guidance*, not punishment is the preferred method.

*It is the guidance of our elders that must be applied at the earliest possible age that makes rationality and the ability to become human possible, not the arbitrary, hypocritical whip of the dictator as widely practiced today. I know I'm not explaining this very well, so I depend on your mind reading abilities and a response to know if I'm making any sense.

Re:Jeeze! It is too simple

[spun]

You are making sense. In fact, in that last paragraph you've hit the nail on the head. "Rationality and the ability to become human," that's a great turn of phrase. And it points out another problem with the "That decision can only come from within," line. We don't have a choice as to whether we're exposed to that kind of stimulus growing up. We don't have a choice about whether we have the experiences necessary to become human. We all need guidance, up to the point where we have the set of experiences necessary to truly guide ourselves.

wtf?!

[apodyopsis]

"the product? A niche type of adult entertainment: photos of fully clothed women popping balloons ... "

fully clothed in what? nurses uniforms? fettish gear? rubber? a gimp suit?

popping ballons?! no sir, that is too much. is this some kind of freudian thing?

my mind boggles.

Re:wtf?!

[another_neophyte]

fully clothed in balloons of course

Re:wtf?!

[nmos]

"the product? A niche type of adult entertainment: photos of fully clothed women popping balloons ... "

fully clothed in what? nurses uniforms? fettish gear? rubber? a gimp suit?

Well, fully clothed in balloons of course!

Re:wtf?!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.mellyloon.com/sale/tight.html (no nudity, work safe I would say)

I mean, ok, balloons, whatever, but $40? What? Just go buy some balloons for $5 bucks and experience the real thing. :P

Re:wtf?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Strange, isn't it?

http://www.geocities.com/iloveballoons2001/index.h tml

I don't believe in an afterlife...

[Nimey]

...but part of me wants there to be a very special hell for spammers (and people who talk in the theater).

Re:I don't believe in an afterlife...

[mroberts47]

And that comment makes me wish I could mod you up for funny. :)

Re:I don't believe in an afterlife...

[Anonymous Coward]

Gotta wonder where Spammers that talk in theaters end up?

Re:I don't believe in an afterlife...

[Anonymous Coward]

They become Phyllis Diller's tampon.

Re:I don't believe in an afterlife...

[slimyrubber]

> "Yes, I know I'm going to hell," said Ed."

Aren't _all_ sales person?

Re:I don't believe in an afterlife...

[zarthrag]

Firefly reference?

Re:I don't believe in an afterlife...

[eln]

I may never eat again. Thanks for that.

Re:I don't believe in an afterlife...

[Anonymous Coward]

Read Dante's Inferno or Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's sci-fi take on the same subject... I kind of like the ironic (some would say appropriate) justice meted out to the "sinner's" in these books!

ob ATHF

[SCHecklerX]

Enjoy!
http://www.vimeo.com/78881

Re:ob ATHF

[everphilski]

wow. I think that's the first time I've seen an 'obligatory' ATHF.

But yes. very applicable. (make the homies say ho, and the girlies wanna SCREAM!)

Hell you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

"A niche type of adult entertainment: photos of fully clothed women popping balloons" And he's going to hell? Oh shit...

Good news

[fermion]

Under the assumption that no one does nothing for nothing, this is good news as it indicates that the risk benifit curve has shifted so that selling a book is better money than spamming.

It is like those get rich quick schemes on paid TV. If it were so easy, then why is the promoter not making the million dollars a week instead of making cheesy commercials. If I made a million a week for a year, I certainly would not be on TV telling everyone about it, at the risk of reducing my real profit opportuities. I would hiding out in my fortress of richness and enjoying the money.

This also reinforces my assumption that for the most part spamming is just a way to make some easy money without much real work. Most people are not going to get rich off it, but if one is a country where a few thousand a year is good money, then hey, it beats doing honest work. It might even product the 20K a year one needs to live in the US. But like any organized crime, a few get insanely rich, and the rest get knocked off for pocket change.

Re:Good news

[everphilski]

If it were so easy, then why is the promoter not making the million dollars a week instead of making cheesy commercials.

I'm not saying all late-night TV schemers are legit (few are, imo). But once you've made your first million or so, you are pretty much set (Invest 3/4 of it and your RoR on a mediocre year is over 50k). You might as well train the 'next generation' with the understanding you get to tap a few % of what they make as overhead.

Re:Good news

[AutopsyReport]

this is good news as it indicates that the risk benifit curve has shifted so that selling a book is better money than spamming.

Not really -- it probably indicative of him being tired of living an underground life and having to watch his back. And he's certainly sitting on good money. Like other markets (drugs, etc.) some people will push until they make enough money they are content with, then pack it in. It's just a calculated risk -- pursue something long enough to reach a certain cash goal, and if you happen to reach it, you walk away.

Quit while you're ahead, as they say.

Re:Good news

[reaper]

It's pretty easy to see why someone would write a book about their success plan, instead of continuing it: More Money!

Take the "Make millions in real estate" category. It works... in fact, it's so rock-stupidly simple that TLC has shows about it now with people who really have no business in real estate somehow managing not to lose money. Sure, most of those people are only making $100K-$200K per year at it, but they don't do it for a living.

So, why don't these millionaire-author guys keep doing it? Because it's hard work all the time. Books, OTOH, are hard work for the time taken to research, write, and promote it.... but if it's a hit, it brings in money for years while you're.... that's right! Making more money using your system! Or not... nothing wrong with cashing in for a while, or maybe, like you said, the bottom has dropped out of the market they're pimping.

Granted there are plenty of crap systems out there, and all of them understate the amount of work required to do anything, but just because they have a book doesn't mean it doesn't work.

Re:Good news

[lena_10326]

This also reinforces my assumption that for the most part spamming is just a way to make some easy money without much real work. Most people are not going to get rich off it, but if one is a country where a few thousand a year is good money, then hey, it beats doing honest work. It might even product the 20K a year one needs to live in the US. But like any organized crime, a few get insanely rich, and the rest get knocked off for pocket change.

I know an owner of a legitimate "spam" business. The owner grosses over $20 million a year with an approximate 50% margin of profit. The amount of money made depends on several factors that are difficult to maintain over time, which is why you don't see everyone making 10's of millions dollars off spam.

• a clean email list - cleaning an email list requires sending an email and not receiving a bounce. There is risk in testing the email because if you test too many bad ones you can get blocked, but once it's tested it's worth considerably more than an unclean email.
• list of active users - users who opened or clicked. An order of magnitude more valuable than a clean email.
• relationships - avoiding email blocks and getting unblocked
• distributed servers - avoid email blocks by sending from and rotating multiple IPs. The more you have, the more stable the delivery is.
• delivery - your email has to make it to the inbox. An order of magnitude more valuable than Bulk box delivery. Bulk delivery is still better than no delivery, which can be the case if you're blocked.

If you have all those factors in your favor, you can sustain the profits, which is what the major "legitimate" commercial emailers do. The true spammers are usually a bit more shitty, using trojans and disposable accounts, but achieve the same effect, usually at the cost of the ISP, however they're risking jail time if they're caught.

Re:Good news

[HouseArrest420]

It might even product the 20K a year one needs to live in the US.

Where the hell in the US do you live??? And do you have a room for rent?

I remember making 30k and wondering where the hell I was going to get the money for my son's meals at school that week. I guess with more money comes more things to spend it on, but I didn't start feeling secure with the amount I earned until I hit the 40k mark, and even that was mostly due to the investments I made while I was still in my teens.

20k is barely even entry level pay, I definitely wanna know where you live lol.............or maybe I don't, I can't decide lol.

Re:Good news

[Red Flayer]

Under the assumption that no one does nothing for nothing, this is good news as it indicates that the risk benifit curve has shifted so that selling a book is better money than spamming.

At a certain point, would have a very small marginal effect on quality of life. Whereas, writing a book about it gains him notoriety/fame, which he cannot easily buy.

Someone who is relatively poor might be quite willing to take the risk of spamming (see Todd Moeller, the bit player who went state's evidence in the Adam Vitale case), whereas someone like this guy doesn't get much of a benefit from the same amount of cash earnings.

Re:Good news

[RobertLTux]

its just like that song "the Gambler" hes at the walk away stage of the game some folks are at the RUN stage and then some are at the " can i get to Cheyene Mountain in time" stage

Re:Good news

[lena_10326]

Shoot. I missed one. You also need:

• steady influx of new emails - the list will degrade over time, so you need to replace those emails to maintain a constant list size

Now with legitimate spammers, they will honor complaints and unsubscribes. Processing them quickly does help a lot, because you can just repurchase the email on another list and continue slamming the hell out of them until they unsub once again. Heh. You just purchase or create new "lists" ad nauseum to get keep them active. Heh.

The only thing separating you from millions of dollars is owning a list of several million verified names, but can you live with being a slimeball? Surprisingly, most people can. Money smooths over everything.

Re:Good news

[ShinmaWa]

Remove the word "legitimate" and take the quotes off the word spam. There's no difference between what you (I'm sorry, the 'owner you know') do and what you call "true spammers" do. You are still dealing in unsolicited commercial mass emails that people don't want.

In fact, looking over your list of what makes this enterprise "legitimate", every single one of them involves circumventing and defeating the protections that people and ISPs spend a lot of time and money to put up and maintain to keep this mail away. You mention the cost to the ISP in your last line, but utterly ignore that your "legitimate" version is ALSO at the cost of the ISP, in the increased manpower and hardware costs to adjust to your "legitimate" circumvention methods.

Re:Good news

[Anonymous Coward]

Well said. The spammer needs to spend some face time with Sweet Lady Brick.

Re:Good news

[fermion]

Most of the families I know have household incomes around the 100K mark or higher. Does that mean that most families in the US have 100K a year to spend? No, of course not. So what does it matter that one spammer makes lots of money. That is like saying that one pan handler makes a more than a living wage, so all pan handlers have more money than the average person. Some people are particularly good at what they do, and they know how to manage the economic forces,and can manage their scruples, so they do well.

Re:Good news

[lena_10326]

Remove the word "legitimate" and take the quotes off the word spam. There's no difference between what you (I'm sorry, the 'owner you know') do and what you call "true spammers" do. You are still dealing in unsolicited commercial mass emails that people don't want.

Legitimate as in.. not breaking any laws. There are lots of slimy things you can do that aren't illegal.

You are still dealing in unsolicited commercial mass emails that people don't want.

That's baloney. If they didn't want it, they wouldn't click on it and purchase. No money would be made off spam if that were not so. What people say is a lot different from what they do.

In fact, looking over your list of what makes this enterprise "legitimate", every single one of them involves circumventing and defeating the protections that people and ISPs spend a lot of time and money to put up and maintain to keep this mail away.

They can circumvent those "protections" because the burden of cost and method of delivery is flawed.

You mention the cost to the ISP in your last line, but utterly ignore that your "legitimate" version is ALSO at the cost of the ISP, in the increased manpower and hardware costs to adjust to your "legitimate" circumvention methods.

Duh. Heh.

Seriously though, most list owners don't give two hoots about the cost to the receiving ISP, which is part of the reason why everyone thinks they're slimy. Heh. However, when an industry builds an infrastructure open to sending enormous quantities of bulk mail with very little cost to the sender (by volume) and where the larger burden of cost is shifted to the receiver, who do you have to blame?

The architects of that flawed system? Or those who use it for their benefit?
______

By the way, there is one very important point I should make that many of you may not be aware of.

Some of your ISPs really don't give a crap about your spam complaints, because who do think their biggest customers are? Bulk emailers. Who generates traffic that's billable to a client flush with cash? Bulk emailers. Who pimps out their lists for commercial email? ISPs. The smaller ISPs care and are the ones who usually get it up the ass, but they're also not in a position to do much about it. These relationships are very complex and often hypocritical: ISPs want to profit on spam, but don't want to receive spam. The big players know what the deal is and they're making money.

Oh sure. There are complaint systems in place, but those keep the small number of complainers happy and give the appearance of doing something. Most people don't complain, which are the ones they make their real money on. Nobody makes money off complainers which is why there's a strong incentive to get them off a list as quickly as possible--preferably through an unsub, because unsubs are transparent to filtering systems like Brightmail.

Life is tough. You gotta be told Santa Claus doesn't exist at some point.

Re:Good news

[Brickwall]

Take the "Make millions in real estate" category. It works... in fact, it's so rock-stupidly simple that TLC has shows about it now with people who really have no business in real estate somehow managing not to lose money. Sure, most of those people are only making $100K-$200K per year at it, but they don't do it for a living.

So, why don't these millionaire-author guys keep doing it? Because it's hard work all the time. Books, OTOH, are hard work for the time taken to research, write, and promote it.... but if it's a hit, it brings in money for years while you're.... that's right! Making more money using your system! Or not... nothing wrong with cashing in for a while, or maybe, like you said, the bottom has dropped out of the market they're pimping.

In fact, you can usually tell when the bottom is about to drop out of a market when the books (and the hotel seminars, and the late night infomercials) begin to heat up. When the bottom fell out of the stock market in 2001 (after everyone in 2000 was urging you to load up on tech stocks on margin), and Alan Greenspan began to lower interest rates and inject liquidity into the US economy, smart guys began to buy and flip housing. You buy one place with $5k down, flip it in two months for a $15k profit, then buy three places with $5k down, flip those a few months later, etc. As interest rates kept falling, this was a very profitable strategy. But interest rates have bottomed out recently, and the poor saps who bought houses with little or no down and adjustable rate mortgages are shortly about to find out that they can't make their new payments. New fed chair Ben Bernanke, testifying before congress's Banking Committee yesterday, said there's a potential loss of $100 billion on so-called "sub-prime" mortgages (i.e. mortgages to people with "shaky" credit), and there's an even greater potential loss on more solid loans where the owners are going to find their ARM's reset. On a $500,000 home, a 4% interest rate is $20,000 a year in interest. But, with the 10-year rate pushing 5% right now, those ARM's are going to cost $25,000 a year in interest. That's another $400/month people are going to have to find, and for a lot of them, they're not going to be able to do it, and they'll be forced to sell.

But guess who'll be there to buy those homes at fire-sale prices? That's right - the same hucksters who told them to buy houses "with no money down!" in the first place. The cycle repeats every 7-8 years.

Re:Good news

[lena_10326]

So what does it matter that one spammer makes lots of money. That is like saying that one pan handler makes a more than a living wage, so all pan handlers have more money than the average person. Some people are particularly good at what they do, and they know how to manage the economic forces,and can manage their scruples, so they do well.

Well. I think most underestimate just how many spammers there are. You can purchase spam software for $500, which lets you input a 50,000 email text file and away you go. I wouldn't be surprised if there are a lot of fly-by-night spammers making 50k a year on the side. They're under the radar because their volume is low and they can easily signup for various $20 a month cheap accounts.

Just like any other business, there are those who truly understand the business they're in and simply make it work better, which can propel them into shifting into large-scale production. There aren't that many making 10's of millions on spam err I mean commercial email, but I'd wager there are at least several hundred to a couple thousand that are. I can't prove it so it's a total guesstimate.

Re:Good news

[Anonymous Coward]

And spammer-sympathizers need to spend some face time with Sweet Lady Brick, too.

Re:Good news

[lena_10326]

And spammer-sympathizers need to spend some face time with Sweet Lady Brick, too.

LOL. Nothing gets you people more riled up than a spam discussion. LOL.

I'm not a spam sympathizer really. I find spam annoying and often potentially dangerous with respect to trojans.

I just had a connection to someone you would call a spammer, although he did it in a completely legal way (conforming to CANSPAM, processing unsubs and complaints, maintaining a physical place of business, etc), so I've had many discussions on how spam works. I no longer have that connection so you can settle down now. :)

By the way, if it helps you feel better, the guy was (is) a prick. :D

Re:Good news

[bit01]

You are still dealing in unsolicited commercial mass emails that people don't want.

That's baloney. If they didn't want it, they wouldn't click on it and purchase. No money would be made off spam if that were not so. What people say is a lot different from what they do.

Way to rationalize. The spammer "business model" is based on stealing the time, money and attention of a large number of people to make a sale to one person. Unsolicited advertising is the same but with a smaller ratio.

---

Marketing talk is not just cheap, it has negative value. Free speech can be compromised just as much by too much noise as too little signal.

Re:Good news

[lena_10326]

Way to rationalize. The spammer "business model" is based on stealing the time, money and attention of a large number of people to make a sale to one person. Unsolicited advertising is the same but with a smaller ratio.

Hmmm. It'd be nice if you actually read my post properly. I wasn't rationalizing (you really meant defending) spam. I was explaining why so much money was made on spam. The parent post I responded to gave the impression no one is making money on spam, which is nonsense. A lot of money is being made. Email is one of the most effective ways of generating revenue. Far more effective than silly banner ads.

Re:Good news

[bit01]

I was addressing the particular point you made, not the overall post.

A lot of money is being made.

Spammers lie. Some money is being made. They lie about making lots of money to encourage suckers to buy their services.

---

Marketing talk is not just cheap, it has negative value. Free speech can be compromised just as much by too much noise as too little signal.

Re:Good news

[lena_10326]

Spammers lie. Some money is being made. They lie about making lots of money to encourage suckers to buy their services.

Right... How do you figure that when email is generally CPA these days? Heh. Heh. Heh. By the way, I'm not going to explain CPA, if you don't know what it means you're just talkin about your butt. There's also no way to fake or forge conversions, whether you want to believe it or not. If the advertisers aren't getting conversions, they BAIL. They're actually very sensitive to profit loss. Of course, I can expect some of you to confuse "conversions" with clicks. Heh.

It just kills ya that some people make money with spam. Doesn't it? :D

Life ain't fair. Sometimes the jerks profit. Heh.

Strange ending to the Summary...

[Actually, I do RTFA]

But Ed said he once got a 30 percent response rate for a campaign. The product? A niche type of adult entertainment: photos of fully clothed women popping balloons ... "Yes, I know I'm going to hell," said Ed.

This seems like the least objectionable use of spam. There seem to be three problems with spam.

First, truely evil spam that contains malware, fraudulent offers, or other things that people might call the police about if it arrived via snail-mail (I'm assuming the adult entertainment site was just pornography and not malware infested).

Second, that the spammer uses botnets to accomplish his goal, which is to hid his operation because of spam-filtering/laws etc (I'm assuming the botnet is just for anonimity, as a huge e-mail server shouldn't be that costly to run.)

Finally, that we are diluged in 3,000-1,000,000 e-mails a day for crap we don't want. But a 30% success rate means that the ads were fairly well targeted and most people did want them. Ignoring for the moment the scary database that produces these lists, if you got 10 pieces of spam offering you legitimite, cheap things you may want to buy, I don't think people would be upset at all. In fact, it might make a good e-commerce site.

Re:Strange ending to the Summary...

[Jellybob]

A mail server isn't that expensive to run, but if you're a spammer then it's going to need it's IP address changing on a regular basis, since it's going to get blacklisted frequently.

That's the advantage of a botnet - if you've got enough zombies in your network then there's no way they're all going to get blacklisted, and it's possible to replace nodes that have been quick enough that it won't make much difference.

Re:Strange ending to the Summary...

[sjames]

I feel a bit differently, but only in degree. I'll tolerate television commercials IF they pay for the programming. I'll tolerate ads IN public transportation under the same condition. I do not care to put up with billboards or ads on the outside of busses and such. The cutoff there is simple. If it helps me (personally) get things free or cheaper, I'll tolerate it.

Spammers, telemarketers and junk mailers are the bottom of the barrel with telemarketers being the worst of all. They provide me no benefit or compensation and actively pester so that I have to actually expend effort to seperate their crap from legitimate and wanted communication. Spammers are a close second due to the sheer volume and liklihood that it's a rip-off.

Actually...

[StressGuy]

I keep re-reading that passage thinking that there is some detail that I'm probably missing.....then again, the way fetishes go, probably not. Seriously though, why can't we seem to find women with oddball fetishes? or are they just better at keeping it to themselves?

Re: Actually...

[Anonymous Coward]

Watching her inflate the balloon too much... you know it's gonna pop, you know she knows it... but she just keeps going... <<shiver>>

Re: Actually...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can safely say that I've seen or read about a lot of really bizarre things on the internet, and 99% of them I can intellectually get in an abstract way no matter how horrible or crazy they seem, but this is wholly alien to me.

I simply don't get it at all... I mean, not a bit.

Re:Actually...

[LurkerXXX]

My guess? Right before he wrote that, he created a website with women popping balloons and is now making tons of revenue off the huge volume of views the ads on the site are getting now that it's being /.'d.

Re: Actually...

[Anonymous Coward]

Informative?!?

Re:Actually...

[Anonymous Coward]

The fetish actually has some history. One of the HBO sex series (either Real Sex or Pornucopia, hell if I remember which) featured the balloon popping fetish in an episode.

http://www.deviantdesires.com/map/balloon.html

So, no, this isn't a new fetish invented solely to make this guy a quick buck.

fully clothed women popping balloons

[tsbiscaro]

Pics anyone?

A Gimp Suit ?!?

[StressGuy]

Ok...I wasn't going to google "balloon popping fetish"....but I'm probably going to have to google "gimp suit"....just when you think things can't get any more wierd, somebody comes along and moves the bar.

Re:A Gimp Suit ?!?

[Hoi Polloi]

Rent "Pulp Fiction" and watch the kidnapping scene. That'll answer your question and some you didn't think to ask.

Re:A Gimp Suit ?!?

[ettlz]

No doubt there'll be some troll along shortly claiming that the GIMP suit is clunky and hard to use, and that they prefer a PhotoShop suit.

Re:A Gimp Suit ?!?

[The Munger]

I really get down to business when I wear my LaTeX suit. It's funny; it's clunky and yet at the same time, so sleek.

How is he selling this book?

[Nom du Keyboard]

I think I got a spam e-mail today hawking this book.

Balloon Popping?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn! A balloon fetish? Who would have thought? Ain't the Internet great?

For the lazy, see http://www.mellyloon.com/ and http://www.looneynudes.com/preview/lnasampl.html and others (Google away, dudes).

Oddly, it's just not appealing to me. I'm not be the Slashdot uber-geek I thought I was. Now perhaps, balloon pooping . . .

Rule #1 - spammers lie.

[khasim]

A 30% response rate? Either:

a. That was an EXTREMELY targeted spam run. In which case, WHERE did he get the email addresses?

b. Considering that there are usually a few million emails sent out in a spam run, we're talking about hundreds of thousands of people who responded to that.

Neither one makes much sense to me. Oh, that's right. Rule #1 - spammers lie.

Re:Rule #1 - spammers lie.

[everphilski]

Right? Wrong? I'm the one with the spam ...

Re:Rule #1 - spammers lie.

[Hoi Polloi]

He bought a list of men who subscribed to "Macy's Balloon and Blimp Fetish" magazine.

Re:Rule #1 - spammers lie.

[Anonymous Coward]

There were three world wide, and one replied. Makes sense to me!

Re:Rule #1 - spammers lie.

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither one makes much sense to me. Oh, that's right. Rule #1 - spammers lie. Great false dichotomy there.

Re:Rule #1 - spammers lie.

[mollymoo]

Perhaps the mailing list in question consisted of those who responded to one of his previous spamming campaign for a similar niche. In TFA he mentioned repeat customers for meds; I guess the addresses of those who previously responded to spam must be the most valuable of all. You know that spam works on them and you know what they're into.

Re:Rule #1 - spammers lie.

[Jiggy]

I was at the event and one of the first things he said was that spammers must have no morals in order to succeed. Hence I was quite skeptical about his facts and figures.

He struck me as a very nice guy but I always got the impression he was holding something back. Perhaps he wasn't a reformed spammer at all and he just wanted to socially engineer his way into Ironport's confidence in order to improve his spamming techniques!

Spam gets a return rate.

[tinrobot]

That makes it profitable, and because of that, spam will continue.

The only way to get rid of spam is for everyone on the planet to swear off buying anything based on spam based advertising. I know I never respond to spam, but there's always going to be that one person who does...

Earn thousands with ads like this one

[goombah99]

Earn thousands with ads like this one...send three dollars for instructions.

This was an actual ad that frequently ran in the national enquirer

It may, but there may be solutions

[Sycraft-fu]

It all comes back to the who risk/reward thing. Lower the ratio enough, and you'll find fewer people willing to do it. So on the one side is increasing the risk. Used to be spam had no risk, other than maybe somebody punching you if they found out what you did for a living. Now there's starting to be some risk as a few spammers are getting prosecuted. So that's the first part of the solution is to grow the risk. Get better at having criminal and civil penalties dropped on spammers.

Then, of course, there's reducing the reward, the amount of people who respond. This is a technical solution in the form of better spam filtering. It's already getting much better. Even just 5 years ago it was still somewhat rare to see ISPs filter their mail, now virtually all of them do. Also the filtering itself is getting better. Rather than just rely on a simple analysis of a given message it is cross checking messages, some of it even across different organizations. By improving this we can drastically drop the number of people they are able to successfully contact and thus lower the reward. If 1 in 100 spams go to someone, you don't need many of those someones to respond to make some money. However if less than 1 in 10,000,000 go through, you need a much higher response rate to make it worth while.

So while there's not a silver bullet it IS something that can be mitigated by going at it from a couple of different ways. If it goes from something you can make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on with zero risk to something that it's hard to make a couple grand a month on that is likely to put you in prison, the number of spammers will start dropping.

Re:It may, but there may be solutions

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to say the best way that i've run across so far to stop drive by spamming (a bot comes online and blows out a couple thousand messages then shuts down)

Is http://www.openbsd.org/spamd/ with greylisting. It's an email deferral daemon. Effectively it will stop any email from a non RFC spec email server. Which of course is pretty much every botnet out there. Now it won't by itself stop real email servers from spewing spam at you, but it stops all of the bots, and even soaks up valuable time from those said spammers.

Add to the fact that you can just inline it infront of your email servers with no configuration changes to your email server or mx records, and it's beatiful.

Just an easy way to remove botnet spammers.

AC

Re:It may, but there may be solutions

[ftobin]

You have a good point, but you're assuming that the risk is increasing as the filtering techniques get better. The risk only exists if your spam gets through, as I find it improbable that authorities will go after spam that gets blocked. So, similar numbers of pieces of spam have to still get through for the risk to remain level or increasing. It also might be true that if there is a correlation between spam getting through and prosecution, filtering among the less-likely-to-buy victims might induce less prosecution overall, if their voices are heard more by authorities than the more-likely-to-buy victims. If spam only successfully gets through to more susceptible victims, and they have less sway with prosecutors, the risk/reward ratio actually gets better from the spammer's perspective.

Re:It may, but there may be solutions

[Anonymous Coward]

You have a good point, but you're assuming that the risk is increasing as the filtering techniques get better.

No, s/he's positing that one half of the equation is increasing risk and the other half is reducing reward. Improving filtering techniques reduces reward because it reduces the number of spam mails that get through, which requires either increasing the number of mails going out by the same amount as the mails filtered out, or increasing the response rate, in order to get the same number of total responses.

Born Every Minute

[_Sprocket_]

From the article:

The ultimate unsolvable problem is users, who continue to buy products marketed by spam, making the industry possible.

Huh. There's a sucker born every minute. The Interenet hasn't changed human nature - just given the con men more tools.

Re:Born Every Minute

[Kjella]

Honestly, technically I don't care if idiots buy spam products. The trouble is that e-mail is so cheap they can carpet bomb us trying to find the idiots. If I just could keep any spam from entering my inbox, they can buy penis enlargement pills, fake viagra, penny stocks and 411 scams all day long for all I care. A fool and his money will always part ways anyhow, and it's not in any way for their protection I want to exterminate spam. I just want them to leave me the hell out of it.

Innocuous?

[Mr_Icon]

Yes, let's see... women forced to do something that they are frightened of... complete with shrieks, wincing, and hesitation.

Now, let's think of the kinds of people who would pay money to watch that...

Thought so.

Re:Innocuous?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh.. not to be rude, but how come you know so much about the contents of balloon-based pornography? It's not as if any of what you wrote is obvious - popping balloons is neither at all dangerous nor any sort of a taboo for regular women(or men). There's no obvious reason why there'd be wincing, fear or hesitation.

Re:Innocuous?

[Vulva R. Thompson, P]

He moonlights as "Sadie the Clown".

Re:Sod the spammer, how about the sources of his i

[Intron]

How many people work at credit card and insurance companies doing low-paid data entry? How much more could they make if they were using some of their time to make lists of names and addresses of people with specific ailments or problems and selling them on the black market?

Morally acceptable piracy

[Teppy]

If I were a juror, I would under no circumstances punish someone for pirating this guy's book.

if only that were true...

[Speare]

If all the spam were really targeted that well, I doubt there'd be so much animosity to the problem (except from credit service companies and psychologists who treat addicted gamblers).

What gets me is that after twenty years of using email, and 15 years of getting spam email, and 10 years with the same email address, I am currently getting a breakdown of spams like this (numbers guessed but not unrealistically):

• 600/wk prescription or herbal drug offers
• 400/wk money transfer scams
• 300/wk stock pump-n-dump tips (usually gif)
• 300/wk foreign language (hebrew and russian are big this month)
• 200/wk long-lost-friend contacting you
• 200/wk bayes bombs with no discernable ad
• 150/wk fishing scams

After not responding to any of this, it's not like I'm a good target for any of these, but they still come at me as fast as the MX responds.

This month has had a brutal surge, a lot of new russian and long-lost-friend stuff is getting around my current spam filtering solutions.

Sounds like a hoax... But is not

[mi]

I don't think, this article was written by a real (ex-)spammer. Either that, or it has been too heavily edited be plausible.

If he deliberately targeted only recovering gambling addicts or only people in need of particular drugs, he is not even a spammer by some of the (vague) definitions — spammers carpet-bomb all addresses they can reach, without trying to narrow down to the (relatively) small groups of addressees, as a more responsible marketeer would do (not to defend those types).

But, wait a minute, the article was not written by "Ed", as the write-up would imply, it simply (mis)quotes and sensationalizes him.

Being "the things, that people hate about the Internet" was not dramatic enough for the magazine — they had to add these details, which aren't even true. Why target "recovering gambling addicts", when you are going to get more money from those, who have not started recovering, for example?

Shoddy journalism, again...

Re:Sounds like a hoax... But is not

[Anonymous Coward]

If he deliberately targeted only recovering gambling addicts or only people in need of particular drugs, he is not even a spammer by some of the (vague) definitions -- spammers carpet-bomb all addresses they can reach, without trying to narrow down to the (relatively) small groups of addressees Bingo -- the article didn't say he only sent the gambling email to recovering addicts. If he sent the gambling spam to the whole world, he also sent it to all the recovering addicts.

Why target "recovering gambling addicts", when you are going to get more money from those, who have not started recovering, for example? He got those too. And me got me too, God Damn his worthless soul.

Re:OS

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, he did, a Beowulf cluster of them, while eating hot grits, and he had nat port stickers on the cases, and he had a full collection of OMG PONIES and he called himself the "I for one welcome our obligatory overlords" and his business plan was
1. spam
2. ???
3. Profit!!!

I for one wish there was a -6 beating a dead horse mod
I also wish i had the ability to delete /. accounts for people who continue to beat the dead horse...

Book distribution?

[CompMD]

So am I going to get four copies of the book every week in my real mailbox in packages with nonexistent return addresses while a guy punches me, takes my credit card, and bills me for the books?

Only plausible source:

[Kadin2048]

a. That was an EXTREMELY targeted spam run. In which case, WHERE did he get the email addresses?

Maybe it was the email database from a softcore porn site that specializes in fully-clothed women popping balloons?

Technical details?

[Charles Dodgeson]

Has anyone seen the book? I would be interested in it if it provided sufficient technical details about how the spammer operated. (Though, I think I'd be more tempted to steal the book than actually buy it.)

No Porn???

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you must be the only person on the planet who doesn't get porn spam. Well, you and that one guy in Siberia who still doesn't have an email account.

Re:No Porn???

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe he doesn't consider that spam?

Re:OS

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one wish there was a -6 beating a dead horse mod I, for one, welcome our dead horse-beating, spamming book writing overlords.

Get off my lawn.

[Valdrax]

Ignoring for the moment the scary database that produces these lists, if you got 10 pieces of spam offering you legitimite, cheap things you may want to buy, I don't think people would be upset at all. In fact, it might make a good e-commerce site.

I would. I'd mind terribly. Putting aside the creepy privacy issues (which would be enough to set me off), I just simply don't like push advertising at all. I don't want my life to interrupted by people interjecting their pleas for me to give them my money for crap I don't need.

I don't like TV ads. I don't like radio ads. I don't like billboards. I don't like fliers on phone poles. I HATE people who stick menus in my apartment door, I HATE telemarketers, and I'd hate spammers too even if they were selling me things I want. I have a habit of stopping doing business with any business that gets too pushy with its advertising (like the people who stick menus in your door), and a spam for something I want is the best way to keep me from ever buying it (at least from that vendor).

The only kind of advertising that I like is the kind where you list a product in some public forum, and I find it when I decide I'm in the market for it. (e.g. Froogle.) Anything that tries to come and find me to tell me how wonderful my life would be if I just bought it is annoying. (And God forbid an ad actually be effective and influence me to do something unwise with my money.) Unless your ad entertains me, go away.

(And yes, I realize that I am on the far end of crotchety about advertising, but that's just my opinion.)

Re:Get off my lawn.

[UbuntuDupe]

If you've ever hit on a girl before, you're a hypocrite.

If you're female, are you against being hit on?

(I have the sneaking suspicion you're neither female nor a hypocrite...)

Re:Get off my lawn.

[Valdrax]

If you've ever hit on a girl before, you're a hypocrite.

I know you're just trolling, but two points:
1) Trying to start a real relationship is different from asking for money (or sex).
2) Forcing your desperation on a stranger is different from asking to deepen a relationship with a friend.

I don't mind Amazon telling me about things that I might like when I log in. I would mind if they started spontaneously emailing me about these things or if one of their partners that I'd never done business with started doing the same thing.

(Also, having been hit on by strangers I had zero interest in before, I will say that it is a distinctly creepy experience, and I do oppose it in general. I wouldn't want to make someone else feel that way.)

Re:Get off my lawn.

[UbuntuDupe]

I know you're just trolling,

No, I'm most certainly not trolling. While I certainly could have made the point more diplomatically (and less succinctly), this is a very important issue for me. I don't see how it's possible to reconcile opposition to all push-type advertising with acceptance of attempts to initiate romantic relationshps. After a lot of personal introspection, I've come to accept that position on the former -- which used to be pretty much the same as yours -- has stunted me on the latter. (socially I mean)

1) Trying to start a real relationship is different from asking for money (or sex).

How? Be specific. ("I like one and don't like the other" doesn't count.)

Forcing your desperation on a stranger is different from asking to deepen a relationship with a friend.

Well, two of my own points:

1) If you're good, it doesn't look desparate.
2) Again, *how* is it different? Be specific.

(Also, having been hit on by strangers I had zero interest in before, I will say that it is a distinctly creepy experience, and I do oppose it in general. I wouldn't want to make someone else feel that way.)

Yes, but there are situations where someone has wanted to heighten a relationship, and you *have* wanted it. What kind of rule do you want people to adhere to, that eliminates the bad instances and keeps the good?

OTHER than mind-reading, I mean.

Re:Get off my lawn.

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems you're confused about what the word "hypocrite" means. A hypocrite is, roughly defined, someone who does not have an internally consistent set of beliefs. Someone is not hypocritical merely because you find their set of beliefs illogical. (Specifically, you believe that it's illogical to differentiate between commercial advertising and flirting. The GP obviously does not. The fact that he or she does not agree with you does not make them a hypocrite.)

In other words, "I like one and not the other" is enough.

Nevertheless, I'll give you a rationalization, even if I've made it clear that I don't think one is required: if no-one ever used push-type "romantic advertising", no couples would ever form in our society(having no system of arranged coupling). (This is because the two parties are in this respect equal(both are human, neither is a company), so any advertising at all would be "push-type".) This is not the case with commercial advertising: if no-one ever slid menus under the GP's door, they would likely still order pizza occasionally. They'd be able to do this because "non-push" advertising of commercial services is available: the GP could find a way to order pizza using, say, a directory of restaurants(which was not forced upon them but voluntarily collected), or a web search(which they meant to undertake specifically to explore the possibility of a commercial transaction). According to their own post, that's actually how they do live.

In summary: the situations are different because one is an interaction between two humans, and another is an interaction between a human and a commercial entity.

Re:Get off my lawn.

[Torvaun]

This is why targeting is important. If I go to the local singles bar and hit on girls, it's assumed they wanted to be hit on, otherwise they wouldn't be in the local singles bar. If I go to the local gay bar, it is assumed that other men are going to hit on me, otherwise I wouldn't be there. If I go to the local fetish club, and a girl tries to interest me in something kinky, that's expected. None of these activities should stray to locations associated with the others.

I get refinance your home spam. I rent. I get pharmaceutical spam. I don't have any medical conditions that require drugs. I get incredible amounts of foreign lottery scams, and I've taken to replying with inquiries as to how my name ended up on their list and editorial corrections to their email. I'd like more spammers to be like this guy, at least 30% of his recipients wanted to get that mail.

Re:Get off my lawn.

[UbuntuDupe]

If I go to the local singles bar and hit on girls, it's assumed they wanted to be hit on, otherwise they wouldn't be in the local singles bar.

Sorry, but that just doesn't follow. There are many reasons girls could be at such a bar. And even so, none of them voiced a desire for a relationship with any *one* of the men in the bar, which is what would be necessary to meet the OP's standard. "If I want what you're offering, I'll seek it out."

Re:Get off my lawn.

[Actually, I do RTFA]

if no-one ever used push-type "romantic advertising", no couples would ever form in our society(having no system of arranged coupling)

Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match...

Actually, I started off hating push advertising, but I realize that a small amount of it is good. It brings forth new ideas. And, as your example inadvertantly demonstrates, leads to better solutions in some cases.

The problem is the huge amount of crap that I'm not interested. To get back to the flirtation example, hot girls dislike being hit on, except by the guys they're interested in. That's the crux of it all.

I forgot my point, and boss is on his way

Re:Get off my lawn.

[Torvaun]

You believe that you will know if you need a product by whatever means, and would then like to go out and browse through all the products of that type until you find the one you want. I think that I probably wouldn't have even been aware of half the products that I know about if it weren't for advertising. Some of those products, I have decided would be nice to have, and I have purchased them. I certainly didn't need them, but if needs were all people went by, neither one of us would be on Slashdot right now. Neither would we have computers, or electricity. Hey, the Amish get along without, so they must not be necessities.

I believe that there is a place for well targeted advertising. I spend time on Darknet and Coding Horror and Slashdot and a bunch of news aggregators with a distinctly geeky spin. If someone were to gather my email address from one of these locations and send me an offer to subscribe to their geeky email newsletter, with a free copy of one of their more recent publications so I could see what it's like, I would likely subscribe. I like it when I do not have to go well out of my way to find things that are interesting to me. Bring on the targeted ads. It's only when I end up with a stack of crappy ads that try to sell me things I have no interest in that I start to become irate.

Re:Get off my lawn.

[Valdrax]

Essentially, I don't consider advice about products from friends in random conversation to be a form of push advertising anymore than I consider being asked out after mutual flirting with a friend to be advertising. In both cases, the situation is intimate, the parties involved are well-known to each other, interest is mutually displayed, and the agenda is not dominated by an entirely material interest.

The opposite of these attributes are all parts of what I find irritating about advertising and about come-ons from strangers. Really, though, I'm stretching to finding the common ground between them. I generally try to think of romance and commerce as distinct things. You may disagree, but I'll go into my reasons a bit more below.

(As an aside, there are ways for strangers to hook up without spamming uninterested parties. Dating sites, speed dating, etc. are ways for people interested in hooking up to meet other people interested in hooking up and to do a little research before trying out a full date with them. That's more analogous to the sort of non-push advertising that I prefer.)

What kind of rule do you want people to adhere to, that eliminates the bad instances and keeps the good?

Any attempt at a relationship though is going to run the risk of bothering someone not interested. That's just part of human nature; love is a two-way street, after all. If you consider that to be a big negative, then you must concede it's at least a necessary evil because there's no other way to know. Commerce is not the same, though.

It is possible to have people buy only things they were already interested in because commerce is usually a mostly one-way relationship. The presence of a business generally indicates a willingness to sell. After all, very few businesses only sell to one customer. Commerce is all about the customer's choice to come seek out and buy. This is a large part of why I see the analogy you're making as a tad stretched.

Re:Get off my lawn.

[Valdrax]

Some of those products, I have decided would be nice to have, and I have purchased them. I certainly didn't need them, but if needs were all people went by, neither one of us would be on Slashdot right now. Neither would we have computers, or electricity. Hey, the Amish get along without, so they must not be necessities.

Forgive me if I roll my eyes at the prospect that we'd all be churning own butter if not for the brave work of advertising companies.

Also, while I did say things I "need," I more meant things that I already decided that I wanted. I don't *need* to buy the newest Harry Potter book, but suffice it to say that I'm aware it exists in spite of not having been exposed to any ads for it other than a single pre-order sign-up placard in the bookstores I frequent.

That's the sort of thing that doesn't bother me. I'm already in the store looking for books, so why not have a few tasteful ads for books I'll be interested in? On the other hand, I do not sign up for "rewards" cards because I don't want them sending me junk mail. When I decide that I'm in the mood to buy books and that I have enough money to throw around on it, I'll head to the danged store, and no sooner.

I like it when I do not have to go well out of my way to find things that are interesting to me.

Well, I suppose what you consider "well out of your way" is where we'd differ. I would *never* sign up for an email newsletter selling me products. I *would* subscribe to an RSS feed that I could check whenever I feel like it. For me the difference is in who initiates the transaction. I want to be the one in charge of when I see ads and not somebody who has a financial incentive to encourage me to spend my money foolishly.

Re:Get off my lawn.

[UbuntuDupe]

love is a two-way street, ...It is possible to have people buy only things they were already interested in because commerce is usually a mostly one-way relationship.

And here we find your hidden faulty premise: Commerce is *not* a one-way street. When someone buys something, assuming they aren't being pressured at *that* moment, they prefer the good to the money, and the seller prefers the money to the good. BOTH benefit. Someone who seeks a romantic relationship is seeking a *mutually beneficial* event. Someone who seeks commerce is *also* seeking a mutually-beneficial event.

(As an aside, there are ways for strangers to hook up without spamming uninterested parties. Dating sites, speed dating, etc. are ways for people interested in hooking up to meet other people interested in hooking up and to do a little research before trying out a full date with them. That's more analogous to the sort of non-push advertising that I prefer.)

And it's precisely those kinds of places that women DON'T LIKE. Go look up the male/female ratio for those activities.

This is a large part of why I see the analogy you're making as a tad stretched.

I think that the extent that you call this an "analogy" is the extent to which you trivialize both my insight and my personal experience. I did not dream this up as a way to refute your argument and/or justify spam. I came to that realization after trying to live under your philosophy. I consider the two areas both implications of the same premise: do people have the right to pressure others to do things they did not ask to be pressured with, but which they may decide they like? (Not being female, I'm limited in the amount of insight I have access to from that perspective.)

Re:Get off my lawn.

[Valdrax]

Commerce is *not* a one-way street. When someone buys something, assuming they aren't being pressured at *that* moment, they prefer the good to the money, and the seller prefers the money to the good.

Yes, but what does that have to do with advertising? After all, I generally don't see an ad for a good right where I'm going to buy it. That's a large part of my objection. I don't mind an ad for something in a store that sells it, and I've said so elsewhere. After all, I'm already there to look for similar goods.

My point was that the decision to buy is one-sided because the decision to sell has already long ago been made.

I consider the two areas both implications of the same premise: do people have the right to pressure others to do things they did not ask to be pressured with, but which they may decide they like?

See, now there is a good question. If you'd phrased it that was from the start instead of attempting to be insulting, this discussion might've gone a very different way.

Basically, I'd say that I neither consider it inherently a right nor inherently a crime. I don't think the answer has a universal "yes" or "no" answer. I think that the answer is entirely dependent on context and intent.

This is why I mentioned a distinction between asking out someone you already have a less romantic relationship with and hitting on a stranger. Intent is different because the list of possible motives for hitting on a stranger are inherently more limited by your lack of previous knowledge of them. You generally only want the one material gain from the transaction.

Similarly advertisers only want you for your money and don't care about the effects of their ads on the rest of your life. They don't care if it clutters up a previously pretty neighborhood with garish visual noise. They don't care if it breaks up the flow of the movie you were watching. They don't care if their junk mail fills up landfills. They don't care if they interrupt dinner with a phone call. They don't care if you have to waste time deleting their spam. They don't care about any of this because they don't have to bear these costs.

That difference in intent matters to me.

Re:Get off my lawn.

[Torvaun]

I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. In my example, the newsletter was the product. It presupposed that someone had taken the time to analyze the things I do online and had a paid newsletter that discussed the same things. Sorta like how I got hooked on 2600, except that was peer review more than anything else.

On the other hand, I am signed up for ThinkGeek's monthly email. It is a newsletter trying to sell me things, but I do purchase things from them on occasion. I have the opportunity to opt out, but I don't. It's the same reason as why I'm on Slashdot and other sites, I could go search through the various news sites to find things that interest me, but someone else has already gone through the work for me, so I go there. Depending on quality, I am willing to pay for similar types of services.

I know what it will look like

[patio11]

The people who talk in theatre are watching their favorite movie for eternity, except the seat behind them holds a fully-clothed women popping balloons. And the seats to either side of them hold the men who are buying the videos of the fully-clothed women popping balloons.

Hmm, I wonder if Satan would pay me a usage fee if I trademarked that. Eh, probably not, he has enough lawyers to fight his way out of it.

Re:Sod the spammer, how about the sources of his i

[middlemen]

What about the possibility of spammers themselves working as data entry employees and then getting first hand access to data themselves and selling it or using it on the spam market ?

Nice Guy

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'm actually a really nice guy. Trust me." and then...

In short, Ed said he was "basically what people hate about the Internet." I don't think he has a firm understanding of the phrase "nice guy".

Spam

[Stalinbulldog]

Buy the book and you'll get free complimentary book recommendations, also links to pr0n involving cans of spam...

Shut that door!

[iminplaya]

Hmmm...dust...

CAUTION! Don't watch this if you like cute, furry animals.

Re:Shut that door!

[ADHDYoshi]

CAUTION! Don't watch this if you like cute, furry animals. Why? The python WINS!

NARRATOR: And so, ADHDYoshi turned this entire discussion into an argument about whether pythons are furry or not. Some people said that pythons were completely bare, other people said that pythons had some hair, but that didn't make them furry, and some other people said that if in animal even has one hair, it makes the animal furry, and yet some other people said that only three obscure species of python have hair, and even if they did have hair it would be very doubtful that they would be considered "furry" by the general public, and that these species in question only live in India and are a completely different color than the python in the video in question. However, Mr. Biologist saw this conversation and immediately concluded that the "python" in the video was in fact a space alien which looks exactly like a python and eats rabbits FOR DINNER. The End.

Long tail of fetish marketing

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a bit like the 'Long Tail' ideas of Chris Anderson. The most effective spam will be the most niche.

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you think that he ran Windows? Not likely. No way was this guy going to help his competitors.

New book?

[jpkunst]

It seems that this "New book" is actually three years old. Inside the Spam Cartel: Trade Secrets from the Dark Side (November 1, 2004).

JP

Re:New book?

[Legion303]

You must be new here.

Ok I googled, but you won't like...

[Anonymous Coward]

her.... A well, she is popping a balloon, so who knows who will like her now!

RTFA, the money was sent to his bank account

[Anonymous Coward]

... from where he then cashed it. For some reason.

Not my Church.

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

While there is nothing immoral in the pictures, but part of the sin lies in the objectification or women. If you're still objectifying them, its still wrong.

brought to you by the local morality guide.

Re:Not my Church.

[Adambomb]

And the People for the Ethical Treatment of Balloons.

Re:Not my Church.

[Mister Whirly]

Won't someone please think of the balloons!

Re:Not my Church.

[Scooter's_dad]

While there is nothing immoral in the pictures, but part of the sin lies in the objectification or women. If you're still objectifying them, its still wrong.

Have you ever been hit by a woman moving at high velocity? They are most definitely objects!

Re:Not my Church.

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Its not that they aren't objects, but there also more than objects. You know, endowed with a soul and free will.

Re:Not my Church.

[gsn]

Yes and what's worse is to describe them hitting you at high velocity we model them as point objects and then they go on the "Are you calling me fat!" rant...
Also works if you model them as spherical cows.

Re:Not my Church.

[Anonymous Coward]

Provide evidence for the soul, give me a good definition of "free will", and I might believe you.

Re:Not my Church.

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

free will, def:

  The ability to question the existence of the soul and doubt free will.

Re:Sod the spammer, how about the sources of his i

[Anonymous Coward]

This guy should be forced to disclose where he got the information from, so that these companies can be punished for poor data security, or worse, actually selling such sensitive private information on.

Two thoughts: 1) I doubt most of us read the fine line that says we agree to allow the release of our information to third parties, and 2) I believe publicly-funded organizations do this themselves.

When I applied to attend classes at the local public university, I started receiving many solicitations for loan programs. I never applied anywhere for loan money (paid in cash), and never requested such information. How did they get my info?

Who the fuck do you think you are?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

You probably shouldn't be punishing anyone for piracy. How many times in you life have you illegally copied cassette tabes/CD's/DVD's? If you were to get caught, do you think you should be punished for it?

That's what I thought.

making spam less profitable

[cmdr_tofu]

Spammers pay real money for botnets/phishing websites etc, but their return is higher
than their expenses so they continue to plague us. Our spamfiltering solutions may
diminish their return, but apparently not enough.

One interesting approach (from MIT Spam Conference) was these guys (SPAMALOT), who basically interact with the spammer as much as possible.

http://acm.cs.uic.edu/~lszyba1/

I really think its a good idea. If a spammer is trying to get a credit card, give them 50000 phonies. Imagine what would happen to spammers if everyone responded to all their spam? The only probem I see is it might make it easy for malicious people to DOS real web stores, by sending out spam for those stores.

Any other ideas?

you are not alone

[Ogive17]

For the most part, I am just like you. I throw away almost every advertisement without looking first. If I want something, I will do my own research.

Going to hell? Only if he's lucky...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I know I'm going to hell," said Ed."

Not if we get to him first...then he'll wish he had.

There's NO such thing as a "legitimate spam biz"

[BattyMan]

Every day I get spam from "legitimate" businesses like DiscoverCard, my College (AZ State U)'s Alumni Association, and even my mortgage company (Countrywide). Just because these asshats are BIG deals or have some ongoing business relationship with me does NOT legitimize their spam - it remains unsolicited and unwanted.

Sears and Craftsman tools are the worst - everyday there's something.

You guys need to understand that when Chen Lin sends me penis enlargement spams & offers for fake Rolex watches there isn't much I can do to retaliate for that, but when Craftsman pummels my inbox I quit bothering with the NASCAR truck races and quit going into Sears at all. I'll have nothing more to do with Sears - at least until they drop epending and spamming from their advertizing policies.

I look through my spam repositories regularly, and filter guys like Guns and Ammo Magazine, who were nice enough to ask me to opt-out before spamming me (which I _won't_ do: why should I opt-out of something you shouldn't be sending me in the first place?)

Again, I'm taking names, and you guys are _very_ easy to filter: it's not as if any of yer spam is ever getting read.

If I had enough of a credit rating to refinance my mortgage Countrywide would be gone from my life - not that I would expect that that would actually get them outta my inbox.

If your business has enough of a name to be recognized by your victims, the LAST thing you can afford to do is spam - it's the WORST possible PR outreach you can do. When are "legitimate spammers" gonna get this?

Hope it does poorly

[kbsoftware]

I hope his book does poorly. Today I'm not so mad at spammers anymore as I am at those who respond to spam. Those are the people who need to be taken outside and shot. With them gone spammers have no more revenue.

Re:Hope it does poorly

[micromuncher]

It would do as well as OJ's "If I woulda killed Nicole"...

MASSIVE Violation

[l33tDad]

He used e-mail addresses of people known to have bought antianxiety medication or antidepressants and targeted them with pharmaceutical spam. I work at a hospital and am involved in HIPAA regulation compliance. This one line is proof that some company, hospital, care giver, pharmacy or what ever seriously violated HIPAA regulations by disclosing that information. By law that would make the spammer liable and force him to disclose his information for further prosecution of who ever gave him the list(s) of people on medication.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_Insurance_Port ability_and_Accountability_Act

why not prosecute?

[skinfaxi]

If this dude details his spamming exploits, why not use the book to sue or prosecute him? It's illegal, isn't it? Would an ex-burgler get to make a bunch of money from a book on his lock-picking techniques and stories about houses he'd broken into and people he'd mugged?

Re:why not prosecute?

[Vegeta99]

See Discovery Channel's "To Catch a Thief" or whatever its called, in which 2 ex-criminals break in your place, ransack it, and then tell you how to not be an idiot when it comes to home security (The guard dog don't do very good if you come with chicken nuggets for you, and the barricaded windows don't work too hot when you leave them unlocked and opened, etc)

Re:why not prosecute?

[Anonymous Coward]

SPAM in itself not illegal. The law never passed.

But getting the info to spam may!

Well, duh! Of course we don't care.

[Anonymous Coward]

"It seems to me that few people understand the two go together like beer and potato chips."

That's because it's not Free Beer and Free Potato Chips. Once someone steps on our Free beer and Chips, then we REALLY get pissed off!

photos of fully clothed women popping poppers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well there's the slightly more risque versions out their. Fully clothed women popping their blow-up bras, and fully clothed women popping YOUR "balloons" Ewww!

Re:There's NO such thing as a "legitimate spam biz

[lena_10326]

Again, I'm taking names, and you guys are _very_ easy to filter:

I'm not a spammer, so I object to your use of the "you" pronoun.
____

Anyway, nice sentiment in your post, however there's something you should realize. Your opinion doesn't matter because you're one individual among a group of spam recipients. You won't click an ad and purchase, but for every one of you there are 100 of your peers that will.

When it comes to understanding why spam works, you have to think in terms of group social behavior. Not individual behavior.

Re:There's NO such thing as a "legitimate spam biz

[ShinmaWa]

I'm not a spammer, so I object to your use of the "you" pronoun. Bull. You doth protest too much, methinks, and you know far too much about this business "the owner you know" has to not be a part of it somehow. I suspect you see this owner every time you look in the mirror.

You won't click an ad and purchase, but for every one of you there are 100 of your peers that will. Actually, it's the other way around. With less than 1% response rate, for every one of us that won't there's another 100 of us that also won't.

Re:There's NO such thing as a "legitimate spam biz

[lena_10326]

Bull. You doth protest too much, methinks, and you know far too much about this business "the owner you know" has to not be a part of it somehow. I suspect you see this owner every time you look in the mirror.

LOL. HA HA HA HA

If I was making money doing that, I wouldn't be posting here.... or would I? Hmmm. Anyway. I'd be occupying my time with leisure and what-ever-else if I were. The reason I don't is because I'm lacking two things: an email list and a sense of greed.

Actually, it's the other way around. With less than 1% response rate, for every one of us that won't there's another 100 of us that also won't.

Riggghht. Keep on thinkin that. 5% or more is possible, although difficult. No, I'm not going to say how but think about the women popping balloons example. Narrow & focused.

fishing scam

[Anonymous Coward]

hot... wet... trout... just hanging there on the line waiting to get reeled in...

Re:fishing scam

[Anonymous Coward]

"hot... wet... trout... just hanging there on the line waiting to get reeled in..."

LINK, PLEASE!!!

Re:There's NO such thing as a "legitimate spam biz

[lena_10326]

Actually, it's the other way around. With less than 1% response rate, for every one of us that won't there's another 100 of us that also won't.

Oh boy. I'm dyslexic today. I misread your and the previous posts wrong. But yours is still wrong too, so no biggie.

Should read, for every one who responds, there are 99 others that won't. Heh.

Re:Your math error has been corrected

[Dark_Gravity]

You won't click an ad and purchase, but for every one of you there are 100 of your peers that will.

You won't click an ad and purchase, but for every 1000 of you there are less than one of your peers that will.

You had your ratios reversed and disproportioned. I corrected them for you.

For every idiot that buys something from a spammer, there are approximately another thousand recipients that would just as soon cut off the spammers balls and feed them to him.

Re:OS

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you, but deleting accounts doesn't prevent the same asshat from returning with new accounts and/or hiding behind anon coward. At least for now we can just mark him as foe and auto-mark his comments to -1 with a modifier when viewing...

I believe it

[Anonymous Coward]

Something like that crosses the line from just plain "spam" to VIRAL spam. Women popping balloons. It's too weird to pass up clicking to the site. I remember seeing this site too (last year?). The old marketing rule applies: Make something remarkable and you will get people's attention (even if it's for 15 seconds). This weird "adult" site fits the bill. It's viral marketing sent out via spam methods.

Re:Sod the spammer, how about the sources of his i

[Amouth]

easy. you said "public university" due to it being a public and not private school the list of attendees is a matter of public record - all they had to do was ask for it.

The real question...

[Anonymous Coward]

Will it blend?

As has yours.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, for every 1000 of you there are less than ten peers that will. 1% of 1000 is 10, not 1.

photos of geeks popping expectations.

[Anonymous Coward]

"But my god, what a weird thing to be turned on by."

Yeah! You said it!

What does destroying angel or cyanide taste like?

[syousef]

These are about the only things that would be interesting to learn from a spammer.

He can keep his "tell all" bullshit money grab.

English, mofo, do you speak it?

[spun]

What do you think "Tend to" means? Does it mean everyone does it, all the time? No, it does not. Moreover, in trying to be clever, you have mistaken reductionism with generalization, which is what I was doing. It's a generalization I stand behind, like saying men tend to be taller than women. Does that mean every man is taller than every women? I probably have to spell this out for you so, no, it does not. Go back to digg.

Competitors??

[Anonymous Coward]

more correctly they worked together ;)

Spam is a solved problem

[AmiMoJo]

Spam will probably not get worse, as it has already largely been solved.

My email account gets in the order of 500-700 spams a day. I see maybe one a week. I occasionally check for false positives but have not seen any for over a year.

I use SpamAssassin at my domain provider (joker.com) followed by Gmail's spam filtering. All ISPs need do is start offering this kind of thing to their customers, and spam will die overnight. It wouldn't even be hard - just enable it with a [SPAM] tag for everyone and provide a program to re-configure Outlook to filter it. A lot of people use the web interface anyway.

recipient bears the majority of the cost, not ISP!

[hadaso]

> the recipient bears the majority of the cost
> (actually, the ISP does, in terms of increased
> bandwidth and storage requirements, ...

Actually I did the math, and the costs in terms of bandwidth and storage are much much lower than the cost of the recipient's time.

"Just hit delete" is very expensive if you just multiply the the few seconds it takes to read a bit of the mail and think just a little bit to make sure you don't delete real email.

Snail mail spam is not a real time waster for me because the time use to junk it is wasted time anyway. Most of it go straight to the garbage can we have near the mailboxes for that purpose, and the rest of it to the other garbage can we keep next to the elevator. the time it takes to walk from the mailboxes to the elevator is usually enough, and is wasted time anyway. In addition most snailmail junkmail I see is actually quite targetted. That is someone put in some thought and money into trying to locate relevant audiences. Email spam is not sent to people. It is sent to strings that contain a "@". There is no effort to limit the sending to recipients that might be interested as it is cheaper to send glbally than to research the market. Spam lets the market "research itself", and that's what's wrong with it. What should have been outlawed is the sending of bulk communications to lists of addresses (or "routing instructions") that are not positively identified with individuals.

Telemarketng is very annoying, in that it is actually harrassment. It makes you get up and go to abswer a phone, and when there's too much of it it robs you of the functionality of a phone as a means to call you in an emergency (it cannot be used in this way if most of the times you pick up the phone you find out it's commercial harassment. Anyway, with telemarketing the cost to the recipient (time it takes to get up and answer the phone, and the indirect cost of interfering in one's routine and in harassment) is much higher than the cost to the caller, of a single phone call, probably with great discount for bulk usage.

The real solution is to make the advertisers costs higher, and the way to do it is to respond: use their 1-800 numbers to tell them their advertising is unwanted. Use their inquiry forms to force them to contact you to hear you're not interested (or just provide false info they have to follow because they have to find the real customers out of all the inquiries they receive). Bulk mail/telemarketing is built on the assumption of low percentage of responses that are "high quality", i.e. that they only have to allot expensive resource (handling by a human) to whoever is going to purchase the service. The way to make this nuisanse go is to respond negatively much more often, swo the the costs of handling responses does not justify the campaign.

sending from and rotating multiple IPs = botnet

[hadaso]

A very accurate descripton of the worst kind of spamming.

If the "owner" you know were to be publicly excuted, thousands will come to make sure the corpse doesn't remain in one piece...

Second that

[microbox]

I don't think anyone likes advertising, but they accept it because they think it's necessary for their TV, newspaper, etc. If only people realised that we pay for the advertising _and_ the TV (newspaper, radio, etc). I saw a senior marketing researcher describe how they were studying how to make children more effective naggers, because they had already determined that that's the best way to get parents to buy stuff. She was asked:

"Do you think that's morale?"

"Morale? I don't know, however, if we sell more products then we've done our job."

If we had strictly regulated, non-intrusive advertising, then that would be a level field for companies to "get their message across", and lower the irritation level of society at large. Alas, nothing will ever happen while intrusive advertising is perceived as necessary.

Fetish Map

[Anonymous Coward]

It has more to do with a latex fetish then anything, but can be combined with a crush fetish.

This according to the fetish map.