Phishing Is a Minimum-Wage Job

rohitm918 writes "A study by Microsoft Research concludes that phishers make very little (PDF): '...low-skill jobs pay like low-skill jobs, whether the activity is legal or not.' They also find that the Gartner numbers that everyone quotes ($3.2B/year etc) are rubbish, off by a factor of 50. 'Even though it harvests "free money," phishing generates total revenue equal to the total costs incurred by the actors. Each participant earns, on average, only as much as he would have made in the opportunities he gave up elsewhere. As the total phishing effort increases the total phishing revenue declines: the harder individual phishers try the worse their collective situation gets. As a consequence, increasing effort is a sign of failure rather than of success.'"

Comments

Economically rational, isn't.

[QuantumG]

You have the choice:

1. earn minimum wage at McDonalds
2. earn less than minimum wage selling drugs

Which do you choose? Selling drugs of course. Why? Cause you've got respect for yourself and refuse to work a demeaning job.

Before you object, whether or not you agree that working at McDonalds is demeaning is irrelevant. Many, many, many women have been given the choice:

1. work as a stripper
2. work as a waitress

and decided that working as a waitress is less demeaning than working as a stripper. You may disagree with that, also but that's also irrelevant. The facts are that you can make a lot more money working as a stripper than as a waitress, and yet so many people choose not to.

The economically rational human is a myth.

Re:Not really all that big a surprise

[Shakrai]

Very true, I know a guy who sells pot. He is always bragging about how much money he makes

If he's selling drugs (even something as harmless as pot) while running around town bragging about it, he's likely to discover that his cost of doing business will be going up soon.....

I'm not a big fan of a war on drugs but I don't have much sympathy for someone that mind numbingly stupid either. I always used to suspect that a friend of mine had a grow-operation going on -- but I never asked and she never told. If you are going to get involved in anything like that the first rule you learn is to keep your fucking mouth shut.

Re:Not really all that big a surprise

[PCM2]

I wouldn't have the balls to get into dealing. The risk to reward ratio just isn't there for pot and I don't believe in any of the harder stuff.

On the other hand, the risk seems pretty low. Most pot dealers don't stand on a streetcorner, and many don't even advertise. Business is all word of mouth, and most customers repeat once a month or more -- nice and predictable income. Maybe every once in a while a dealer will try to up-sell a customer some mushrooms, but that's about it. Overall, selling pot seems like a much less risky business proposition than opening a coffee shop.

Irrational expepctation

[fermion]

It is this way any time someone waves huge amounts of money at a job people think anyone can do. It is likely that some spammers make huge amounts of money, so why not me?

For instance, some football players make a lot of money, so families, schools, colleges spend huge amounts of money to get people a position where they can make this money. In fact, even if one only considers colleges that are regularly recruited, the expectation value of income for these players are minimum wage. Of course, they can make money if they have others degress or skills, but the expectation if the rely on the game is very small.

As mentioned, many people prefer a small income with criminal activity rather than an honest, if perhaps uncomfortable job. People also prefer jobs they think they can have fun with to jobs where they actually have to put a honest days work.

We see this with the Madoff case, where it is better to be rich and work at a dishonorable profession than honorable and not so well off. Why would Madoff, or his criminal kids, be more respected than a person who is on time and does a good job at McDonalds?