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.