A New Approach To Reducing Spam: Go After Credit Processors

WrongSizeGlass writes "A team of computer scientists at two University of California campuses has been looking deeply into the nature of spam, and they think found a 'choke point' [PDF] that could greatly reduce the flow of spam. It turned out that 95 percent of the credit card transactions for the spam-advertised drugs and herbal remedies they bought were handled by just three financial companies — one based in Azerbaijan, one in Denmark and one in Nevis, in the West Indies. If a handful of companies like these refused to authorize online credit card payments to the merchants, 'you'd cut off the money that supports the entire spam enterprise,' said one of the scientists." Frequent Slashdot contributor (and author of a book on Digital Cash) Peter Wayner wonders if "the way to get a business shut down is to send out a couple billion spam messages in its name."

Comments

Fight Fire with Fire

[retroworks]

I've never understood why not, when a computer can generate millions of spam ads for viagra, that another computer cannot generate millions of (fake) orders for the viagra.

Re:Fight Fire with Fire

[FudRucker]

but not just one fake credit card number, send them billions or trillions of them, just flood their system to the point that the credit companies just throw in the towel and refuse to process products advertized by spammers, spam the spammers, give them a large heaping helping of their own medicine...

Re:Fight Fire with Fire

[retroworks]

Tough Crowd! Sorry for not explaining that the credit card companies can generate a number for this purpose which would appear to be a real number but they would not execute payment. I'm assuming that at least one bank could be found that doesn't like spam. I'm not saying there isn't a reason it cannot be done, just that I've never understood why not, and the retorts here don't really resolve that.

Re:Fight Fire with Fire

[Khyber]

I just tried it, and it fucking worked. I used a totally unknown e-mail account and just socially-engineered my brother.

I have ZERO faith left in humanity.

You're fucking evil and insightful.

Re:Fight Fire with Fire

[rickb928]

Don't bother. The processors have fraud detection systems that are sensistive to a few card numbers. Any processor tryng to spam the actual issuers will find out quickly it won't work.

Really.

But going after the few processors that serve the majority of spammers is not impossible. Perhaps better to answer the spam and buy stuff, then dispute the charges, and taint the spammers so much that the processors have to give up on them. And the spammers won't be able to just move to a new processor - they tend to share data on deadbeat 'merchants'.

Except this doesn't work well enough to deal with the offshore poker houses. Better to get the spammers labeled as illegal. Card issuers hate that.

Good luck. I'm not hopeful.