But I want to write a screen-scraper that will troll
through slashdot posts and fetch e-mail addresses.
It will intelligently delete "nospam", "no-spam",
"remove this", "removethis", etc. (case insensitive).
It will also look at the strings for alphanumerics, and presume that the first special character (or any instance of "AT") should be @. Commas or spaces will be converted to dots (along with any instances of "DOT" or "DAHT").
And then I'll move on to other slashcode sites, since the migration will be ridiculously easy. I'll harvest industry-specific e-mail addresses, sorted by site.
The major ISPs charge in a metered fashion. That means all their customers pay by the MB, GB, etc.
A spammer who uses bandwidth to send spam is going to pay for all that data - but so will the end user in the ISP's system. The ISP knows that spam is an issue, but it provides them with zero-maintenance traffic, constantly running up the user's 'meter'.
In a capitalist society, profit is always the motive. The ISP doesn't just charge you what the bandwidth costs them... They add a percentage that equals profit.
[Begin technically inaccurate but wholly educational example]
XISP has a fixed cost of 10 cents per Gigabyte of traffic, upstream or down. They charge 12.5 cents per Gig.
Spammer_X sends out 20GB of spam. He pays the ISP $2.50 for that privilege. Since cost was $2, they made 50 cents. Now, assume that the mail is primarily directed at ISPs who lease lines from XISP, and who pay that same 12.5 cents per Gig.
If they get 60% of the downstream covered, they'll be able to make another $1.50 off the traffic they originated.
So for transferring 20GB across their own network, they made $4 on something that cost them $2.
THAT is why the "Common Carriers" take their time getting rid of spammers. The longer they can let the guy spew his mail, the more 'incidental revenue' they can scrape together.
Slashdot Mirror
It will intelligently delete "nospam", "no-spam", "remove this", "removethis", etc. (case insensitive) .
It will also look at the strings for alphanumerics, and presume that the first special character (or any instance of "AT") should be @. Commas or spaces will be converted to dots (along with any instances of "DOT" or "DAHT").
And then I'll move on to other slashcode sites, since the migration will be ridiculously easy. I'll harvest industry-specific e-mail addresses, sorted by site.
Does that make me evil?
The major ISPs charge in a metered fashion. That means all their customers pay by the MB, GB, etc. A spammer who uses bandwidth to send spam is going to pay for all that data - but so will the end user in the ISP's system. The ISP knows that spam is an issue, but it provides them with zero-maintenance traffic, constantly running up the user's 'meter'. In a capitalist society, profit is always the motive. The ISP doesn't just charge you what the bandwidth costs them... They add a percentage that equals profit. [Begin technically inaccurate but wholly educational example] XISP has a fixed cost of 10 cents per Gigabyte of traffic, upstream or down. They charge 12.5 cents per Gig. Spammer_X sends out 20GB of spam. He pays the ISP $2.50 for that privilege. Since cost was $2, they made 50 cents. Now, assume that the mail is primarily directed at ISPs who lease lines from XISP, and who pay that same 12.5 cents per Gig. If they get 60% of the downstream covered, they'll be able to make another $1.50 off the traffic they originated. So for transferring 20GB across their own network, they made $4 on something that cost them $2. THAT is why the "Common Carriers" take their time getting rid of spammers. The longer they can let the guy spew his mail, the more 'incidental revenue' they can scrape together.
Thousands of additional ads, huh? M-o-z-i-l-l-a. Adblock is your friend.